From http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/beyonces-4-a-track-by-track-breakdown-20110608
By: Matthew Perpetua
Beyoncé's new album 4 is a change of pace for the R&B queen. While her first three solo albums were full of blockbuster jams, 4 is a more relaxed, personal set that emphasizes ballads over bangers and showcases the singer's nuances; it's very much the sort of album a pop star makes when she doesn't feel like she has anything to prove. (She seems, in other words, to have set aside her alter ego Sasha Fierce for the moment.) "4" won't be in stores until June 28th, but since it leaked this week, here's a track-by-track preview of the album's 12 songs.
1. "1+1" - The album opens with its most tender ballad, a slow-burning number that calls back to both Sam Cooke's "Wonderful World" and Prince's "Purple Rain" without sounding like a retread of either tune. The song is already available as a single, but it sounds best in the context of the album, where its slow, steady build to a cathartic guitar break is the perfect introduction to a set of mostly low-key tracks about love and heartbreak.
2. "I Care" - "I know you don't care too much, but I still care," Beyoncé sings over cooing background vocals and dense percussion, delivering the words with a devastating blend of sadness and resentment. It may not be an obvious single, but it's one of the finest tracks on the record.
3. "I Miss You" - This is Beyoncé at her most understated. Her phrasing is cool, calm and collected as she sings over a simple metronomic beat and layers of atmospheric keyboards.
4. "Best Thing I Never Had" - "Irreplaceable Part Two," basically. It's a breakup ballad with a bitter, nasty streak: "When I think of the time that I almost loved you / you showed your ass and I saw the real you / thank God you blew it / I thank God I dodged a bullet." Beyoncé's vocal performance brings depth to a straightforward song about dumping a terrible suitor, conveying a compelling mix of wounded pride and genuine heartbreak.
5. "Party" featuring André 3000 - The first non-ballad on 4 is also the only song on the record to include a guest appearance by another star. André 3000 is sharp and effortlessly charismatic on his rapped verse, but the real attraction here is the track itself, which was co-produced by Kanye West and delivers a mellow Eighties-style smooth funk groove.
6. "Rather Die Young" - There's a great melodramatic kick to this song, which comes across like a quiet storm slow jam spiced up with modern drum programming. "I’d rather not live at all than live my life without you" is an unusually self-pitying lyric for Beyoncé, but she sells it well regardless.
7. "Start Over" - While the other songs on 4 all have a distinct flavor and give Beyoncé an opportunity to try something new in some way or another, "Start Over" just kind of sits there at the middle of the disc not doing much of anything. It's an inoffensive ballad that doesn't do much for the record aside from break its momentum at the halfway point.
8. "Love On Top" - This song is a shameless throwback to perky, squeaky clean mid-Eighties R&B, and it's a blast. Beyoncé sounds confident and joyful as she sings about a lover who can do no wrong. If you've been craving a modern take on old-school Whitney Houston, this is the song for you.
9. "Countdown" - 4's much-needed mid-album stretch of upbeat tunes continues with "Countdown," a playful, inventive jam that revisits the sassy spirit of B'Day's "Get Me Bodied," but swaps out that song's jumpy rhythm for a heavy brass riff and steel drum fills.
10. "End of Time" - This Fela Kuti-influenced track is one of the most adventurous cuts on 4, with Beyonce singing lovey-dovey lyrics over an ecstatic, beat-heavy arrangement.
11. "I Was Here" - A Dianne Warren-penned showstopper that disrupts the flow of up-tempo songs on the second half of the record, but it works well as a bittersweet emotional climax for the album. "I Was Here" is exactly the sort of blustery ballad you'd expect from a Warren/Beyoncé team-up, but it seems a bit flat and generic in comparison to other more emotionally nuanced tracks on 4.
12. "Run the World (Girls)" - Much like album opener "1+1," this intense club track based on Major Lazer's indie dance hit "Pon de Floor" was a bit underwhelming when it came out as 4's lead single but is exciting as the record's celebratory conclusion. After all those songs about romantic angst, "Run the World" feels totally joyous and liberating.
From http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jun/23/beyonce-4-album-review
By: Alexis Petridis
".................This isn't by any means a bad album. There's nothing wrong with a song such as Love on Top, which is well written, has a great vocal and will doubtless help ensure Knowles doesn't have to manage on a mere $35m in the next 12 months. It's just that it isn't the album you might have been led to expect. The highpoints offer hints of what it might have been: it's hard not to feel that what it might have been sounds better than what it is"
From http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/click-track/post/album-review-beyonce-4/2011/06/28/AGxjyDpH_blog.html
By: Chris Richards
On Tuesday, Beyonce drops “4,” as in her fourth album. It’s also her fourth-best album, as in her worst.
Both cool and low-key, its subdued tone suggests that she’s turning an intimate new leaf. Surprise! She isn’t. Instead, Beyonce sounds more precise and distant than ever, making these mid-tempo tunes feel vexing at first, then dull. Unlike Sade and Prince — her mysterious, ultra-private forebears — Beyonce is becoming a puzzle that might not be worth solving.
The album’s oomph is drained instantly with the Prince-pantomime of “1 + 1.” It’s a stark ballad about desire, but Beyonce’s pleading comes from the emotive one-size-fits-all comfort zone that’s become her default. “I don’t know much about fighting,” she sings in a fiery, too-familiar voice. “But I know that I will fight for you.”
She spends the rest of the album fighting to make her words sound more believable. But with “I Miss You,” it’s hard to know which Beyonce to trust. Over an airy, puttering beat, she double-tracks her apologies to an absent lover: One Beyonce coos softly in our ear while the other wails for our attention from a distance. “The words don’t ever seem to come out right,” the battling Beyonces sing. “But I still mean ’em.”
Fans are used to this sort of thing. With her 2008 album, “I Am . . . Sasha Fierce,” Beyonce introduced an alter ego to help explore her wild
side — which was actually the side we’d been exposed to all along. The album was split in two with Ms. Fierce specializing in the dance-floor urgency that made Beyonce’s 2003 debut, “Dangerously in Love,” so riveting. Meanwhile, we learned that the “real” Beyonce was into bland, pseudo-triumphal balladry, a trend she unfortunately continues here with the mascara-smudging piffle of “I Was Here” and “Best Thing I Never Had.”
She’s still at her best when she’s singing in the service of others. “Run the World (Girls)” is a classic Beyonce empowerment anthem where the message is as dizzying as the beat. As if leading a college marching band into a Caribbean street carnival, she belts out a disjointed feminist salvo, saluting a generation of women who “bear the children” and are “smart enough to make these millions.” It’s the final track on “4,” putting an exclamation point on an album that doesn’t really deserve one.
And whether it was intentional or not, “4” puts Beyonce in the company of other pop greats who have used that same number to celebrate their respective arrivals at new creative summits. Gap Band, Zapp and Led Zeppelin each released enduring “IV” albums that memorialized some of their finest hours.
Beyonce’s “4” won’t go down in the books like that. It smacks of a once-great blockbuster movie franchise sadly spinning its wheels.
