Probably a shrewd move, for a second act of a career. There's a kind of ascendancy you can achieve through discourse and chatter. where your releases are Events. And then there's then popularity in the sense of being played a lot and people getting casual use-value out of your music. Sometimes the two can coexist. Beyonce probably had both for a good while, but then she realized, or found out, that she could stay on top through the former - being talked about - rather than being an omnipresent part of people's listening lives.
At a certain point, Beyonce as Public Figure becomes the point of her pop stardom as much as the music. The pop consumer consumes her Next Move as an idea, a twist in a narrative, far more than the actual substance of the move itself.
Beatles and Bowie both had that going on, but it seems to have become more and more common amongst top level pop stars- Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift... You don't want to just be played and enjoyed on the level of functionality, you want to be discussed, monitored, analysed.
I read pop reviews and they'll largely be an analysis of the career moves to date, the persona shifts. Taylor Swift did that video that was all about all the different "Taylor Swifts" so far.
There's stars who don't do that and it's really just about their reliable functionality - like Rihanna. I don't think there's much of a career narrative as such, maybe a little soap opera in terms of her private-public life.
www.theguardian.com
