I Was in the Same Room as Beyoncé

TIA HERE with all the power of Beyoncé and Jay Z flowing through my veins. My dear friend Winnie and I were able to snag somewhat cheap tickets (around $50) to see Beyoncé and Jay Z as they stopped by MetLife Stadium on July 12 as a part of their On The Run Tour. I can't believe it's been a month since it happened! (If you haven't noticed, these posts are quite backed up/scheduled, so by the time you see this, I'll already be in Denmark, but still uploading posts about New York City. Crazy!) Anyway, how to summarize the experience of seeing Beyoncé in the flesh? Let's start at the beginning, shall we? When things went all wrong...

a day of selfies; clockwise starting in top left: on train to concert, waiting in line to get in to the stadium, at the stadium, on the train ride back to the city

It started simply. I bought the tickets through an app called Applauze, mostly because they offered me a $16 off coupon. The app is great, to go off on a little tangent, because it lets you see everything that's happening nearby in a date range of your choosing, and you can buy tickets right through the app. They email them to you in PDF form. However, it sends a lot of unwanted push notifications, so I would not say I'm a huge fan--plus, now that I'm home for a little bit before Denmark, I have no use for it. It's really best if you are trying to find something to do in the city and don't know what concerts are coming your way (or for what prices).

I bought Winnie a ticket too and we were on our way to Beyoncé. Then came the matter of the train. MetLife Stadium is technically in New Jersey, so we had to find our way there. It's at "Meadowlands Sports Complex" in East Rutherford, NJ, which meant that we had to buy a roundtrip train ticket, starting at Penn Station to get over there. We left early, per my mom's suggestion, with the intent to eat something along the way and still leave plenty of time before the concert started. However, we are fools.

We'd just passed maybe the first or second stop and Winnie, in a panic, had said, "Wait! What stop is this? What stop did we just pass?" I tried to read the sign on the platform but only caught a part of it. "I don't think that was the one," I said. Little did I know, that was exactly the stop we were supposed to get off on. Oops. Maybe three stops later, I finally pulled out Apple Maps to see where exactly we were --to approximate which upcoming stop was surely ours--when I realized we were moving deeper and deeper into New Jersey Hell. At the next stop, we got off, afraid we were being led even further astray (which we were). Then, in the middle of nowhere (New Jersey), we were forced to buy a much more expensive ticket (like $16 or something crazy!), just to get back to the stop we had passed.

Still, because we had left so early, we made it to the stadium in good time and bought food there to eat before Beyoncé arrived and graced us with her presence. And grace us she did. While we were almost as far as humanly possible as you could be from the stage, when the concert started, the power of Beyoncé and Jay Z could be felt from even the furthest corners of the stadium. The well-earned confidence and magnificence of their performance can't even be put down into words. If the divorce rumors are true, I'll be quite disappointed that their impressive combined power will be halved, but of course it is their personal decision to make.

beyoncé performing at metlife stadium

There is something very different about seeing performers in person rather than on a TV. Plus, the On The Run show had really beautiful and dramatic short films/media projected on stage between songs and during them. There was no opening act, and there was no need for one. Seeing Beyoncé and Jay Z perform their individual songs and collaborative covers was well worth the time, although I do think it would have been a much much better experience if we had been in the pit. Too bad I'm not made of money!

Overall, I was floored mostly by the sheer power of Beyoncé and Jay Z as performers. On the internet, it's not uncommon for people to "worship Beyoncé" like she is an actual goddess, but once you see her perform in person you realize that it's so true. She and Jay Z have a presence, collectively and individually, that is paralleled by no person I have ever known. If our plain, non-Marvel/DC world is ever said to have any superheroes, I would say that they are the only ones I've seen. They're really something and I highly recommend you see one/both of them in concert if you even remotely like their music. It's truly impressive.

For more, check out Tia's new blog!

Much love,

T.