Destiny's Child, a female rhythm'n'blues group that crossed over into pop and rap, formed in Houston in 1990 when its members were still teenagers (in fact, Beyonce Knowles was nine years old).
They established themselved as a major commercial force with a string of
singles: Killing Time (1997),
No No No, from Destiny's Child (1998),
Say My Name and Bills Bills Bills, from The Writing's on the Wall (1999),
Independent Women Pt 1 (2000), one of the biggest hits of the era.
Following much-publicized internal turmoil,
Beyonce wrote most of Destiny's Child third album, Survivor (2001),
containing Survivor and Bootylicious.
Beyonce's first solo singles, Work It Out and
Crazy in Love (2003), made her a star, despite the mediocre quality of
Dangerously in Love (2003).
B'day (2006)
was full of disposable
songs. The only one that mattered was the colossal hit composed by producer
Ne-Yo, Irreplaceable. Her best impersonation was perhaps Ring the Alarm (2006).
I Am Sasha Fierce (2008) contains the bouncy Single Ladies,
composed by Terius "The-Dream" Nash, Thaddis "Kuk" Harrell, and Christopher "Tricky" Stewart.
In 2008 Beyonce married rap superstar Jay-Z .
4 (2011) and Beyonce (2013), that sold more than 600,000 copies in the first three days, had no song worth mentioning.
Nonetheless, by 2013 she had sold over 100 million "records" (whatever that meant in 2013).
Beyonce (2013) was notable for being as much visual as audio.
This was a new step in the marriage of marketing and show business.
Drunk in Love was the hit.
The genre-hopping
Lemonade (Parkwood Entertainment, 2016) was another attempt to promote
her to auteur. An industry artifact with no personality, Beyonce swings between
the playful reggae of Hold Up and the gospel hymn Freedom via
the piano elegy Sandcastles. Best is probably
Don't Hurt Yourself, which is quintessential Aretha Franklin.
The collaboration with James Blake yields two of the most boring ballads of
his career.
All the media hype does little to make this album more than a marketing
project. In fact, it's even less musical than Beyonce.
She's a mediocre singer and an awful songwriter, and no amount of production
work can fully hide that.
The accompanying video (a much more relevant cultural artifact, inspired by Julie Dash's 1991 film "Daughters of the Dust"), includes spoken-word interludes of poetry by Somali-British poet Warsan Shire: "The Unbearable Weight of Staying", "Dear Moon", "How to Wear Your Mother's Lipstick", "Nail Technician as Palm Reader", and "For Women Who Are Difficult to Love".
Everything Is Love (2018) was a collaboration with her husband
Jay-Z.
Beyonce's younger sister Solange Knowles debuted with
Solo Star (2002) but mainly wrote songs for Beyonce until
Sol-Angel and the Hadley St Dreams (2008), a work that turned her into
a soul-revival star. A Seat at the Table (2016)
reached the top of the sale charts with confessional and almost psychoanalytical lyrics. Unfortunately the music was really (really) boring and trivial,
which means that she joined the ranks of
Beyonce and
Rihanna as a leading black pop star.
Beyonce's next album was the soundtrack of a remake of
The Lion King, an album titled
The Gift (2019), featuring collaborations with both US rappers and
African musicians. The songs of the soundtrack were then given videos
by various directors to create the visual album
Black Is King (2020), including Black Parade, a
celebration of African-American history that speculated on the "Black Lives Matter" protests of that year.
Jay-Z composed her collaboration with Megan Thee Stallion Savage (2020).
Break My Soul (2022) is de facto a tribute to house music of the 1990s
(composed by Allen George and Fred McFarlane, the composers in 1990 of Show Me Love for Robin Stone).
That was the appetizer for Renaissance (2022), another over-hyped sociological event... of little or no artistic value.
It's an album built around
catchy samples of dance hits from the past, almost a tribute to 50 years of dancefloor beats (disco, electro, house, etc).
She basically impersonates a modern Donna Summer in disco-ploitations like
Virgo's Groove (produced by Leven Kali and The-Dream with echoes of
Madonna's Isla Bonita), Cuff It (a tribute to Chic’s Good Times) and
Summer Renaissance (that quotes explicitly I Feel Love),
although injecting her provocative sensual persona in more creative songs like Pure/ Honey (a creation by Michael "BloodPop" Tucker and the Nova Wav's duo Brittany "Chi" Coney and Denisia "Blu June" Andrews).
The album is almost a collage of contributions by different minds.
It took 30 co-writers to write the ridiculous lyrics of Alien Superstar.
The disco ballads are so lame that the rap song Church Girl ends up being a highlight and the rhythm of the atmospheric Thique sounds like an experiment in industrial beats.
Beyonce was perhaps unique among pop stars in her passion for the visual experience, demonstrate by
the "visual albums" Beyonce (2013) and Lemonade (2016),
by her documentary Life Is but a Dream (2013),
by the documentary Homecoming (2019) that documents a Coachella festival performance,
by her narrative film Black Is King (2020),
and by the self-adulating documentary Renaissance - A Film by Beyonce (2023), based on her 2023 world tour that was second only to Taylor Swift's one in terms of publicity and attendance.
Beyonce’s Texas Hold ‘Em (2024) topped Billboard’s country chart, a feat previously achieved only by another soul artist, Ray Charles.
