Beyoncé proves she's pop’s ultimate princess in Dublin

The lead-up to Beyoncé’s four sold-out 02 Dublin shows has been dominated by tales of extravagant backstage demands, including an all-white dressing room, Jo Malone candles, and an insistence that the temperature be set to precisely 22.2C.

Yet the 31-year-old cut a surprisingly ordinary figure in the paparazzi shots of her arriving at Dublin Airport on Saturday with husband Jay Z and their 2-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy.

In the pictures, she walks past a taxi-rank, lugging her carry-on and baby-bag, her frizzy locks bundled into a black beanie. If it wasn’t for the bodyguards, you might mistake her for a normal person.

Clearly, ‘Bey’ was saving the overkill for show-time.

The Beyoncé live experience is 50% pop smackdown, 50% feminist salute — and 100% eye-popping sensory assault. Giant video screens implore women to love themselves for who they are, even as Beyoncé, in short shorts and blinged-out baseball cap, cycles through her repertoire of poll-dancer moves.

The contradiction is most palpable on ‘Flawless’, a full-fat ballad about embracing the “real you” — the one who clambers out of bed in the morning, pasty-faced and without make-up. In an era when young children are exposed to Rihanna and Lady Gaga, such sentiments are entirely laudable — but how strange they should be delivered by one of the era’s most glamorous entertainers.

Beyoncé took a leaf from David Bowie’s playbook, recording her latest album in secret and unleashing it on an unsuspecting world in December. At the time, it seemed a canny way of controlling the hype but, in hindsight, perhaps she might have done things differently.

Beyoncé hasn’t yielded much in the way of hits and newer tracks are received in generally luke-warm fashion. It’s the older tunes that really set the 14,000-capacity (overwhelmingly female) audience alight. Preceded by a lavish introductory video that presents Beyoncé as a decadent monarch in pre-revolutionary France (or something), she pops through a trap-door, doused in rhinestones, and belts out ‘Run The World (Girls)’, executing the number’s signature frenzied dance with a mixture of ferocity and delight.

As on previous tours, Beyoncé is accompanied by an all-female troupe of musicians, two skinny dancers the only men on stage. Breathlessly dashing through smashes such as ‘Halo’ and ‘Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)’ she preens, pirouettes, waggles that iconic mane as flames arch from the floor.

The show is deafening, bombastic, and completely silly — exactly what you expect of a high-end arena extravaganza. Queen B is still pop’s ultimate princess.