First let me say that I think "Ego," from the deluxe edition of Beyonce's I Am...Sasha Fierce, is one of the more clever uses of a double entendre to emerge on the pop&B landscape. This isn't the regrettable analogy of "You Remind Me of My Jeep."
The song is written by Harold Lilly and Elvis Williams. (Beyonce gets a writing credit too, courtesy of Daddy, but you know she didn't write anything but her signature on the back of the royalty check.) In it she extols the dimensions of her man's considerable (ahem) ego before the song crescendos into a humming gospel riff:
He got a big ego, such a huge ego
I love his big ego
He walk like this cause he can back it up
Yet whereas the clip for her matrimony-seeking mega-hit "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)" elevated the track by way of Fosse's choreography and the Balmain-inspired rehearsal room costumes, the video for "Ego" is just a bad retread.
Beyonce also gets a directing credit here (Again, thanks, Matthew Knowles) alongside her longtime dance director, Frank Gatson. The bodysuits are resurrected, as are many of the now familiar head spins and twirls. Her latest, "Sweet Dreams," is yet another take on the formula.
More woeful is that she swapped the sleek look of the earlier video for a drag-like makeup job that made me think of the Cat Lady aka Jocelyn Wildenstein. Don't you think they kinda look alike?
With Kanye on the remix, I just think creative minds could have cooked up something more enticing instead of trying to bait the legions of dancing Stans who crowned her Lord of the "Ring" when they uploaded their own versions of that video onto YouTube.
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1 comment:
Thank you for writing about this. I was thinking how could Beyonce pull another video like this in her Miss Tina leotard! These things upset me when I'm up watching VH1 Soul. Am I getting too old for this or am I just tired of Bey's lack of creativity?
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