Murrayfield Stadium

Dazzling – if you ignore the music: Beyoncé, at Murrayfield Stadium, reviewed

Scheduling open-air concerts in mid-May in northern Europe is a triumph of hope over experience. I last spent time with Beyoncé – I’m sure she remembers it fondly and well – in 2016, in a football stadium in Sunderland on a damp, drizzly, early-summer English evening of the type that even strutting soul divas struggle to enliven. I don’t think it was merely the weather which left me underwhelmed by her brutalist attack, the sheer choreographed drill of the show, the lack of engagement, of spontaneity, of joy. By then, Beyoncé was no longer seeking to be regarded as a mere pop star. She had recently taken on the unearthly