Stevie G: 'Beyoncé keeps getting better and better'
The atmosphere at Beyoncé’s show in London last Saturday was “explosive” says Stevie G.
Her three-hour performance at Tottenham Hotspur stadium had it all; a relentless barrage of classic material, new bangers, amazing dancing with the top-notch choreography, visuals, sound and production that you’d expect from one of the world’s biggest pop stars in 2025. The 60,000 fans were in the palm of her hand, and it really was a show that had everything.
I was fully expecting an amazing show, even though the album she is ostensibly touring would not be on the top of my personal list of favourites. It’s still a great album but her immediately previous albums, such as and , and even were more to my personal taste. It’s just a matter of personal taste really, my own tastes are much more aligned to hip-hop/r&b/soul/disco/dancehall/house and afrobeats, all genres which she explored on these albums. And this isn’t even mentioning the material from the first 10 or 15 years of her career!
The album is still packed with hits and, of course, it carries amazing symbolism too, and London was full of cowboy hats and fans dressed to the nines! The album itself provided the basis of some great moments in the show but, in truth, this was a performance that further underlined to me, personally, that is an absolute stone cold classic that will possibly be seen as her crowning glory when the dust settles in years to come. The multiple tracks played from turned a huge stadium event into a Saturday night disco party and everybody was on board!
This all changed with their subsequent albums and by the time I got to warm up for Destiny’s Child in Dublin in 2001, Beyoncé and her band were massive superstars.
I was standing only a few yards away from her on the side stage that night watching them perform and, nearly 25 years on, I can still being mesmerised at their performance.
Kelly Rowland herself is an amazing performer and artist, but it was clear even then that Beyoncé was going to be one of the biggest pop stars of all time. Watching her dance (with high heels) and not miss a note vocally from so close was mind blowing, and in London last Saturday, I couldn’t stop thinking back to that evening nearly a quarter of a century ago.
Beyoncé was a solo artist within a couple of more years and we all know how it went. I writing about her after , and speculating that once she matured as an artist and a woman, she would be definitely heading for more funk and soul.
These were girls who grew up on hip-hop and it never surprised me that Beyoncé managed to incorporate even more street swag into her solo career as it progressed.
These days she can effortlessly move between hip-hop/r&b/house/trap/dancehall/disco/jersey and other genres, sometimes all in one song, and those last few albums really demonstrated this. She managed this on and it was therefore logical that sounded so good live last Saturday.
Our Irish dancing friend Kait was killing it on stage too! But the highlights were many. The show was paced incredibly and, by an hour in, Beyoncé had barely scratched the surface of her big hits but had the crowd right behind her. By the time the bigger hits arrived the atmosphere was explosive, but she glided quickly over the classics, and it remained a show celebrating the new more than anything else. Her Coachella performance put her on the plateau previously belonging to the likes of Michael Jackson and Prince, and in London last Saturday night Beyoncé proved that unbelievably, she keeps getting better and better!
