In last week's New Yorker, Sasha Frere Jones called Beyonce, "a quiet meritocrat, celebrating the pleasure of doing things well and not making a particularly big deal of it." Last night, attendees at England's Glastonbury festival clamored to praise her headlining, mid-career performance—a maximum display of hard-boiled talent and well-mannered grace. She opened with "Crazy in Love," crowned with a singing-from-the-floor medley of Prince's "Beautiful Ones" and Kings of Leon's "Sex on Fire" and closed with a string of Destiny's Child hits and "Halo." From the stage and in an interview after, she exclaimed, "you are witnessing a dream! I always wanted to be a rock star," as if she hadn't worn those heels, with freak boss-serenity, since age 13. Somewhere in the midst of this (or before, on tape) B managed to phone-in two songs to the—very funny this year—BET Awards broadcast.
