Beyonce Returns To the Stage This Weekend

Posted by Emily Exton on 05/25/2012 at 4:29 PM News

The Popdust Files: 4, beyonce, blue ivy carter, concerts, jay-z

With one dramatic mike drop, Beyoncé put a momentary pause of her career last fall, capping a summer of album promotion with the announcement that she and Jay had succeed in making a happier three from that already jubilant two. What we’ve gathered about new mom B in the five months since giving birth to the Most Important Baby in the World: Beyoncé still wears high heels, has been dabbling in photography and film editing and can’t wait to get back to work. The Queen begins the first of her four “comeback” shows tonight at Revel Resort in Atlantic City, thus ending the live performance drought that cast a grey shadow on our already dreary winter—and spring, and almost-summer. Seriously, when is the sun coming out? We’ll try as best we can to be eloquent and philosophical about what this all means, but ohmygoshwesoexicted! What songs will be included? What “elements of 4″—if any—will get scrapped? And in a post-Blue Ivy world, has Beyoncé’s performance style changed?

Following a year in which she kept busy topping herself with live moment after live moment—the Billboard Awards, Glastonbury, Roseland, and of course the VMAS—and a stockpile of new videos, we really have no idea what to expect from Beyoncé’s first show of 2012. Mentions of Jay-Z and Blue Ivy seem like a given, as the new mom has stretched the boundaries of a personal life that was previously invisible to fans. Those intimate nights at Roseland worked as a culmination of her achievements, in hindsight serving as a look at the life she created for herself. So how does her daughter fix into her live show?

Because she’s a perfectionist and newly social media obsessed, Beyoncé wants her fans to know what they’re getting into before pulling themselves away from the slot machines this weekend. Below, a behind-the-scenes look at the upcoming Live at Revel show, made even more intimate now that B has given birth just like any other woman over the course of time, albeit in a much fancier hospital suite. “What I’m trying to say is, ‘Yes, I had a baby but it just made me more grounded and more like you,’” she explains.

Three-day weekends are few and far between, so fans with tickets to such an anticipated show deserve infrequent costume changes (“I don’t want to have to disappear from the show too many times”) and plenty of hits—as in, not just the entirety of 4 and chorus to a handful of Destiny’s Child songs. Even with what she considers rusty vocals, “Halo” is always appreciated, if only to allow audience members their own moment in the spotlight.

As she lets us in on her enviable, post-baby workout routine and brainstorming sessions, it looks like B is bringing along similar visuals used at the Billboard Music Awards last spring. For Revel’s 5,050-seat Ovation Hall, such a setup is much larger and more elaborate than her last gig at Roseland, where she performed on an otherwise bare stage alongside a few dancers and her lady band.

We’ll be in the audience—come say hi!—at Saturday’s show, stupidly excited and minds rattled by the lingering questions any paparazzi photos or BeyHive reports have failed to answer, including:

All these questions—and more!—will likely be answered as we make the trip down 1-95 to revel in some Live at Revel goodness. For all those traveling this weekend, cue up some 4 on your music player of choice out of respect for the Queen.

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