DREAMGIRLS Reviews and News!

There are a couple of articles related to the song "Listen" that I thought people might be interested in. The first is from the LA Times where Geoff Boucher interviewed Beyonce on the set of the video for "Listen." Here is an excerpt: "At the video shoot in the Los Angeles Times' corporate offices, the crew clapped when Beyoncé finished her smoldering performance and a few shook their heads, marveling at her intensity. They didn't know that it was the restraint of stepping into a movie role that had set the stage for a newly impassioned pop star. "In the movie I had to sing really soft and the thing is a little more contrived and not soulful … whenever I would go into the studio, back when we were prerecording the music, the director kept saying don't growl, don't belt out notes, don't sing so high, don't go on any runs. I felt like I needed to release all of that. That's why I was screaming the song. I couldn't have that passion for so long." She laughed. "It felt good." Click here to read the full article. The second article is a review of "Listen" by Mr. Brown of rottentomatoes.com. Here is an excerpt: "There have been two early criticisms of the song: (1) this power ballad doesn't feel entirely of a piece of the score's largely classic soul sound; and (2) Knowles's rafter-shaking belt is the antithesis of Deena's softer, sweeter voice. In the case of the first, the song may not sound nor feel terribly specific to the period and overall genre, but Krieger has given it a fairly timeless pop quality that enables it to place comfortably in the '60s-'70s setting; in fact, the terrific production by The Underdogs achieves the tricky feat of sounding like something relevant even to today's popular music yet also having the epic emotional bombast of classic Broadway showtunes." Click here for the full article. Source: rottentomatoes.com and LATimes