The title is stupid. It’s Beyonce’s fourth solo album, but so what. Naming an album after its numerical order makes little artistic sense, especially when the three previous albums don’t share the same concept. Of course, it’s the music that matters most. In that category, there are barely four good songs. Track one, One Plus One, which equals a romantic two, may have a number of things going for it and the Miss You song, despite its irksome snare drum, may sound gorgeous before it suddenly fades away, but that’s not really saying a lot. Beyonce’s first album, Dangerously In Love, has a lot of good songs on it. Not to mention the Destiny’s Child albums. These days the girl is drowning in mediocrity and has been for years.
4 throws itself back three decades to the 1980s for some vintage vibing, and that part of it; the retro music production that makes most of these songs sound as if they could’ve come out in that decade; sort of works. A sample from Slick Rick’s La-Di Da-Di evens shows-up in an old-school-synth-laced Party mix. It’s the album’s vocal melodies, and sometimes the words themselves, that fail to live-up. Listen to the chorus on I Care. It just sounds silly. And the Run The World anthem, with all its bombastic sound effects, is hollow and annoying; almost as annoying as the Countdown song. Composer Diane Warren does better with a power ballad entitled I Was Here, but it’s not nearly enough to match the album’s rating with its title.
my rating : 3 of 5
2011