Beyoncé surprises with album release

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This article was published 20/04/2019 (2704 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Beyoncé tweets but once a year, and this time, it was to announce the release of Homecoming: The Live Album, a surprise collection of music from her showstopping 2018 performance at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival — aka “Bey-chella.”

The record, which is the artist’s 14th release and her fifth live album, is an unexpected accompaniment to her Homecoming documentary, which hit streaming service Netflix simultaneously Wednesday.

“Beyoncé could have just come to the 2018 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and played the hits. She didn’t,” the Times’ Gerrick D. Kennedy writes in his review of the new film.

“The artist instead opted to conceptualize a performance that paid tribute to black culture, and championed — and even challenged — her black fans.”

The nearly 2½-hour movie shows the planning and rehearsals that went into the set, which is a salute to black colleges, and offers a rare look into her personal orbit, he said.

The 40 tracks captured on the live album include Lose My Breath, Say My Name and Soldier with Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams of Destiny’s Child, which reunited for the 2018 Coachella set.

There’s a track featuring Jay-Z, one with daughter Blue Ivy Carter and two bonus cuts, Before I Let Go and I Been On.

Homecoming: The Live Album is available now across major streaming platforms, including Tidal, Spotify, Apple Music and more, and can be purchased via iTunes.

— Los Angeles Times