Catching up with Beyoncé before her world tour (in between gigs at the Inauguration and the Oscars), Jonathan Van Meter discovers why the superstar never slows down—she's unstoppable.
Photographed by Mario Testino.
February has barely begun, and Beyoncé is already having the biggest year of her life. Just a couple of weeks after her historic, indelible star turn at the presidential Inauguration, she has found herself, yet again, at the center of another worldwide television event with an unfathomably huge audience: the Oscars. Although she is in the midst of a grueling schedule of her own—preparing for a world tour that kicks off this month—she has somehow found time to rehearse for what might be the most challenging performance of her career: a high-wire act that essentially packs the history of the movie musical into five minutes of showstopping song and dance. Opposite Hugh Jackman (gulp). Live.
The weekend before the telecast, Hollywood's ultimate showman, Baz Luhrmann, who is directing this big, pizzazzy number, calls me in between rehearsals. "At some point," he says, "as Hugh was inventing his own little musical out of many famous musicals, he realized he needed a leading lady. The question became: Who could that be? Who can sing and dance and act? It's a fairly rare combination." Enter Beyoncé.
"There are many people who have powerful voices," says Luhrmann, "and then there are rare stars—whether it's a Streisand or a Louis Armstrong or a Maria Callas—whose voice is recognizable no matter what the material. That's what makes a great musical star: They put their imprint on anything they're given. Beyoncé absolutely has that." He pauses for a moment, and then for good measure adds one last piece of high-flying praise: "And as a dancer, there's not a step you can give her that she can't pick up."
If her director is suitably impressed, her costar is positively giddy. "Just watching how she processes everything, she's so fast," says Jackman. "She'd never heard the song 'Top Hat,' and she just listened to it once, and she was sort of humming along with it, and then she heard it another time, and then she just sang it like it had never been sung before, in a way that was so sultry and soulful and sexy and engaging. You thought to yourself, This is the best version of this song I've ever heard. I just found myself going, 'Oh, my God, I want to do movies with this girl. I want do a movie musical!' "
When Beyoncé finally appeared out of the darkness at the top of the stairs on Oscar night—every inch the showgirl in red sequins and top hat—she looked fabulous and sounded even better. The whole number was classic Baz Luhrmann: pastiche stirred into happy chaos. But it did make me long to hear Beyoncé sing whole versions of some of those songs, from "Over the Rainbow" to "You're the One That I Want."
Could there be a full-length Luhrmann-directed Knowles-Jackman movie musical in the future? "One can only pray," says Luhrmann. "My mind is racing already."
For now, however, Beyoncé has more pressing concerns. It's one of those spooky-dark early-February nights, and she's been holed up for hours in a vast, musty, windowless studio space on Manhattan's far West Side. Sitting on a barstool facing her ten-piece all-female band, she is wearing her rehearsal uniform: a skintight black bodysuit with a long, clingy, cream-colored knit T-shirt and what she calls "mega-pumps"—black YSL platform stilettos. Her long hair is pulled back off her face with a pair of sunglasses, and her shiny silver-metallic manicure makes it seem as if she has ten tiny mirrors glued to the ends of her fingers.
She and her band—all the single ladies, indeed—are just one week into rehearsing for the tour, which kicks off this month in Edmonton, Canada, but they sound surprisingly tight already. They are still in what Beyoncé refers to as the "play" phase. At one point, the pianist begins the quiet, pretty Sarah McLachlan ballad "Angel," and Beyoncé sings the song exactly as it was originally recorded—a kind of vocal drag that she is very good at. Suddenly, the keyboard player starts banging out her part as if she were in a black church in the deep South. Beyoncé starts belting to the heavens, testifying from her barstool. Before long the whole band falls out laughing—wooo, child!
It has been a very long day—though the end is not even close for Beyoncé, who is now flopped down next to me on a black leather sofa. "My mind is on overload," she says, and that is about as big a complaint as you will ever hear out of a girl who defines the word trouper. She got up at the crack of dawn in the Tribeca loft she shares with Jay-Z (whom she finally married last April after a six-year courtship), ate a tiny portion of Honey Nut Cheerios, ran six miles, and then worked out with her trainer, who had her in every imaginable kind of squat to get her ready to fit into her no doubt skintight Thierry Mugler-designed tour costumes. Then she went to a dance rehearsal for a couple of hours before showing up here. Now she will sit for a meeting with her management, scarf down several bites of a salad with jalapeños and avocado ("so that it tastes like something that's bad for you"), do this interview, and then rejoin the dance rehearsal until late into the night. "And then I have to go home and be a wife!" she says, laughing.
It is just two weeks since Beyoncé sang the Etta James classic "At Last" to Barack Obama and his wife on the evening of January 20, as they danced for the first time as president and First Lady and gave the entire nation a collective lump in its throat. There was something about the look on Beyoncé's face, the way she herself seemed as if she might start to cry as her voice—suddenly so adult, so elegant—glided effortlessly through the standard, that made everyone grow quiet. Her composure brought to the surface the reality of what had happened: We had elected a black man to be president of the United States. By the time the song was over, Beyoncé had become not just part of a historical moment but the perfect symbol of it.
Watching her that night reminded me of something she said three years ago, when I interviewed her for the release of Dreamgirls. I asked her if she had ever experienced any of the racism in the music business that is depicted in that film, and she said, "In some ways but only slightly. My father had to fight those battles. I didn't. And now I'm large enough—I'm universal—that no one's paying attention to what race I am. I've kind of proven myself. I'm past that." I remember feeling a real charge when she said it; I was both sure that it was true for her and shocked that a 24-year-old black girl from Houston had the nerve to say such a thing. But on the night of the Inauguration it became patently obvious that what she said three years earlier had finally become true for all of us, not just for her.
"Fierce Creature" has been edited for Style.com; the complete story appears in the April 2009 issue of Vogue.
The weekend before the telecast, Hollywood's ultimate showman, Baz Luhrmann, who is directing this big, pizzazzy number, calls me in between rehearsals. "At some point," he says, "as Hugh was inventing his own little musical out of many famous musicals, he realized he needed a leading lady. The question became: Who could that be? Who can sing and dance and act? It's a fairly rare combination." Enter Beyoncé.
"There are many people who have powerful voices," says Luhrmann, "and then there are rare stars—whether it's a Streisand or a Louis Armstrong or a Maria Callas—whose voice is recognizable no matter what the material. That's what makes a great musical star: They put their imprint on anything they're given. Beyoncé absolutely has that." He pauses for a moment, and then for good measure adds one last piece of high-flying praise: "And as a dancer, there's not a step you can give her that she can't pick up."
If her director is suitably impressed, her costar is positively giddy. "Just watching how she processes everything, she's so fast," says Jackman. "She'd never heard the song 'Top Hat,' and she just listened to it once, and she was sort of humming along with it, and then she heard it another time, and then she just sang it like it had never been sung before, in a way that was so sultry and soulful and sexy and engaging. You thought to yourself, This is the best version of this song I've ever heard. I just found myself going, 'Oh, my God, I want to do movies with this girl. I want do a movie musical!' "
When Beyoncé finally appeared out of the darkness at the top of the stairs on Oscar night—every inch the showgirl in red sequins and top hat—she looked fabulous and sounded even better. The whole number was classic Baz Luhrmann: pastiche stirred into happy chaos. But it did make me long to hear Beyoncé sing whole versions of some of those songs, from "Over the Rainbow" to "You're the One That I Want."
Could there be a full-length Luhrmann-directed Knowles-Jackman movie musical in the future? "One can only pray," says Luhrmann. "My mind is racing already."
For now, however, Beyoncé has more pressing concerns. It's one of those spooky-dark early-February nights, and she's been holed up for hours in a vast, musty, windowless studio space on Manhattan's far West Side. Sitting on a barstool facing her ten-piece all-female band, she is wearing her rehearsal uniform: a skintight black bodysuit with a long, clingy, cream-colored knit T-shirt and what she calls "mega-pumps"—black YSL platform stilettos. Her long hair is pulled back off her face with a pair of sunglasses, and her shiny silver-metallic manicure makes it seem as if she has ten tiny mirrors glued to the ends of her fingers.
She and her band—all the single ladies, indeed—are just one week into rehearsing for the tour, which kicks off this month in Edmonton, Canada, but they sound surprisingly tight already. They are still in what Beyoncé refers to as the "play" phase. At one point, the pianist begins the quiet, pretty Sarah McLachlan ballad "Angel," and Beyoncé sings the song exactly as it was originally recorded—a kind of vocal drag that she is very good at. Suddenly, the keyboard player starts banging out her part as if she were in a black church in the deep South. Beyoncé starts belting to the heavens, testifying from her barstool. Before long the whole band falls out laughing—wooo, child!
It has been a very long day—though the end is not even close for Beyoncé, who is now flopped down next to me on a black leather sofa. "My mind is on overload," she says, and that is about as big a complaint as you will ever hear out of a girl who defines the word trouper. She got up at the crack of dawn in the Tribeca loft she shares with Jay-Z (whom she finally married last April after a six-year courtship), ate a tiny portion of Honey Nut Cheerios, ran six miles, and then worked out with her trainer, who had her in every imaginable kind of squat to get her ready to fit into her no doubt skintight Thierry Mugler-designed tour costumes. Then she went to a dance rehearsal for a couple of hours before showing up here. Now she will sit for a meeting with her management, scarf down several bites of a salad with jalapeños and avocado ("so that it tastes like something that's bad for you"), do this interview, and then rejoin the dance rehearsal until late into the night. "And then I have to go home and be a wife!" she says, laughing.
It is just two weeks since Beyoncé sang the Etta James classic "At Last" to Barack Obama and his wife on the evening of January 20, as they danced for the first time as president and First Lady and gave the entire nation a collective lump in its throat. There was something about the look on Beyoncé's face, the way she herself seemed as if she might start to cry as her voice—suddenly so adult, so elegant—glided effortlessly through the standard, that made everyone grow quiet. Her composure brought to the surface the reality of what had happened: We had elected a black man to be president of the United States. By the time the song was over, Beyoncé had become not just part of a historical moment but the perfect symbol of it.
Watching her that night reminded me of something she said three years ago, when I interviewed her for the release of Dreamgirls. I asked her if she had ever experienced any of the racism in the music business that is depicted in that film, and she said, "In some ways but only slightly. My father had to fight those battles. I didn't. And now I'm large enough—I'm universal—that no one's paying attention to what race I am. I've kind of proven myself. I'm past that." I remember feeling a real charge when she said it; I was both sure that it was true for her and shocked that a 24-year-old black girl from Houston had the nerve to say such a thing. But on the night of the Inauguration it became patently obvious that what she said three years earlier had finally become true for all of us, not just for her.
"Fierce Creature" has been edited for Style.com; the complete story appears in the April 2009 issue of Vogue.
No comments:
Post a Comment