Still, even with albums such as 2024’s Ten Fold, Bey demonstrated an affinity for smooth and soulful R&B. Her last LP, 2025’s do it afraid, showed her moving more deliberately in that direction, her vocals dreamy, the album’s instrumentation textured but unintrusive. Despite the occasional grumble or passing complaint re: the tortuosities of romance, the set exuded a notably positive vibe.
With her latest album, Fidelity, Bey grazes the R&B/pop sounds of the 2000s but largely resists the crispness and clarity of those precedents. If Brandy and Destiny’s Child, among others, worked primarily in the treble domain, Bey is interested in mid and bass tones. Emotionally, this translates to an intrigue with ambivalence or grief. While do it afraid tilted toward optimism, Fidelity engages with what might be dubbed melancholic equanimity.
Bey, at least as a singer, has always been more intrigued with classic R&B than its later pop iterations. Artists such as Marvin Gaye, Gladys Knight, and Mary J. Blige run deep in her DNA. If she’s toed a contemporary line, it’s been mostly via sonic contexts and a swaggery bent. With Fidelity, she lets much of that go, embracing an old-school R&B MO. It’s a credit to her unflagging authenticity that despite her retro leanings, she’s still chic, modish, and frequently enchanting.
Maybe there’s something to the maxim that a person who is utterly themselves is timeless. “On the Town” features Bey’s lead and back-up vocals lushly interweaved. “The Great Migration” stresses a New Age-y view – “Love’s the thing that got us here / And it’s love that’ll take us home” – even as Bey’s timbre points to the antecedent suffering that makes such a perspective possible. On “Higher”, Bey adopts a Buddhistic lens: “Everything I love will break my heart one day / Nothing’s ever here to stay”. Her vocal is supple, undergirded by ambient accents and muffled beats. If there’s positivity here, it’s positivity tempered by big-picture wisdom.
It’s worth noting that Fidelity isn’t ultimately a “hooks” album. Certainly the set’s melodies are enrolling, but these songs serve more as vehicles for Bey’s nuanced performances. “Slot Machines” includes truncated and sustained vocal lines as well as lulls and frissons. Still, the melody isn’t what one would call catchy. Here it’s about tone, vibe, feel. Ditto the sultry “As the Ocean”, replete with languid beats and summery instrumental swirls. Bey is at her most vulnerable, asking her partner to show her some patience, to be supportive as she processes whatever adversity has presented itself.
“Blue” is sung in the second-person, though Bey is clearly giving herself a reality check (“There’s no running away from yourself”). “In the Middle” conjures various R&B milestones – Gaye’s What’s Going On, Sade’s Diamond Life, Blige’s My Life, Badu’s Baduizm – mixed into a seductive sound that would be equally welcome at a jazz club, an airport lounge, or on a suburban veranda. “Egyptian Musk” refreshingly integrates a reggae beat and guitar lick while Bey takes on the idealized lover/love-as-sanctuary stance (“The world is so cold but baby it’s warm in here”). On “Who Are You”, Bey emphasizes how briefly a life can pass one by, how we often isolate ourselves, how we need to master moderation, and that self-knowledge should be our primary pursuit.
Which explains why Fidelity lands as such a winning sequence, even if it is stylistically vintage and a bit repetitive – it’s infused with Bey’s sincerity, illustrating an earnest search for truth and meaning. Life unfurls quickly; trends come and go; popularity is fickle. An artist gravitates toward their most natural form of expression. With Fidelity, Bey has surrendered to her own aesthetic and spiritual proclivities. One might say that she has become herself. That in itself is an accomplishment.
