碧昂斯:站在世界之巔的女人

A few years ago, Beyoncé Knowles was like any other record-breaking pop star in an already crowded field. Then something changed.

幾年前，碧昂斯·諾爾斯(Beyoncé Knowles)像其他任何打破記錄的流行歌星一樣，是本已擁擠的歌壇的一員。然後有些事情發生了變化。

If you've ever seen Beyoncé Knowles astride a concert stage or a red carpet, you know she is a woman with a flair for dramatic entrances. But no previous coup de théatre prepared the world for the arrival of the singer's fifth full-length solo record, "Beyoncé," the "visual album" that airdropped onto iTunes at midnight on Dec. 13, 2013. For months, the music press had seethed with speculation about Beyoncé's delayed record release, with rumors of disastrous studio sessions and dozens of scrapped songs. "There is utter disarray in Beyoncé's camp," the website hissed. It was an unheard-of turn of events for Beyoncé, whose career had been a testament to, as it were, array: a regal, orderly parade from hit to hit, milestone to milestone, strength to strength.

如果你曾見過碧昂斯·諾爾斯登上音樂會舞臺或踏上紅毯的情景，你就知道她是個具有戲劇化登場天分的女人。但是之前的轟動並沒有讓世界準備好迎接她的第五張個人完整長度專輯《碧昂斯》(Beyoncé)，這張“視覺專輯”於2013年12月13日午夜空降iTunes。之前的好幾個月，音樂媒體因對碧昂斯專輯的推遲發行衆說紛紜，有謠言說錄音過程出現了災難，幾十首歌報廢了。“碧昂斯的陣營出現了完全的混亂，”網站發出噓聲。對碧昂斯來說，這是前所未聞的劇變，因爲之前她的事業像是有序的皇家閱兵，一首又一首金曲，一個又一個里程碑，她的實力不斷增強。

Sure enough, the alleged behind-the-scenes chaos turned out to be the usual behind-the-scenes order, in disguise: While the gossip mills whirred, Beyoncé stealthily recorded 14 songs and shot 17 videos, which she unleashed in that December sneak attack. Purely as a feat of information management, "Beyoncé" was impressive. The National Security Agency couldn't stop its secrets from spilling all over the place; Beyoncé kept the lid on a project which, conservatively, involved hundreds of individuals — studio musicians, cameramen, key grips, personal assistants, even record executives, as a rule the least trustworthy people on the planet. The arrival of all that music, all at once and out of the blue, was an unprecedented shock-and-awe move, which rocked the record industry back on its heels and convulsed the Internet. A single Beyoncé video is capable of staggering the senses; the simultaneous release of 17 of them — an onslaught of sound and spectacle and costumes and choreography and, in the case of a video like the one for "Rocket," stately slow-motion images of billowing silk sheets and water droplets tumbling onto Beyoncé's bare midriff — it was a lot to process. We can only imagine the feelings of Beyoncé's pop diva competitors, whose carefully plotted monthslong album rollouts were instantly rendered quaint, and moot. That whining, whirring sound you heard on Dec. 13, mingling with the strains of "Drunk in Love" — that was Lady Gaga, in her gloomy castle keep, chainsawing a meat dress into sackcloth.

毋庸置疑，所謂的幕後混亂實際上是正常的幕後秩序：在流言滿天飛的時候，碧昂斯暗自錄了14首歌，拍了17個錄影帶，在12月份的那次突襲中一下子推出。《碧昂斯》像是一場信息管理的大勝仗，讓人印象深刻。國家安全局都無法阻止自己的祕密四處泄露，碧昂斯卻能嚴守自己項目的祕密，保守估計，這個項目涉及幾百人——一般來說，錄音室樂手、攝影師、道具員、私人助理，甚至包括錄音主管都是世界上最不可信賴的人。這些作品突然全部發布是一個前所未有的令人震驚的舉措，震驚了唱片業，震撼了互聯網。碧昂斯的一個錄影帶就能讓人大開眼界，同時發行17個，更是夠人享受很長時間。這些錄影帶是聲音、場面、服裝和編舞的猛烈衝擊，而《火箭》(Rocket)這樣的錄影帶中有絲綢洶涌飄動、水滴跌落到碧昂斯裸露腹部的慢鏡頭。我們只能想像其他和碧昂斯競爭流行天后的歌手們有何感受，她們花幾個月時間精心策劃的專輯發佈瞬間變得徒勞無功。12月13日，伴着《醉在愛裏》(Drunk in Love)的旋律，你可以聽到Lady Gaga哀怨的呼叫，她在自己陰暗的城堡裏把一件肉做的連衣裙鋸成碎片。

Beyoncé is 32 years old. She was 9 when she began singing with Girls Tyme, the group she formed with friends in her hometown, Houston; when the successor to Girls Tyme, Destiny's Child, first cracked the Top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100, in 1998, Beyoncé was just 16. She never seemed like an ingénue, though: Even as a teenager, she had gravitas. In one of the centerpiece songs on the new album, Beyoncé gazes backwards: "Look at me — I'm a big girl now . . . I'm a grown woman." But the innocence-to-experience cliché doesn't square with Beyoncé's life, or art. From the beginning her message has been professionalism, perfectionism, power — ideals exemplified in her fearsome live performances and dramatized in songs that view romance through the lens of finance. Hits like "Bills, Bills, Bills" (1999), "Upgrade U" (2006) and "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" (2008) have found Beyoncé figuratively hunched over a balance sheet, weighing the costs of affections dispensed and luxury goods accumulated. She's afit star for our new gilded age, and an apt match, musical and otherwise, for her husband Jay Z, another arch-capitalist. In recent years, Beyoncé has toned down the materialism a bit, but ambition remains her calling card. In the torrid 2011 single "Run the World (Girls)" she sang: "We're smart enough to make these millions/Strong enough to bear the children/Then get back to business." The song is a postfeminist anthem, sure. It's also a business plan that she's followed to a T.

碧昂斯32歲了。她9歲起在女孩時間(Girls Tyme)樂團唱歌，那個樂團是她和朋友們在故鄉休斯敦組建的。1998年“女孩時間”的後繼者真命天女(Destiny's Child)樂團第一次躋身“公告牌”百大金曲前五名時，碧昂斯才16歲。不過，她似乎從來沒經歷過天真少女的階段：甚至在十幾歲時，她都很穩重。在新專輯的一首主打歌中，碧昂斯回首過去：“看看我——我現在是大姑娘……是成熟的女人。”但是從無知到成熟的老套路線與碧昂斯的生活和事業都不吻合。從一開始，她傳遞的信息就是職業素質、完美主義和力量——這表現在她令人畏懼的現場表演中，體現在她透過金錢看愛情的歌曲中。像《鈔票，鈔票，鈔票》(Bills, Bills, Bills, 1999)、《提升你》(Upgrade U, 2006)和《單身女士》(Single Ladies, 2008)這樣的熱門歌曲讓人覺得碧昂斯在俯身看一張資產負債表，權衡付出的感情成本和積累的奢侈品的收益。她是適合我們這個新的鍍金時代的明星；不管從音樂還是其他方面，她與丈夫Jay Z都十分般配，因爲Jay Z也是業界重要的資本家。近些年，碧昂斯稍稍弱化了物質主義，但野心仍是她的重要特點。在2011年熱情的單曲《統治世界》(Run the World)中她唱道：“我們足夠聰明，能掙幾百萬/我們足夠強大，能養育孩子/然後還能繼續幹事業。”這首歌當然是後女權主義的讚歌，也是她嚴格遵循的事業計劃。

In 2014, Beyoncé's grip on the zeitgeist has become a stranglehold. A recent "Saturday Night Live" skit revolved around the gag that Beyoncé-worship has become compulsory in the United States, that Beyoncé refusniks will be tracked down and eliminated by deadly government goons, the Beygency. ("He turned against his country . . . and its queen," boomed the voiceover.) As "SNL" suggests, Beyoncé has become something more than just a superstar. She is a kind of national figurehead, an Entertainer in Chief; she is Americana. Someday, surely, her "Single Ladies" leotard will take its place alongside Mickey Mouse and the Model T Ford and Louis Armstrong's trumpet in a Smithsonian display case.

2014年，碧昂斯對時代思潮的把握變成了一種束縛。《週六夜現場》(Saturday Night Live)最近的一個小品講的就是碧昂斯崇拜在美國已經成義務了，排斥碧昂斯的人將被致命的政府暴徒“碧機構”(Beygency)追蹤並消滅（“他背叛了自己的祖國……和它的女王，”畫外音洪亮地說道）。就像《週六夜現場》暗示的那樣，碧昂斯已經不只是個超級明星。她是一種國家領袖，是娛樂圈的老大；她是典型的美國事物。毋庸置疑，有一天，她在《單身女士》錄影帶中穿的緊身連衣褲將和米老鼠、福特T型汽車以及路易·阿姆斯特朗(Louis Armstrong)的小號一起出現在史密森尼博物館的展櫃裏。

Historically speaking, this is no small achievement. Black women have always been dominant figures in American popular music, but no one, not even Aretha Franklin, has reached the plateau that Beyoncé occupies: pop star colossus, adored bombshell, "America's sweetheart." Inevitably, Beyoncé is also a flashpoint, provoking ire from naysayers and ideologues of all stripes. In March, Bill O'Reilly decried "Partition," a song that details a Beyoncé-Jay Z tryst in a limousine, for setting a poor example for "girls of color." (Postmarital sex between consenting adults: immoral.) Last month, the black feminist author and activist Bell Hooks told an audience at a New School symposium: "I see a part of Beyoncé that is in fact antifeminist, that is assaulting — that is a terrorist . . . especially in terms of the impact on young girls." There is a growing scholarly literature on Beyoncé; the Women's and Gender Studies department at Rutgers University has offered an undergraduate course called "Politicizing Beyoncé." Beyoncé is, as a cultural studies professor might put it, popular culture's most richly multivalent "text." The question these days is not, What does the new Beyoncé record sound like? It's, What does Beyoncé mean?

從歷史角度講，這絕不是小小的成就。黑人女性一直是美國流行樂壇的主力軍，但是沒有人，甚至包括艾瑞莎·弗蘭克林(Aretha Franklin)，曾達到碧昂斯現在佔據的高度：流行歌壇巨星，性感尤物，“美國甜心”。同時，碧昂斯也必然是個導火線，引起了愛唱反調的人以及各種思想家的憤怒。3月份，比爾·奧賴利(Bill O'Reilly)認爲《隔離》(Partition)給“深色皮膚的女孩”樹立了一個壞榜樣。這首歌詳細描述了碧昂斯和Jay Z在豪華轎車中的一次約會（成年人的婚後性愛：有傷風化）。上個月，黑人女權主義作家、活動家貝爾·胡克斯(Bell Hooks)在新學院(New School)的一次研討會上對觀衆說：“我覺得從某些方面講，碧昂斯實際上是反女性主義者，有破壞力，是恐怖分子……尤其是從她對年輕女孩的影響方面講。”有越來越多的關於碧昂斯的學術研究。羅格斯大學的女人和性別研究系開設了一門本科生課程，名叫“碧昂斯政治化”。就像文化研究教授可能說的那樣，碧昂斯是流行文化中最具有豐富多重意義的“文本”。如今的問題不是碧昂斯的新專輯聽起來如何，而是碧昂斯意味着什麼？

Of course, the meaning begins with sound — with the tone and timbre of Beyoncé's voice, one of the most compelling instruments in popular music. Beyoncé has traditionalist skills. She can belt an adult contemporary ballad like Barbra Streisand; she can deliver a fiery gospel testimonial; she can channel Michael Jackson ("Love on Top") or imitate Prince's falsetto ("No Angel"). But she is unmistakably a product of the hip-hop era, a singer who has assimilated the aggression and slippery rhythms of rap into a virtuosic and strange vocal style. We have gotten so used to Beyoncé, it may be hard to grasp what an oddball she is, how different her approach to rhythm, melody and harmony are to those of previous generations. You can hear that eccentricity in the wild timbral shifts and skittering syncopations of "Drunk in Love," a half-sung, half-rapped hit that sounds, in the best sense, like a song Beyoncé is improvising from scratch in real time. Like all innovators, Beyoncé has pushed back boundaries, expanding our sense of what music should sound like. To the extent that we hear Beyoncé as "pop," it's because she has taught us to do so.

當然，意義始於聲音——碧昂斯的音調和音質是流行樂壇最引人注目的利器之一。碧昂斯還有傳統主義技巧。她能像芭芭拉·史翠珊(Barbra Streisand)那樣高歌成人當代抒情歌曲，也能演唱熱烈的福音歌曲；她能模仿邁克爾·傑克遜（Michael Jackson，比如《愛情至上》[Love on Top]），也能模仿“王子”(Prince)的假聲（比如《非天使》[No Angel]）。但她毋庸置疑是嘻哈音樂時代的產物，她吸收說唱樂的攻擊性和變幻的節奏，形成一種藝術性的、奇怪的演唱風格。我們太習慣於碧昂斯的唱腔了，所以可能沒有想過她其實是個多麼古怪的歌手，她對節奏、旋律和和聲的把握與之前幾代音樂人是多麼不同。在《醉在愛裏》狂野的多音色變化和跳躍的切分音中，你能感受到那種古怪。這首半演唱半說唱的熱門歌曲聽起來像是碧昂斯從頭即興創作的一首歌。和所有的創新者一樣，碧昂斯打破界線，擴展了我們對音樂聽起來應該是怎樣的看法。以至於我們覺得碧昂斯就是“流行音樂”，因爲她教我們這樣認爲。

She's taught the world to see music differently, too. The 17 videos for her latest album capture the star in a head-spinning variety of attitudes and alter-egos: as a beauty pageant contestant; as a moll with a flapper haircut; as a roller-disco queen; as the leader of a militant street mob with her hair dyed green; as a Houston homegirl, vamping on a street in the city's hardscrabble Third Ward, with a nasty-looking dog on a leash; as a stripper, an ardent lover, a wife; and, in "Blue," as an earth-mother-with-child, strolling a sun-dazzled strip of Brazilian coastline with her daughter, Blue Ivy. More than three decades after the rise of MTV, there are still those who view music videos as debased or "inauthentic." But Beyoncé's music is inseparable from her movie-star magnetism: the way she stares down a camera, strikes a pose, wears her clothes and, especially, the way she dances. And why not? Popular music has always been an audiovisual medium. If Beyoncé is the dominant figure in 21st-century music, perhaps it's because pop has circumnavigated back to its 19th-century vaudevillian roots, to a time before disembodied voices came to us through hi-fi speakers or noise-canceling headphones, when music was, exclusively, a performing art. Beyoncé is the greatest old-fashioned singer and hoofer, the supreme show-woman, in an era when, once again, we've learned to love a splashy musical show.

她還教這個世界用不同的眼光看音樂。在她最新專輯的17個錄影帶中，這位巨星表現出令人頭暈目眩的各種態度和人格：選美比賽選手；髮型輕佻的妓女；旱冰迪斯科女王；好鬥的綠髮街頭暴徒頭目；休斯敦居家女孩，在該市貧窮的第三區的街頭色誘男人，手裏牽着一隻長相兇惡的小狗；脫衣舞女，熱烈的情人，妻子；在《藍色》(Blue)中，扮演一位能生兒育女的母親，和女兒布魯·艾薇(Blue Ivy)在陽光炫目的巴西海岸漫步。音樂錄影帶崛起30多年來，仍有人認爲它低劣、“不真實”，但是碧昂斯的音樂和她電影明星般的魅力是不可分割的：她注視攝像機、擺姿勢、穿衣服、特別是跳舞的方式，特別吸引人。爲什麼不呢？流行音樂一直都是一種視聽媒體。如果說碧昂斯是21世紀音樂界的主導人物，也許是因爲流行音樂又迴歸到了19世紀輕歌舞劇的根源，回到了我們通過高保真音響或降噪耳機聆聽沒有實體的聲音之前的時代，那時音樂是唯一的表演藝術。碧昂斯是最優秀的傳統歌手和職業舞蹈家，是無與倫比的表演歌手，在這個年代，我們再次學會了熱愛炫目的音樂表演。

Of course, she's more than that. Literally and figuratively, Beyoncé is a moving target — it's as difficult to get a fix on her as it would be to keep up with her on the dance floor. Beyoncé represents down-home earthiness and impossible glamour, soul-woman warmth and diva hauteur, a nose-to-the-grindstone work ethic and garish 1 percent excess. Her new album is sexed-up to the point of lewdness, with punch lines about body fluids on evening wear and intimations of rough sex. Yet the sex — in the limo, in the kitchen, everywhere, apparently, but the bedroom — is married sex, family-values sex, which, the album makes clear, produced a bouncing baby girl, a result perhaps even Bill O'Reilly can feel good about.

當然，她不只如此。不管從字面意思還是象徵意義上講，碧昂斯都是一個移動靶——你很難定位她，也很難在舞池上跟上她的步伐。碧昂斯既有美國南方的質樸，也有不可思議的魅力、黑人女性的溫暖和天后的傲慢——專注的職業精神和1%的過分炫耀。她的新專輯對性慾的挑逗達到了淫蕩的程度，其中一些歌詞提到了晚禮服上的體液，暗示着粗野的性愛。但是其中的性愛——在豪華轎車上，在廚房裏，在所有的地方，但是顯然不在臥室裏——是婚後的性愛，是家庭價值觀念裏的性愛，專輯中明確說明，這樣的性愛孕育了一個活潑的女嬰，這樣的結果恐怕連比爾·奧賴利也會感到欣慰。

Beyoncé's songs are packed tight with such contradictions. Think of "Single Ladies," an anthem of feisty feminist solidarity that endorses the most retrograde diamonds-are-a-girl's-best-friend brand of transactional romance: "If you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it." Or consider "***Flawless," on the new album, which throws together a dizzying mix of sounds and signifiers. There's a clamorous trap beat and pitch-shifted vocals; there are shout-outs to Houston ("H-town vicious") and to Jay Z's record label, Roc Nation ("My Roc, flawless"). There are coarse mean-girl threats ("Bow down, bitches!") and a sampled snippet from a TEDx talk by the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie titled "We Should All Be Feminists," which wags a finger at mean-girl threats: "We raise girls to see each other as competitors." The video intersperses an excerpt from 10-year-old Beyoncé's appearance on the TV talent show "Star Search" with the current-day Beyoncé, clad in Kurt Cobain flannel, executing a spectacular dance routine in a dank basement surrounded by skinheads. It's all tied together by a refrain — "I woke up like this!" — which, among other things, does double duty as a boast about effortless beauty and a mantra of enlightenment. What does Beyoncé mean? What doesn't she mean.

碧昂斯的歌充滿了這樣的矛盾。比如《單身女士》，它是一首對活躍的女性主義團結的讚歌，但是它贊同最退化的“鑽石是女孩最好的朋友”式的交易型戀愛：“如果你喜歡它，那你就應該在上面放個戒指。”又如新專輯中的《***無瑕》(***Flawless)，它把聲音和信號令人眩暈地結合在一起。其中有喧鬧的打擊樂和音高不斷變化的唱腔；有對休斯頓的呼喊（“墮落的H市”），也有對Jay Z唱片公司Roc Nation的讚美（“我的Roc，完美無瑕”）。既有刻薄女孩的粗俗威脅（“鞠躬，賤人！”），也有尼日利亞小說家奇瑪曼達·恩格茲·阿迪切(Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)在TEDx大會上的演講片段，演講題目叫《我們都應該做女權主義者》(We Should All Be Feminists)，它不贊同刻薄女孩的威脅：“我們養女孩就是要互相競爭。”音樂錄影帶把碧昂斯10歲時在電視才藝表演節目《明日之星》(Star Search)中的片段與如今的碧昂斯的鏡頭穿插起來，現在的她穿着科特·柯本(Kurt Cobain)式法蘭絨衣服，在一個陰溼的地下室跳舞，周圍全是光頭青年。一句副歌把這些聯繫到了一起——“我醒來就變成這樣了！”——這句話和其他很多內容一樣，有雙重意義，既是對自己天生麗質的吹噓，又像是開悟的咒語。碧昂斯意味着什麼？她意味着一切。