90. Beyonce – Work It Out (2002)

One of the places where you can witness the new sexual revolution is the Austin Powers movie trilogy, about the groovy and naughty spy who supposedly embodies the spirit of the sixties. Austin was frozen at the end of that decade, and when he is defrosted in 1997 (in the first movie of the series), he wakes up into a world where sexuality is a lot more inhibited, and finds it hard to cope. This is of course a gross distortion of reality: the sixties were infinitely more inhibited than the nineties, and the myth about them circles around a small group of youngsters who rebelled and went to the other extreme, going completely wild with the sex and drugs. They paid a heavy price for it, but also opened the doors for the rest of us, and by the nineties their influence spread to such an extent that society became a lot more open to sex and drugs, but also more aware of the dangers and therefore more tame and responsible. But the myth remained, and the Austin Powers series used it to blast the remaining inhibitions, to make the world even more shagadelic. While in the first movie the heroine reacts with prudish aversion to Austin's behavior, the second movie (from 1999) already has a leading lady that is as liberated as him, and the third movie from 2002 serves as a platform for the pop princesses to display their minxifulness: Beyonce plays the leading role, and Britney tries to steal the show from her in a charming cameo. But she has no chance, because Beyonce simply shines in her movie debut, and shows real comic talent. That year, I was sure that this girl is going to be one of the greatest ever, in line with Dietrich, Garbo and Monroe. Now I'm not so sure, but the potential is there.

Both Beyonce and Britney used the movie to present their new sexy image, to a crowd that mostly still thought of them as virginal teens. Each also put out a record to match, produced by, who else, the Neptunes. Britney made the horny 'Boys', one of her best records. But Beyonce trumped her once again, with this funky-to-the-bone bomb. In the movie, Austin uses a time machine to go back to the seventies and meets her in the role of Foxy Cleopatra, a combination of Pam Grier, Tamara Dobson and all the sex symbols of seventies blacksploitation movies, mixed together with Patti Labelle, Tina Turner, Chaka Khan, Gloria Gaynor and all the singing divas of that decade. With the shagadelic afro and the downright funkiness, she proves to be a worthy heir to all of the above, and in this record she purifies their essence to a tune so funky it would make even Frau Farbissina shake her ass.