“The album is definitely an evolution. It’s bolder than the music on my previous albums because I’m bolder. The more mature I become and the more life experiences I have, the more I have to talk about. I really focused on songs being classics, songs that would last, songs that I could sing when I’m 40 and when I’m 60.”
That’s how Beyoncé described her approach to 4, her aptly-titled fourth studio album, on her website upon the LP’s release in the summer of 2011.
The album arrived at a transitional period in the superstar’s solo career, a career that’s since come to be clearly delineated by two defining eras. (That is, if you don’t take into consideration her prior work as the luminous lead vocalist of Destiny’s Child, which, for the purposes of this essay, we won’t.) There’s the incredibly commercial, Top 40-friendly period that centers Dangerously in Love, B’Day and I Am…Sasha Fierce—her first three albums—and the highly artistic and exalted current period that centers the self-titled 2013 LP and Lemonade.
And then there’s 4.
