Beyoncé Knowles is crackers. It's been clear for a while: considering her first album was called Dangerously In Love, and her first single Crazy In Love, she's been leaving the crazy crumbs all the way from daddy's house. But this is more obvious than ever with the concept of her new album, I Am..., out next month.

She's got two new videos out for promotion. First up is Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It), the video for which manages to be both incredibly cool and, well, a tribute to musicals legend Bob Fosse. Cabaret gets crunk? You betcha. Check the video here:

And the root of it all here (Gwen Verdon was Fosse's wife):

Second up is If I Were A Boy, which is tedious, since it contains no references to Bob Fosse and is un-danceable anyway. Not even a few pointers at the beginning of the video – 'Intimacy', 'Honesty', and other Raj Persaud buzzwords – can give it the weight it craves:

Funnily enough, Ciara did a song called Like A Boy once, which was also about how easy it is being a boy, how hard it is being a girl, and which was also filmed in monochrome, just to really hammer those black-and-white generalisations home. But it was fast and fun and it used a very urgent string-section. Knowles, did Survivor teach you nothing at all?

Anyways, the main point of all this is that these two singles are all about showcasing the worrying-exciting I Am… Oh, those dot-dot-dots, they tell so much. Here is what they tell:

*This is a double-album.

*One CD is titled I Am… Beyoncé, and is loads of the mid-tempo yawn-ery which I Were A Boy suggests.

*The other is titled I Am… Sasha Fierce and has all the good hollerin' yelpy ones, which are the reason why we are talking about Beyoncé at all.

*Dot-dot-dots aside, she may as well have scrawled 'Teenage Girls' and 'Gays' on each CD and saved a whole lot on her marketing budget.

In conclusion: it will be better than Back To Basics. But… Sasha ruddy Fierce? That silly old stage persona? It may have been fun to begin with, but it's bad when, at 27, you're not only keeping your alter ego alive, but giving her a surname and all your best songs. B, love, Meryl never got an Oscar with this kind of nonsense. And as for you, Tina... you schooled her too hard.