The thigh's the limit: Beyoncé and her backing gave crowd a ball Pic: © Drew Farrell
Bursting into Crazy In Love, there's no doubting that Beyoncé is a sublimely talented, absolutely tantalising proposition, shimmering away in her black-sequinned dress.
Those of you waiting for a 'but', well sorry, there isn't any. (Well not quite, apart from that one there, which doesn't really count. I think?)
Then strutting gloriously straight into Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) is a brilliantly astute move, the scintillating routine by the singer and her two backing dancers just as flawless as might likely be expected, the song's chorus synths firing out with enough extra bite to inject the song with an added verve, any use of prerecorded vocals not really an issue when every sinew of energy was so tantalisingly deployed.
After her husband Jay-Z practically owned the festival back in 2010, it was the turn of the former Destiny's Child temptress to utterly steal the thunder at T in the Park from the night's supposed headliners. (You suspect Coldplay's Chris Martin could have come out an hour later wearing the same sparkling outfit as Beyoncé, attempting to do Run the World (Girls) in a startling and terrifying falsetto, and still nobody would haved batted an eyelid given what they'd seen during the set before.)
After the brilliance of her opening salvo it seems important to stress - after all the post-Glastonbury hysteria - that no, Beyoncé's not beyond reproach. She's by far the best act to have graced the T in the Park Main Stage so far, but that doesn't mean she's flawless. (Even if she comes close at times.) Though armed with a formidable selection of hits there was still the same tendency as at Glasto to sink into a slew of slightly mundane power ballads mid-set. (Even if they were lifted inordinately by that effortlessly swooping, soulful voice of hers, which can navigate octaves as easily as gently tickling the chin of a new-born kitten. Oh, and being limited to an hour also helped tighten the performance.)
But it's a shame that she feels required to bash out such reliable if ultimately dreary warbling numbers, when she's always been at her strongest pushing the envelope rather than becoming too overwrought. That was demonstrated within her Destiny's Child megamix, the voracious chorus for Survivor at its finale hugely rousing. Wishing someone in the crowd a happy birthday as she still sung seamlessly, the singer was just oceans apart talent-wise from those who preceded her – and quite likely those who will follow. She even had plenty of the crowd in tears by the end of last song Halo, a sweeping anthem to finish the set on a triumphant note. But still in her 20s, it's important – and not a little scary – to remember that her best years may be yet to come, and she has still to add to an already formidable body of work. It can still get better than this, though it'll be hard for many who saw her tonight to even begin to imagine that.
