Before this weekend, Beyonce hadn’t performed in concert since 2018! That doesn’t feel right, but it’s what everyone is reporting. Beyonce went to Dubai to perform a one-night only, invitation-only concert at the new hotel, Atlantis the Royal Grand Resort. Beyonce’s concert was part of the three-day extravaganza for the opening of this hotel and resort. The first reports suggested that Bey was paid $24 million for the concert, but other reports suggested that it was more like… $35 million. Insane.
Bey performed Etta James’s “At Last,” as well as a slew of her own hits, like Halo, Beautiful Liar, Crazy in Love, Naughty Girl, Freedom, Flaws and All, Be Alive, Brown Skin Girl and more. From the videos I saw, it didn’t look like Beyonce was moving a lot, and reportedly, she’s recovering from a foot injury and foot surgery. So that explains why she hired a huge dancing troop as backup.
Blue Ivy – who is so tall now – joined her for “Brown Skin Girl.” Blue tried some choreography and the way Beyonce put her hand out is amazing. Beyonce was like “we didn’t rehearse that enough, Blue.” And yes, even though this was a hyper-exclusive event and no one was supposed to record it, there were millions of videos online this weekend.
Beyoncé told Blue Ivy “Not too much” .. We need another $24million for your choreography 😎 pic.twitter.com/eYyUoqsinP
— Katherine Harris (@IamKatHarris) January 22, 2023
BEYONCÉ & BLUE IVY CARTER 👑 pic.twitter.com/n7TpCcgGrR
— Beyoncé Access | Fan Account (@beyonceaccess) January 22, 2023
Photos courtesy of Getty.
Wow Blue Ivy is tall and I think without bey’s heels she must be the same height as her mom….I think it was more like Blue, we are in Dubai, don’t move too much so we don’t disrespect anyone?
No one would care about this sort of thing. Dubai is much more cosmopolitan than you think.
Fabulous costumes! Blue Ivy looks beautiful like her mother and I can’t believe there is so much money in Dubai to pay 35 million dollars for a one-night concert.
It’s fascinating to me that her fans are okay with her minimal and very exclusive live performance schedule. I love live performances and would be bummed that I didn’t have the option to see my faves. But I love that she is living her choices and I am sure that that very exclusive audience had a fabulous time. Winston Duke has been posting from there all week.
…
I don’t know why artists like her do this kind of stuff. She has money. Is it never enough? Because while I’m sure people enjoyed her performance, they didn’t come to see her, did they? People at these events don’t come to see the artist, they come because they have been invited and move amongst people who can afford to hire effin’ Beyoncé for 35 mil. I’m at work and can’t watch the video so I don’t know if I’m completely wrong and people are cheering like crazy.
I agree with you. Also, I never appreciate artists performing in non-democratic countries that are known for their discrimination of women, foreign workers, etc. And no, I a not confusing UAE with some other country. They are also a theocratical dictatorship based on petro-dollars.
So, we’re stopping all concertgoing in the United States, right?
@Haylie right? Like Laverne Cox was just on MSNBC talking about the 150 plus proposed laws to exile and erase trans people from public life. Dobbs. The deeply corrupt Supreme Court. Let’s stop making Middle Eastern, Asian, and African countries into the big bad. (That belongs to us and the UK!)
I hear you guys, but at least in the US it is allowed to criticise these policies and to publicly talk about it. In some less fortunate countries, you would end up in jail (or worse) if you would say anything bad about the country’s leadership.
I’m sorry but are we acting like the US is just as bad as a dictatorship? Because that’s not helpful in any political discussion. There is certainly a crisis of government and democracy but to say the US is like Dubai is absolutely ridiculous. Dubai has no freedom of speech. Homosexuality is punishable by death. Women cannot marry without consent of a guardian. Come one.
@Queen Meghan’s Hand
As someone who has lived in Asia, Africa and now in Europe, i also get annoyed at western hypocrisy in pretending that the West never does anything wrong.
However the average person’s life in Western Europe is miles better in terms of worker’s rights, women’s rights, sexuality etc.
Dubai shocked me to the core, the juxtaposition of poor indian/pakistani men working in 45 degrees in construction sites with zero protection, men who need to repay those that hired them before they are able to send their meagre salaries home, workers who have to pay for health care that they cannot afford.
No country should be above criticism just because there are issues in other countries too.
i feel like Beyonce here is getting a pass because she is a WOC and part of historically marginalised group, but we need to be see the reality that she is now part of the Elite and indirectly profiting off other marginalised groups whilst paying lip service to feminism and racial equality
So many fans are like “get your bag, B!” but she is insanely outrageously wealthy already. she must get offers like this all the time that she declines. So it was a definite CHOICE to accept $35 mill in blood money for a stupid hotel opening in a repressive, misogynist, homophobic nation. Any talk from Bey and Jaz-Z about their philanthropy and social justice initiatives is performative. If she REALLY believed in social justice & feminist issues, she wouldn’t have accepted this gig (which again, it’s not like she’s a starving artist, she’s already a gazillionaire and doesn’t the money… she could easily get the money for performances in non-theocratic dictatorships).
this ! we need to start calling out all artists for performative , self serving wokeness.
this isnt a YES GIRLLL moment. this is an already incredibly rich woman, singing about feminism, and turning a blind eye to the causes she cares so much about when there is enough money on the table. I say this as brown muslim woman who has seen first hand how poor immigrants from india/pakistan are treated in dubai.
Agree. I am a huge BTS fan but had no problem calling out Jungkook for performing in Qatar at the World Cup. I didn’t watch the videos and won’t stream the song. It is a bad look.
I think there’s room for debate and critical discussions on whether or not anyone should be performing in a country. But a person can get one or two issues wrong without everything else from them being performative/fake. Nobody is going to be on the right or best side of every issue every time.
I spent a year in 2011 to 2012 living in Dubai after Uni. During my stay there, a man committed su*cide. Which, at the time was illegal. His adult family were imprisoned because of his actions
* They have reformed the rules slightly since then
I also used to see Indian & Pakistani men cleaning the pavement with zero protective sun gear in blistering heat during the middle of the day in the middle of summer
I saw Filipino women late late at night cleaning the s*it from white office workers desks. They would leave half-eaten cartons of takeout, multiple coffee cups and plates on their desks
I hated my time there. I cried every morning when I woke up and every night when I got home
It’s a soulless country. Same goes for Qatar.
I hear you. One of my friends moved to Dubaï for her (now ex-)husband’s job a few years ago. They had to get married before the move since common law wouldn’t be accepted, moved to a bldg owned by the company he worked at and where you had to get permission to do any normal thing and you knew someone was checking so that you wouldn’t step out of line… It was really tough and yet, as a white woman, she knew she was amongst the privileged ones. She had a massive nervous breakdown after a year of living there, and hasn’t fully recovered yet.
I would be ok with this if she donated the money to women’s causes that desperately need this
She won’t.
She has enough money to massively donate without doing that type of gig and without seeing a drop in her family’s lifestyle. Rich people love getting richer.
She, rebel Wilson, Kendall Jenner and others were getting dragged on Twitter all weekend for their pr for the resort. Especially because of the treatment of foreign workers and that homosexuality is punishable by death. Bey and rebel (who is married/engaged to a woman) we’re particularly criticized over this. I’m a bit surprised ‘bey gives a concert’ is the thrust of the article and doesn’t mention the immense weekend controversy.
It’s fine to criticize all of them for this but the implication that Black women and LGBTQ women should be more harshly criticized is a really gross and dated way of thinking. Why should straight White women like Kendall not be held equally responsible?
I understand why people do it. I hold women to a higher standard than men when it comes to misogyny. Why? Because a misogynistic woman is helping her own oppressors. I expect more from my fellow women than I do from men.
I’m sorry, but this is so gross. And the fans (and I’m one of them) going ‘well, x and y performed in Dubai’ or ‘US is also bad’ are missing the point.
The US has many, many issues, but no, it doesn’t have the death penalty for being gay and it doesn’t have literal slavery (prison labor is terrible, but as terrible as it is it is not what is going on in Dubai). And maybe this is wrong, but I do think there’s a difference between a star like Madonna or Rihanna stopping in Dubai on a world wide tour with 58 dates, where the general public is the main audience, and doing a one off private event meant to promote the country.
“America has many many issues but no death penalty for being gay” that’s the moral ground u standing on. Shall we talk about the all the atrocities against black people here n America. Slavery the aftermath of slavery. U ever heard of George Stinney. He was a young black boy who at the age of 14 who was convicted in an unfair trial for the murder of two young white girls. He was executed in June 1944. More than 1,000 white Americans crowded the courtroom, for a murder he was innocent for. The face mask couldn’t fit his face he was so small they placed a stack of books to fit him n the chair. America has no moral ground in reference to any countries. I just say that who r we to judge.
Everyone complaining but no one is going to stop buying Beyoncé’s music. They’ll still go to her concert. It doesn’t matter.
Haven’t watched the video yet, but I like the gold dress.
Thank you for looking into this, I was wondering what she was doing there and what the performance was for and none of the outlets seemed to be covering it.
The reason why Dubai paid for Beyoncé to be there is that they are using her and others to boost their tourism. A cosmetics company Tarte paid for hounds of influencers to have a luxurious trip and advertise Dubai. They are even paying people who claim to have worked there to talk about how amazing it is and how they can get a job there too.
As for Beyoncé, this isn’t her first time doing something like this. Back in 2011 She and many others performed for Moammar Gadhafi son birthday who was known for decades for killing his people and for violence against women. it was only after they were all called out that most decided to donate the money. Others just kept it.