It begins with what looks like an old-fashioned TV test card but is in fact the colours of the Progress Pride flag, arrayed across the back of the giant stage. It ends with a photo of Beyoncé’s mother and her “godmother” – her late Uncle Jonny, to whom Renaissance, Beyoncé’s seventh album, is dedicated; a gay man who was HIV-positive. In between is a two-and-a-half-hour assault on the senses, in which the word “shiny” ceases to have meaning. Somehow, Beyoncé has taken a mirrorball and multiplied it by tinsel, then lacquered it in liquid titanium and thrown a post-marathon aluminium foil blanket on it for good measure. The result is a set of outfits – and a wider spectacle – so dangerously gleaming that the many thousand people in this Cardiff stadium really should be watching the third night of the Renaissance world tour through a pinhole projector, as one might view an eclipse. Beyoncé herself occasionally sports shades.
Roughly a year on from its release, Renaissance has been conspicuous by its relative absence. No videos have been forthcoming. Tonight more than makes up for that. Maximalism is expected in stadiums, and especially from stars like Beyoncé, 20 years into a solo career that has only become more opulent, more emotionally gripping and more overtly political as it has gone on. But this banging, progressive, LGBTQ+-embracing, Afrofuturist extravaganza is a masterclass in refined excess.
