Beyoncé channels Britney Spears and SpongeBob in Renaissance World Tour kickoff
She’s “Flawless.”
Beyoncé kicked off her Renaissance World Tour in Stockholm, Sweden, on Wednesday, and it seemed to be a show full of memorable moments and elaborate art choices.
The tour is in support of her chart-topping 2022 album “Renaissance.”
The Grammy-winning singer paid tribute to Britney Spears at one point during the concert, sampling the pop star’s 2003 hit “Toxic” during her own performance of the “Renaissance” song “THIQUE.”
In a clip posted on Twitter, Queen Bey is seen onstage in a rhinestone-encrusted, sheer mesh custom Loewe bodysuit entwined with hands and arms; she moves her body alongside two dancers as they perform to a mashup of the stringed notes from “Toxic” blended into Beyoncé’s own song.
In the past, the singer has worked with Spears, who has an explosive TV special coming up about her life post-conservatorship.
In 2004, they sang Queen’s “We Will Rock You” together in a commercial for Pepsi alongside Pink, who also will launch a huge world tour this summer.
Beyoncé and Spears were supposed to collaborate on a new music video this year, but things didn’t quite work out.
But that wasn’t the only highlight of Beyoncé’s show Wednesday night – on Twitter, other fans noticed the ending of the concert, where she was suspended from the ceiling and flew across the stadium.
Some compared it to a moment from the “SpongeBob SquarePants Movie,” in which the animated animal performed his own hit, “I’m a Goofy Goober” — even putting together side-by-side images of the two moments on the social media platform.
“Confirmed: Beyoncé is a SpongeBob fan,” one fan on Twitter joked with a comparison photo.
“Yall gon’ hate me but Beyoncé reminded me of spongebob while closing the show #RENAISSANCEtour,” another person admitted.
Someone else quipped, “beyonce paying homage to spongebob yes.”
However, others were not fans of the comparison, with one fan writing, “Here come the damn ‘Beyonce at the end of the Renaissance tour’ tweets with the picture of SpongeBob.”
The theme of the tour definitely seemed to be futuristic, as she was joined by two robotic arms that “formed a metal cube around her body,” according to Billboard, and imitated her every movement.
She had multiple outfit changes throughout the night, too – wearing a custom-made, metallic Alexander McQueen suit with bold shoulder pads to open the show, as well as a silver metallic bodysuit and sky-high, knee-high boots later on in the concert.
The setlist for the three-hour show featured a total of 36 songs – mixing her classic hits like “Crazy In Love” and “Run the World (Girls)” with newer songs like “America Has a Problem” and “Pure/Honey.”
She also performed a cover of Mary J. Blige’s 1994 jam “I’m Goin’ Down.”
Fans are thrilled with her return, with some going as far as creating their own versions of the cowgirl hat covered in disco ball pieces that she was seen wearing in the artwork for her tour announcement.
Overall, it looked like tonight’s concert was thoroughly enjoyed by fans, with one person on Twitter calling her “the best performer alive.”
“Queen of the transition!” another user wrote. “She. Smooth. Killed. It. Girl got me in Sweden losing my damn mind …. and my voice!!!!”
One Twitter user even joked, “Only Beyoncé would have us sitting at our places of work, live streaming her concert like it’s a live television event. Her power > us being pathetic.”
The North American portion of her global tour will kick off on July 8 in Toronto, and she will travel around the US for 29 stadium shows.
On July 29 and July 30, she will come close to New York City, touching down at East Rutherford’s MetLife Stadium for two major concerts.
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