beyonce tour kritik

Beyoncé's Renaissance Tour Is Her Greatest Achievement

It's an athletic feat, a work of art, and even a pseudo-communion. Even with another mega-tour sweeping the world this year, we've never seen anything like it—and may never again.

That's me. I was introduced to Beyoncé at six years old, shortly after the release of her debut album , Dangerously in Love . I still remember holding the CD from my car seat, marveling at a mysterious woman in a glittery top, whose heavenly vocals boomed through our stereo. Twenty years later, Beyoncé is still a mystery to me—maybe even more so, following most recent album, 2022's Renaissance . At 41 years old, Beyoncé has three children and seven albums under her belt, but she can still sing like there’s an angel trapped in her throat. (She hasn’t let go of the sparkly outfits either.)

As Beyoncé finishes her speech, 80,000 fans erupt in a thunderous cheer. The floor shakes. Glitter floats through the air. Looking at the jumbotron, I swear there's tear in her eye. Beyoncé beams back at the audience, and everyone roars again. She doesn’t have to say much else. We get it. Beyoncé is a legend. Now, it's simply time to celebrate Renaissance .

The Renaissance Tour kicked off on May 10 in Stockholm, Sweden. From there, Beyoncé and co. traveled across Europe before making it to North America. By the time Beyoncé reached New Jersey, clips from her previous shows leaked online. Even a glimpse at the silver-hued concert hinted that the Renaissance Tour may stand as Beyoncé’s best work yet—and her most popular show ever.

Forbes predicts that the Renaissance Tour could earn around $2.1 billion by the time it wraps in September. If Beyoncé pulls it off, that will make her the highest-grossing female act of all time. That title currently belongs to Madonna, who—in July 2022—had earned $1.4 billion from her shows. Taylor Swift is next in line with a projected $1.9 billion in sales from her currently-running Eras Tour. According to Billboard , Beyoncé is well on her way to nabbing the top spot, earning more than $154 million from her European tour dates alone.

Like everyone else in the crowd, I attended the Renaissance Tour as a fan. But I was a fan on a nearly 20-year-long mission. We all know Beyoncé is Beyoncé (you don’t earn $154 million on a whim), but I wondered what I'd learn from seeing her live—dancing and singing along with her, plus, of course, mingling with the Beyhive.

One of the first people I run into is Zahir, who is proudly donning a sequined top. I simply ask why he loves Beyoncé. He says, “Her Blackness. She’s so in tune with her womanhood and voice.” The next person I talk to is Rickey Mile, a self-proclaimed superfan. He gives a dumbfounded look, as if any questions about Beyoncé's greatness go without asking. “She’s timeless,” he explains. According to Mile, it doesn’t matter when you see Beyoncé, what’s going on in her personal life, or which era of her career she’s in—the woman always puts on a good show.

After seeing the Renaissance Tour, I have to agree. The concert (and the album) is a homage to Beyoncé’s uncle, Johnny—a gay man who introduced her to house music. To say Renaissance would make him proud is an understatement. It’s one giant, queer party, filled with references to drag icons Kevin Aviance and Moi Renee, along with a cameo from viral ballroom dancer Honey Balenciaga. The stadium shook for three straight hours , with fans bouncing and rocking along to each song.

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Given Beyoncé’s expansive catalog, there is a smattering of oldies woven throughout the show. But don’t be fooled. This isn't anything like Swift's Eras Tour. Instead of selecting songs chronologically, Beyoncé presents a mix of her favorite hits. The show opens with a powerful rendition of “Dangerously in Love,” which bleeds into the yearning ballad “1+1.” Then, just when you’re ready to profess your love to someone in the crowd, Beyoncé switches gears, performing the self-assured Renaissance track, “I’m That Girl.” The whole thing exudes rich aunt energy. Pure fun. No rules. And the atmosphere? Well, it’s like a reunion. After all, the last time the Beyhive convened was during 2016's Formation Tour.

You know that moment at a family party, when you see someone you don’t recognize, but feel an intrinsic connection to? That’s what attending Renaissance is like. Everyone is a stranger, yet also a cousin. I suppose that makes Beyoncé our matriarch. Just ask the troves of fans yelling “Mother!” during her set.

Perhaps that maternal energy stems from Beyoncé’s dedication to lifting others up. Along with the references to the aforementioned queer icons, Beyoncé uses Renaissance to celebrate Black women. During the show, she sings, “Break My Soul (The Queen's Version), featuring Madonna. The remix praises every Black performer who inspired them: Bessie Smith, Lauryn Hill, and Nina Simone, among many others. Later on, Beyoncé brings her daughter, Blue Ivy, on stage to celebrate their heritage, with the songs “My Power” and “Black Parade.” The Renaissance Tour feels like one giant love letter to Beyoncé's community—and because of that, every moment has a purpose.

Though the Renaissance Tour is art, and even a pseudo-communion, it's also an athletic feat. Any time you think Beyoncé has reached her peak, she surprises you with something else. At one point, she’s singing riffs you’ve never heard. In the next moment, she’s dancing in stilettos. If you look away for a second, you'll miss a surprise costume change or an exciting set design. It’s magic.

After the concert, I see a teenage girl dab her eyes with her sleeve. “‘Formation’ broke me for some reason,” she tells her friend. “I continued to cry for the rest of the show.”

Those who weren’t crying in the presence of Queen Bey were screaming instead. Case in point: “Energy.” The thumping club track arrives midway through the show. When she sings, "Look around everybody on mute," the crowd is told to shush for dramatic effect. It would have been cool, but everyone was too busy singing to oblige. Beyoncé didn’t seem to mind. She just laughed and carried on. Legendary status aside, Beyoncé is a human being who can’t help but giggle when things go wrong.

On my way home, looking at my notes from the night, I found a few words from my conversation with a kind man named Herby. I met him earlier that night and complimented his outfit—a sparkly silver number that Beyoncé would surely approve of.

“Why do you love Beyoncé?” I asked.

“She represents the dichotomy of being a human person with limits, but she feels limitless,” he said. “That inspires me."

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Beyoncé is back to show us what stars are made of

The first u.s. show of her dazzling renaissance tour sparkled in every way.

PHILADELPHIA — Peep this cosmic slop: Nearly every surface was either sequined up or chromed out, and there were these giant robotic arms that knew how to vogue, and there was a Mars rover with hydraulics and a stripper pole on the roof, and when it appeared as if P-Funk had suddenly landed the Mothership in the end zone of this earthly football stadium next to I-95, the hatch opened to reveal a metallic scallop containing a disco Venus singing words that turned the July air even hotter, but then she transformed into an anime mecha with alloy antlers before finally mounting a stallion made of disco ball and riding it into history, the same way Bianca Jagger pranced that white horse through Studio 54 back in 1977.

Maximalism has always been Beyoncé's thing. If you want people to have a blast, you blast them. That means the glitzy, blitzy launch of her current world tour’s domestic leg at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia on Wednesday night felt like a retinal bombardment of scrupulously detailed choreography, costuming, stage lighting, set design, interstitial videos, metallurgical stage props and more. Even her music threatened to violate its own innate invisibility, thickening the air from the moment the show opened with “ Dangerously in Love ,” a gem from her rookie seasons in Destiny’s Child. “I love you, I love you, I love you,” Beyoncé sang copiously and attentively, as if testing how many notes she could fit into the three magic monosyllables that ultimately bind humanity. A few moments later, during the titular hook of “ I Care ,” she was showing and telling in the same freighted breath.

Bedazzled and jet lagged, the Beyhive swarms Stockholm for ‘Renaissance’

Most stadium-grade pop extravaganzas stash all the ballads and midtempo stuff in the middle of the show, giving the singer a chance to regain themselves. Beyoncé turned in her homework early and didn’t look back. Once the sun had fully checked out of the sky for the night, she happily shimmied into her newest songs from “Renaissance,” a sparkly album that taps into the hereditary pulses of disco and house music while quietly subverting the traditional equation that fun equals careless abandon. In Beyoncé's sound-world, the good times are so tightly girded by her intensity, her commitment, her circumspection, that all the catharsis ends up shooting out of the music like laser light. And in case you couldn’t see-hear-feel it during the gummy bounce of “ Cuff It ,” her lyrics asked the question straight up: “Have you ever had fun like this?” Before a complete answer could be formed, she experienced a wardrobe malfunction that was minor but unforgettable. She literally sang her sunglasses off her face.

Everyone in the crowd managed to keep their clothes on — as evidenced by thousands of sequined outfits casting their delicate, woozy, cosmic reflections into neighboring airspaces. This kind of sparkle is obviously meant to feel emblematic of opulence and extravagance, or maybe even magic. Prices vary between the jeweler and the craft store, but some scientists suspect it goes much deeper than that. They think our attraction to glitter and gloss is likely rooted in our evolutionary attraction to water.

At a Beyoncé concert, where notions of fabulousness and survival feel tightly intertwined, that all made a special kind of sense — especially during “ Break My Soul ,” a throbbing self-reliance anthem that Beyoncé made shimmery during its “la-la-la-la” intro, then heavier than life in its conclusion, its unresolved search “for something that lives inside of me.” In between, the entire song transformed into an interpolation of Madonna’s “Vogue” — but instead of dishing up a sangfroidy little rap about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Beyoncé shouted out Aaliyah, Bessie Smith, Nina Simone, Lauryn Hill, Janet Jackson, Grace Jones, Sade, Aretha Franklin and at least a dozen other Black queens of soul and hip-hop music.

She’s so good at this, so good at telling a musical story bigger than herself, even while proving she’s a singular proposition for the ages. Now, more than a quarter-century into her fame, it’s clear that Beyoncé is done with the pop market forever-ever, having opted to funnel countless Black traditions into a recombinant style of songmaking that very much belongs to her alone. That breadth of vision requires tight focus and loose imagination — and it results in the sequined multitudes spending a hot summer night listening to one of the greatest vocalists alive sing “ Cozy ” while she dances with real robots, then coo “ Partition ” while she zooms around on her fake space rover, then purr “ Virgo’s Groove ” from inside a cosmic seashell where time doesn’t exist. Ever have fun like this?

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Exclusive Review: Beyonce’s Electrifying ‘Renaissance Tour’ Reminds That She Is Peerless

Beyonce has long towered tall as the standard-bearer of performance in the modern music age.

As such, it’s of little surprise that immediate pandemonium greeted news of the launch of the ‘Renaissance World Tour.’

The buzz for Queen Bey has been at particular fever-pitch as she rides of the wave of momentum generated by the release of the trek’s like-titled studio album, ‘Renaissance’ .

Functioning as yet another culture-shifting moment for the icon, the summer stadium run serves as the first time the project’s material is being performed live.

It’s notably also Beyonce’s first solo tour in over six years.

That Grape Juice was on-hand at London’s Tottenham Hotspur Stadium for the latest stop of the ‘Renaissance World Tour.’

Head below for our EXCLUSIVE review…

Beyonce has a well-documented penchant for torching the rulebook and it’s a trajectory that continues with her return to the stage.

For, instead of the expected high-octane opening, a blazing vocal showcase of powerful balladry kicks off what unquestionably qualifies as the superstar’s grandest showing yet.

At the top of the night, the GRAMMYs most-awarded winner declared that what would follow would not be about “perfection,” but rather “release.”

In reality, the ‘Renaissance World Tour’ delivers both bountifully.

Aptly anchored in the intergalactic, the nearly 3-hour extravaganza manages to be both out of this world and Beyonce’s most relatable live offering to date. True to form, Mrs. Carter (as she oft referred to herself throughout the concert) was fierce, ferocious, and potently precise. Yet, more than ever before, she was skilfully chilled. This eclectic combination of the scorching hot, the welcoming warmth, and the effortless cool render the ‘Renaissance World Tour’ a compelling exhibition of a seasoned superstar with a dedication to evolving.

Yes, there are the big choreographed moments (‘Cozy,’ ’Energy,’ ‘Formation’ ), but there is also beauty in the layered intricacies of the performer’s latest live blockbuster.

Of the many instances to draw from, perhaps most striking is her uncanny ability to interact with the crowd and personably acknowledge the sea of signs only to effortlessly hit her mark a millisecond later.

Make no mistake, though. For all its “girl next door” appeal, the ‘Renaissance World Tour’ is a well-oiled, slickly produced machine of a show that is befittingly majestic like the Queen at its center.

With over two decades on top, Beyonce has mastered the art of metamorphosis while savvily maintaining a qualitative throughline. With this trek, there quite literally is an iteration of “Beyonce” available for all. From the vocal fireworks of the unique ballad opening with ’Dangerously in Love’ to the nostalgic warmth of funkified cuts such as ‘Cuff It’ and ‘Love On Top’ to the braggadocios swagger of ‘Savage’ and ‘Diva.’ Whatever your flavor, there are bountiful servings of Bey to feast on.

For much of her tenure in the spotlight, Beyonce has come to mean so much more than a “singer” – she has ascended to the rightful status of a cultural light force. And oh did the capacity crowd at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium re-affirm that. The euphoria embedded in their full-volume renditions of ‘Love On Top’ and the beloved outro of ‘Heated’ captured this in earnest.

The ‘Renaissance World Tour’ (which features the Midas touch of industry heavyweights like Fatima Robinson, Es Devlin, and Chris Grant ) is one that has been pieced together with both purpose and intention. As a Pop show, it hits its marks with sniper-like precision. The spectacle is grand, the outfits stunning, and the scale gargantuan. Yet, most potently, it manages to encapsulate the heart of an album that many deem to be Beyonce’s most culturally resonating release to date. As a body of work, the LP functions as a melodic space of expression, self-love, safety, and a seismic celebration of the marginalized. These themes are woven throughout the entire show, both at a macro and micro level – with the epic ballroom segment towards its climax serving as one of the most emphatic exclamation marks.

With this show, Beyonce powerfully reminds that she is the mold and the master of the contemporary music climate. And, when it comes to blazing a stage, she remains peerless.

That Grape Juice Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆ 5/5

That Grape Juice Highlights: Heated, Break My Soul, Cozy, Love on Top, Alien Superstar

@thatgrapejuice #Beyonce blazing London with #BreakMySoul at the #Renaissance World Tour! “Release the wiggle!” 🔥🔥🔥🔥 #fyp #renaissancetour #beyhive #foryoupage #blacktiktok #live #livemusic #breakmysoul #cuffit #americahasaproblem #queenbey @Beyoncé ♬ original sound – That Grape Juice

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[photo credit: ln / mason poole / andrew white].

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🐝 has approximately 4 Titles =

#QUEEN OF MUSIC #QUEEN OF CHRIST #VOCAL BIBLE #CELEBRITY TO CELEBRITIES

Meanwhile, your favorite don’t even have ONE 😆

#LEGENDARY 🏆

I’ll give her celebrity to celebrities but everything else is a stretch. She’s overrated. Her music is crap. Her vocals aren’t anything special. She can sing but nothing spectacular. No real soul or feeling. She does put on a great show but overall everything else is overrated. Her and her husband are masters at marketing.

If #MUSIC ROYALTY is overrated then so is MJ and if the CELEBRITY to celebrities is vocally overrated then so is Whitney. Fix your Ears, Eyes, brain and skull while yur at it 😆

All facts. Beywitched is the most overrated alleged artist to step in a stage. And this tour shows that. She is standing there with her props moving all around her as she hoarsely sings out these songs (not great songs to begin with) that would likely be pulled off by someone with a true vision. She’s not that and has never been. If she made good ballads, then that would be a lane to think about.

Queen of Christ? Chile, you about to be roasted on a heap of coals. This 304 got you gone.

Brandys the ONLY vocal bible and she sings CIRCLES around your fav

Lol, keep dreaming 🤣

Yes, girl. Let these people know. Beyonce can sing, and dance, and cast spells, and worship Satan, and have her hair blowing in the wind at all times, but she is no Brandy.

THATS RIGHT, BEYONCE HAS NO PEERS PLEASE SAY THAT AGAIN. HER LEVEL OF ARTISTRY AND DISCIPLINE IS ON ANOTHER LEVEL🐝

#MUSIC ROYALTY

Janet has been there, done that. Beyodel with her circus acts are TIRED

Usher says hello. Not to mention he is the better singer and dancer.

Unlike Aretha or Tina, Beyonce needs a massive production to distract from her averageness. Aretha is the vocal bible and Tina was her own special effect. Beyonce is smoke & mirrors with a side of Satan and song-credit stealing.

THE 32 GRAMMY AWARD WINNING QUEEN OF CHRIST 🐝 is 100% PEER-LESS so you mentioning those peasants like Aretha or Whitney will NOT be tolerated 🐝 🐝 🐝 🐝 🐝 💯

lmao at side of satan!! 😈

Kelly Rowland is better. Beyonce tries too hard and it came to bite her in the b*** in the end. Just look she’s being outsold and outgrossed by Longback Swift. She’ll never have respect that the older legends have.

THE RENAISSANCE TOUR IS ON TRACK TO GROSS $2 BILLION WW

The Queen of Christ 🙏🏽 🤲 🙏🏽 already proved that she’s THE GREATEST ARTIST OF TIME when she released FORMATION HOMECOMING BLACK IS KING BREAK MY SOUL & CUFF IT… 📖

Trying to debate this Fact is POINTLESS. 🤣

@paulo let’s keep it real, Beyoncé is a much better artist/entertainer than Taylor and many others. Since so many are jealous and hater of the star she doesn’t get the true support from people. But t none the less you just can’t keep her down.

That is why all the legends have a difficult time mentioning her in the conversation of greatness. When they do it’s usually for clout and pr.

The Queen of Christ 🙏🏽 🤲 🙏🏽 already proved that she’s THE GREATEST ARTIST OF TIME when she released FORMATION HOMECOMING BLACK IS KING BMS & CUFF IT… 📖

Trying to debate this Fact is POINTLESS. 😆

Beyonce is a certified Vegas showgirl act. No depth to her or her vapid music. “Drop it like a thotty” – wise words from a 45 year old cokehead wife and mother.

s been a lot of years, really think you’re getting one past me? I gotta fan myself off, I gotta fan myself off I gotta cool it down (heated), oh You got me (heated), heated, oh Never met a girl with a mind like this, no, no To give you space at a time like this, my love Never met a girl so fine like this, no, no, no, no, no With a waist that whine like this, my love Only a real one could tame me Only the radio could play me Oh, now you wish I was complacent? Boy, you must’ve mixed up our faces Oh, now you wanna have conversations? See how you testing my patience Yeah, yeah Got a lot of bands, got a lot of Chanel on me I gotta fan myself off, I gotta fan myself off I gotta cool down (heated, like stolen Chanel, put me up in jail) I gotta cool it down (heated, tip, tip, tip, tippin’ on) Got a lot of style, got a lot of Tiffany on me I gotta fan myself off, I gotta fan myself off I gotta cool it down (heated, I’m hot, hot, hot) You got me (heated), heated, oh Whole lotta reservations, whole lotta Whole lotta texting with no conversations Whole lotta playing victim and a villain at the same time Whole lotta, yeah, money, not a lot of patience Whole lotta n***** been waiting They want some time on it, now I wanna flaunt it Panty and a bra, we can get involved, boy You keep playing with my heart, boy I’m just as petty as you are Only a real man can tame me Only the radio could play me Only my baby Got a lot of bands, got a lot of Chanel on me I gotta fan myself off, I gotta fan myself off I gotta cool down (heated, like Coco Chanel, put me up in jail) I gotta cool it down (heated), heated Never met a girl with a mind like this, no, no To give you the space in a time like this, my love Never met a girl so fine like this, no, no, no, no, no (fan me off, I’m hot) With a waist that whine like this (hot, hot like Coco Chanel, put me up in jail) Tip, tip, tip on hardwood floors Ten, ten, ten across the board (with a waist that whine like it) Give me face, face, face, face, yah Your face card never declines, my God (ooh) Eat it, eat it, eat it, eat it, eat it Mmh, yummy, yummy, yummy, make a bummy heated Make a pretty girl talk that s***** Whisky ’til I’m tipsy, glitter on my kitty (ooh) Cool it down, down, down, my pretty Ba-bad bitchy, make a bad b**** glitchy Fine, fine, fi-fine, fi-fine, fine, fine Liberated, living like we ain’t got time Yada, yada, yah, yada, yada, yah-yah Yada, yada, yada, bom-bom, kah-kah Blastin’ on that as, blast on that as Fan me quick, girl, I need my glass Fan me off, my wrist goes “click” Dimples on my hip, stretch marks on my tts Drinking my water, minding my biz Monday, I’m overrated, Tuesday, on my dck Flip-flop, flippy, flip-flop and ass b**** Fan me off, watch my wrist go “click” Fan me off, I’m hot, hot, hot Like stolen Chanel, lock me up in jail Cuff me, please, ’cause this ain’t fair Dripped in my pearls like Coco Chanel Uncle Johnny made my dress That cheap Spandex, she looks a mess Fan me off, I’m hot, hot, hot Like stolen Chanel, lock me up in jail Fingertips go tap, tap, tap On my MPC, making disco trap Uncle Johnny made my dress That cheap Spandex, she looks a mess

F*** off fattie😆

Aretha was a fat slob.. Whit was a crackhead Tina a c*** as she hated blacks Patti a lesbian

AND ALL OF THEM ARE MORE LEGENDARY AND RESPECTED THAN BOUNCY THE MIDDLE AGED STRIPPER

No one and I mean no one can touch her. Without a doubt she is the best entertainer of this generation, period. People always wants to hate on this female, but truth be told she’s always giving back, she’s about her craft and a true perfectionist making sure you will be entertained and left in awe 🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝🐝

Circus acts don’t make u legendary

Electrifying is a reach. Most of the time she seem like she over it. Like every show they have to convince her to do a bit more. We know she can sing but she barely moves. The dancers are sloppy and the highlight of the show is her daughter performing.

Lol, she is peerless yet she has stolen from Soo many and takes credit for it. Beyonce is nothing more than CULT! There are too many talented people who simply don’t get the credit because her Illuminati ass would do anything for fame! She needs to pack her bags and ride out on the camel (Jay-Z) that she rode in on!

You will bow to Beyonce, you will honor Beyonce and you will worship the ground Beyonce walk on.

Beyonce is a living Goddess and I rebuke you for such disrespect of our KING.

You are a lost person ..freak of theafyonce

Riiiiiight. Tell your king she is moving in slow motion but the tracks are 140bpm lol. What’s wrong?

You been tricked by all that backmasking bullchit she put in her music, chile. Single Ladies backwards says worship me. I see it worked on you too. Beyonce is the one who will be bowing with her demonic a$$.

Yes Bey has done it again.. better than ever in the 40/30 club 💪 ..not that her mining me aka bloodline in the Frontline..Blue Icy. Is rocking the stage too 👍😎

TLDR. Beyoncé is a fat and very ugly legacy act FLOP. How much did her album sell? Are people interested in her NEW music?

And Blu Ivy is even uglier than her mama and daddy. I feel like getting eye cancer just looking at it.

For a stadium spectacle, the show is entertaining and her American fan base is ravenous for the show to hit US soil. However, beyond the PRODUCTION the team did a fair job of translating those songs to the stage. It highlights how weak the material actually is (see the disappointing tweets for the tease of “Sweet Dreams” and “Freakum Dress” that transition from and into weaker songs). The ballad opener is classy and IMO is kind of a set up to be let down by what follows. The in-between videos are fantastic, tho. The choreography (with the exception of the Formation segment) is also not up to her usual standard. Should’ve never hired Fatima, she needed Parris Goebel and/or Luther Brown. Her dance captain Amari Marshall is PHENOMENAL. Keep that girl on retainer Parkwood! The dancers also are not “clean” in their movements, but rather all over the place but she does say “this show is not about perfection” (although it’s scripted to the nth degree like most stadium shows). Blue Ivy looks more comfortable on stage with each show but it still feels like something to keep people talking instead of an organic show-stopping moment. And finally, all that voguing just seems “been there, done that” at this point. We get it – feminine gay men stand up (yawn). Honey Balenciaga just seems like a distraction from what Beyonce is NOT doing (giving her own energy). Is Beyonce matchless among her peers? I’m afraid this show says “yes” because she can buy production but for sheer performance she (and the team) have done better. And I’ve seen 5 shows…

Come through Queen

There are no truer words and her legacy keeps growing because Biu, has illustrated that she possess the talent, technic, skill and attitude, to take Beyonce’s credentials to the next level. Her performance next to her mother was masterful, her rhythm, coordination,and timing was pure perfection; yet, age appropriate. Her natural capabilities were effortless synchronisation. She sings and sounds like her Mama also. I have got my seat ready for the mother, daughter duo and Rumi is already a big fan of her sister, she may emulate her big sister and Sir is as cool as his daddy. This maybe the next musical dynasty, I hope SO.

Where did u hear Blu Ivy sing?

Look at those cheap ass moves her daughter is doing and fools going like they gonna worship her now ..yall full of s*** beyonce Stan

Why are you so mad 😂

Beyonce sabotaged Chloe’s career because she knew Chloe could surpass her. No respect for that wannabe Latina woman

JLo puts on a far better show….

Than why isn’t she selling out stadiums worldwide?

• Juicy Comments

As one of the highest-grossing performers of all time, Beyonce is no stranger to blazing a stage.

Cop a gander at Beyonce !

The chart-topping megastar marvels in newly shared snaps – and it’s clear she’s embracing all things ‘Cowboy Carter.’

And understandably so.

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We’ve Never Seen Beyoncé Like This Before

The Renaissance concert movie is joyful but jumbled—and less about the star than about her audience.

Confession: The Beyoncé concert I attended this past summer was pretty good but not, as Oprah described it , “the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen.” Naturally, the expectations are high for any show by the most spectacular artist of my lifetime. Beyoncé’s previous solo arena tour, in 2016, made for a peak concertgoing experience: Even from the nosebleeds, she seemed huge, and impossibly important. I felt like I was watching the Statue of Liberty come alive, declare herself empress of Earth, and twerk.

Sitting in equally remote seats to see her in New Jersey this past July, I squinted to make out the action. Beyoncé seemed like just another body on a stage of performers and gadgets. The best part of the set list was its middle section, a megamix of bangers that made everyone watching it wiggle so freely that my eye couldn’t help but wander from the performance to the people around me. The party vibe was great fun, but I did not leave the show with the classic Beyoncé feeling of having one’s skull crushed by a higher power.

Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé now explains what happened. It pulls viewers close—not just into the front row or onto the stage itself, but also behind the scenes. The camera shows Beyoncé’s warm charisma, her unique physical intelligence, and a gala’s worth of splendid bodysuits. Plenty of moments will make the viewer feel, to use the lingo of the ballroom subculture that inspired Renaissance , her latest album , gagged by opulence . Yet the film also suggests that, a quarter century into her career, Beyoncé has begun to make trade-offs: She wants her brand to be less about … herself.

Five years ago, she set a new bar for concert documentaries with Homecoming , about her 2018 Coachella performance, which essentially created a human pyramid with one woman at the apex. Though the staging celebrated the range of talents found at Black collegiate pep rallies , it altogether had a militant, astonishing unity . Intercut with backstage footage, the movie presented itself as the culmination of her career to date. “I definitely pushed myself further than I knew I could,” Beyoncé said in voice-over. “And I’ve learned a very valuable lesson: I will never, never push myself that far again.”

Read: Beyoncé tickets are the new status symbol

The title of Renaissance announced a new era—one in which she’s still pushing herself, but in different ways. Borrowing the Homecoming format, the new movie weaves together performance and backstory to illuminate the effort required to mount an arena show. Beyoncé paid a physical toll, undergoing knee surgery shortly before the first date. She also had to play a mental game; even at her level of achievement, she notes in the documentary that she felt continually second-guessed because she’s a Black woman. In one instant-classic bit of footage, an adviser tells her that a piece of equipment she wants to use just doesn’t exist. She tells him that it actually does, and she knows so because she looked it up.

And yet, a remarkable amount of the movie highlights people who aren’t Beyoncé. One early segment zooms in on her laborers and crew, including the woman who pushed an oversize disco ball onstage every night. Viewers get a download about Kevin JZ Prodigy , whose furious spoken word rang out every night on tour, and Crystal Rovél Torres, the trumpet player who performed while pregnant . The film also spends time with Blue Ivy Carter, Beyoncé’s 11-year-old daughter, who joined her mom to dance on multiple tour dates. The star didn’t want her kid to be in the spotlight so young, but Blue Ivy insisted, put in the work, and became better and more confident with each show.

In the musical segments, Beyoncé shares focus as well. Her dancers zip and twirl in ways that break with phalanxlike choreo clichés. The camera often cuts to fans, bedecked in shiny accessories and pulling their own moves. At one point, Beyonce’s mother, Tina Knowles, says the fans remind her of Beyoncé’s uncle Jonny , the inspiration for Renaissance ’s mélange of Black, gay party sounds. At another point, Beyoncé—after discussing the fleeting nature of time—says that her present dream is to be for a new generation of talent what Tina Turner was for her. The statement is layered with heaviness, given Turner’s recent death and how she essentially retired from public view in the last decades of her life. Beyoncé is only 42, but she is explicitly thinking about, and preparing others for, a world without her.

Great pop stars always gesture to a communal ideal—fans as family, dancing as democracy. At base, though, they sell dominance and submission: a fantasy of the world’s problems pacified by a noble tyrant. To a fascinating extent, and with convincing earnestness, Beyoncé is trying something different: pulling back and broadening out while still offering a product that’s fierce and flashy. As art, that goal is inspiring, and builds upon the Black feminism that has long been explicit in her work. But she’s also complicating her audience’s experience. Like its concert, the Renaissance movie is fabulous yet uneven, with the energy peaking and ebbing erratically, its glorious polyphony sometimes becoming a muddle.

Of course, Beyoncé is hardly surrendering her claim to power and control. As the movie’s credits play, so does a tremendous new song in which she raps, with boxerly aggressiveness, about house—the musical style, the material achievement, the place to host guests and raise families. Implicitly, she’s inviting us all inside her walls. And yet, she very amusingly keeps shouting, “Get the fuck up out my house!” She knows we still want to be commanded—and that not everything she’s got can be shared.

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Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour is a vast sci-fi spectacle designed for social media

This retrofuturist extravaganza, like all modern big gigs, is intended to look good on someone’s phone so they can prove that they were there.

By Kate Mossman

A couple of seats down at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium a woman is holding up a phone, but instead of filming Beyoncé , she is filming her own reaction throughout the entire show: no Beyoncé and no stage, just her own face in close-up, lip-syncing and gasping in surprise. She adjusts the filters, then puts it on TikTok in manageable chunks. Way back when the smartphone took hold, there was talk about the renewed importance of the Communal Event: the show you had to prove you were at.

The modern big gig – with bigger screens, more dancers, more scene changes and concepts than ever before – is designed to look good on someone’s mobile phone. And increasingly, because of the complexity of the stage show, the megastar is offstage a lot, being placed atop a silver moon buggy, if you’re Beyoncé, or inside a Venus clam shell, or dressed in a wonderful elongated fez that might have been worn by Grace Jones. When Beyoncé is onstage, you see her working away as tiny as the rest of us. When she’s off, the giant screen shows images of her – as a beautiful Fritz Lang alien, or swimming alone in a vast sea – and you wish she was back on, and get bored: a man next to me was checking his bank statement.

It was the biggest show I have ever seen, for sure, and nothing went wrong. But it lost me a bit after the opening section, which was powerful because it was the most simple: Beyoncé appeared in a Hillary Clinton -blue dress, smiling beneficently, for a run of ballads: her early song “Dangerously in Love”, “Flaws and All” (Beyoncé has no flaws), and a tribute to Tina Turner with “River Deep – Mountain High”. The opening section said, to me: you know I should be president, we all know I should be president, and let’s imagine a world where I could be president, because it ain’t this one – yet.

After that, she was funnelled into armour to become a disco cyborg (rather like the one Janelle Monáe was doing ten years ago) for “I’m That Girl”, before embarking on a two-and-a-half-hour journey through sci-fi, Nineties house, soul and protest music, at one point disappearing up a hole between a vast pair of silver legs. Retrofuturism, and the use of that gorgeous early sci-fi imagery is a powerful aesthetic: it’s beautiful, classy, stylish, full of hope and invention; it says dream big, but it also takes account of all those who have dreamed big before, and failed.  

[See also: Beyoncé: “Renaissance” review – an exultant, daring return to sticky dancefloors ]

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In the 60,000-capacity stadium there is a largely black and queer audience, and queer culture influenced the Renaissance album, which came out a year ago. As a female icon of Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ rights, with plus-size dancers and songs , such as “Cozy”, about being comfortable in your own skin, Beyoncé now seems to represent everyone – but her increasingly brainy music also represents everything that has come before it, too. Songs unfold like a Jacob’s ladder in their cross-referencing: in “Break My Soul”, which itself pays tribute to “Vogue” by Madonna , she reels off Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Santigold, Missy, Diana, Grace Jones. At one point the old black and white “swirl” of Sixties time travel (used in Austin Powers – oh how wonderful she was as Foxxy Cleopatra!) spins hypnotically on the stage and seems to mirror what one’s brain does while watching Beyoncé: flying through space, traversing all of culture, all of women , all of experience, all of music, together. And incorporating it, owning it, piling it up, and planting a space flag on the spoils saying: you try doing it better.

I sometimes wonder what Beyoncé is like. Her eyesight must be good because she has an autocue at the back of the stadium with rather small print, showing lyrics such as “Yada, yada, yada, bom-bom, kah-kah/Blastin’ on that ass, blast on that ass” (“Heated”). I once heard a first-hand account, from another big popstar, that at her dinner parties she likes to play the “Would You Rather” game: one of the questions, one night, was “would you put your tongue on a pile of dog poo for a million dollars?” That made her feel very human to me: I bet she said she would. I like to think that because she doesn’t really speak in public: she is protected from having to switch between real and fake selves, and can just be a strange ball of celebrity otherness all the time, designing her new $200m house, and popping round to her songwriting camps, checking in on her topliners, then getting everyone together over a massive meal and playing Would You Rather. I feel like she does a circle of trust with her dancers. She doesn’t come down the runway much, tonight, possibly for her own safety.

Beyoncé’s dancers are wildly exciting (her daughter Blue Ivy makes an appearance) – particularly her identical twin performers Laurent and Larry Nicolas Bourgeois, known as Les Twins (at several points, on the big screen, I thought they were one man repeated, until they formed a human sofa together and Beyoncé sat on it). There was a jazz-rock freak-out half way through “Crazy in Love” – the biggest hit she played (no “Single Ladies” these days). You don’t really get big tunes on the Renaissance tour, but you get juddering rap and shaku shaku dance and spooky, disembodied sloganeering. In the majesty of “Black Parade” she disappears back up the big, silver fundament on her buggy; in “America Has a Problem”, she reads the news in a giant inflatable red suit. If you are part of the club, you get it all: in “Love on Top”, she challenged the audience to sing the many, ascending key changes unaccompanied, and they stayed ropily together.

People don’t necessarily go around singing her newer songs, but they listen to – and watch, in the case of Lemonade – each entire album obsessively and they get the stuff that passes the laypeople by. Fans had been, as people are saying, “starved of visuals” for the Renaissance album. This, for anyone who wondered, is what Renaissance looks like.

[See also: Will Beyoncé’s new song “Break My Soul” usher in a new era of dance music? ]

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Review: Beyoncé is indomitable as the Renaissance Tour plays its first American show in Philly

The culture shifting superstar's sold out 2 1/2 hour spectacular at the Linc was her first solo show in South Philly in seven years.

Beyoncé's South Philly Renaissance began with a prelude.

Before darkness fell on Lincoln Financial Field on Wednesday, an enormous video screen showed a TV test pattern, cleverly reworked to include colors of the Progress Pride Flag celebrating the LGBTQ community.

That screen became an image of a cloudy blue sky, and then — as the anticipation of the sellout crowd turned into ecstasy — it was filled in with a stadiumwide image of Beyoncé herself.

And then there she was, at 8:45 p.m. sharp.

In a short black Givenchy dress, uttering the words that her mostly female, significantly queer, impressively diverse, sequin-clad and bedazzled cowboy hat-wearing audience longed to hear: “I love you, Philadelphia.”

From there, the opening segment of the first U.S. show of the Renaissance Tour — named after the pulsating 2022 album that draws on the history of dance music and club culture, spotlighting Black gay creators — was surprisingly old school.

The 2½-hour spectacularly entertaining show started off with “Dangerously In Love,” a Destiny’s Child song that became the title cut of Beyoncé's first solo album in 2003. The six-song segment was a ballad-singing masterclass, backed by an eight-piece band. ( Check out the setlist here .)

It was intentionally presented as an intimate intro to an evening that would soon enough get bigger than life.

The 41-year-old singer sat atop a piano while Emily Bear played “1 + 1,” growled into the bluesy “I’m Goin’ Down” (a Rose Royce song later covered by Mary J. Blige), and exchanged vocal runs with guitarist Agape Jerry on “I Care,” veering towards hair metal.

None of those songs are from Renaissance , and none are among Beyoncé's biggest hits. (And though the Renaissance Tour include plenty of hits, it is by no means a “greatest hits” tour.)

But by beginning without immediately hitting the audience with outsized production numbers, it allowed her to present herself as an actual human being who just happens to be a culture-shifting global pop star .

It also allowed her to sing an abbreviated show-stopping “River Deep, Mountain High,” a tribute added to the Renaissance set list after Tina Turner’s death in May.

Then, it was “Alien Superstar” time. And that’s when the state-of-the-art Afrofuturist spectacle of Beyoncé's first solo tour in seven years really began.

She made her second entrance seated, a particularly stylish extraterrestrial cyborg. Rising from her throne in a sexy silver spacesuit, the band was replaced by 20 dancers in matching outfits , headed to the catwalk to take to the crowd.

The aesthetic mashed up Fritz Lang’s Metropolis with more modern sci-fi movies like The Fifth Element and The Terminator .

Thumping house music made bodies move, with a theme of uniqueness. We are all our own special, one-of-a-kind entities, with Beyoncé being just a little more unique than everybody else.

“I’m one of one, I’m number one, I’m the only one,” she sang, emphasizing a point incontrovertibly apparent.

But while trumpeting her unicorn status, the Queen also enraptured her Beyhive in the way that Renaissance had hopefully intended by birthing the kind of joyful, communal space that the COVID lockdown created a longing for.

Renaissance is about self-acceptance and the aspiration to be “comfortable in your own skin,” as Beyoncé sang during “Cozy,” which phrased it this way: “You’re a god, you’re a hero, you’ve survived everything you’ve been through.”

It was self-esteem boosting with a sprinkling of “rainbow gelato” and “limoncello glycerine.”

Sounds delicious, and for the most part, it was. Beyoncé’s one-of-one combination of talents were everywhere on display.

For the traditional-minded, she consciously placed herself in a long Black music lineage, not only with the Rose Royce and Tina Turner covers, but also a showcase of Philadelphia-born soul man Frankie Beverly’s “Before I Let Go.”

Other nods to vintage R&B and pop included a snippet of the Jackson 5′s “I Want You Back” in a version of “Love on Top” that turned into a mass singalong.

Backup singers Tiffany Ryan, Karyn Porter, Natalie Imani, and Tayler Green got to step out with Diana Ross’ 1976 disco hit “Love Hangover” during a changeover.

The most hip-hop focused segment of the show was subtitled “Opulence.” It was introduced with a spoken-word interlude featuring Philly ballroom legend Kevin JZ Prodigy .

During “My Power,” Beyoncé’s 11-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy, joined the dancers, showing off her moves in camouflage chic.

Beyoncé’s skills as a rapper are often underestimated. On the Megan Thee Stallion collaboration “Savage (Remix),” she threw down with force, rapping while crouched atop an armored vehicle.

And her flow was intricate on “Heated,” during which fans cooled themselves with folding fans emblazoned with the song’s name, available for $40 at the merch stand. They came in handy; it was a warm night.

The special effects were dazzling. Though in the social media era, the wow factor of spectacular staging is dimmed.

Yes, it was pretty cool to see the actual Beyoncé suspended by wires and floating above the crowd on a platinum horse during the Donna Summer sampling “Summer Renaissance” encore.

But most fans had already seen it on TikTok, so shortly after liftoff, they made their way to exits in hopes of beating epic traffic.

The attention to detail in the staging was thoroughly impressive. Perhaps the truest line Beyoncé sang all night long was in “Cuff It”: “I’m a seasoned professional.”

Costumes were clever, most notably during a segment in which Beyoncé posed inside a scallop shell — a nod to Botticelli’s Birth of Venus — while the star and dancers were dressed as bees.

Her Queen’s outfit included a headdress, complete with antenna. It was a little unclear however, what that had to do with “America Has A Problem.”

Dancers dazzled, showing out with an extended showcase before the encore.

Beyoncé strutted with swagger and confidence, but didn’t dance as much as on previous tours. (The BeyHive speculation is that she might have suffered a leg injury earlier this year. If so, it didn’t hamper the overall effectiveness of the show.)

The highlight came halfway through with “Break My Soul,” the lead single from Renaissance that deals in a Beyoncé speciality: resilience.

The song is marvelously efficient and motivating on its own, with Robin S. and Big Freedia samples and thumping bass pushing us all towards a “new salvation.”

Then “The Queens Remix” version of the song melded it with Madonna’s “Vogue,” shouting out Black women music makers including Philadelphians Santigold, Tierra Whack, and Jill Scott.

With their names in lights, there was strength in numbers, and the Renaissance was in full effect. No souls would be broken. Beyoncé sounded indomitable.

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Show Review: Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour is a display of creative excellence at Phoenix stop

• August 28, 2023

“Hi, Arizona.”

A greeting from the Queen sent the crowd into a frenzy. Light from the massive motherboard bounced off the fans’ shiny, sparkling silver outfits and turned the entire inside of State Farm Stadium into a 60,000-capacity disco ball. Beyoncé had arrived (finally) and the BeyHive was buzzing. 

The “finally” note is because the multihyphenate was fashionably late, starting her set more than an hour after it was scheduled to begin. But the extra time simply gave fans more opportunity to parade their looks — several of which were absolutely stunning — and soak in the “ENERGY” of their surroundings.

From the fans’ fashion to the performance itself, the Renaissance World Tour is a spectacle on a scale rarely seen. The onscreen visuals; the many, many costumes (that change every night of the tour;) the choreography; and the pyrotechnics all come together for these memorable displays of creative excellence. Then, they’re immortalized on social media. 

Plenty of attendees who have been consuming RWT content knew generally what to expect at the Glendale date, but that didn’t stop them from getting swept up in the revelry and screeching in delight during key moments. Some to note: When each new costume was revealed, when Blue Ivy emerged to dance to “My Power,” and when the sound came back after a 10-minute outage.

Yes, even after the lengthy delay, some technical difficulties cut all sound at the beginning of “Alien Superstar” during the Renaissance portion of the show. It took a few seconds for Mrs. Carter and her dancers to realize what was happening, but the ensemble quickly exited the stage with as much poise as they show in their routines. As Beyoncé herself said when the performance had resumed, “You know there are certain nights the crowd is so loud and has so much charge, it makes the power go out.” We prefer to think the sound system partook in the “Everybody on Mute” challenge, even if it was a few songs too early. 

While the House of Chrome portions of the performance are perhaps the most documented so far, the Renaissance World Tour showcases just how multifaceted Queen Bey is as an artist. She’s a strong vocalist, shown best on “Flaws and All” during her opening act. She’s a rapper, as shown on her “Savage” remix. She’s a dancer, side-by-side with her daughter and having the time of her life. And she lifts up the people around her, giving dancer duo Les Twins their own solo number and her troupe an opportunity to shine. 

Different themes were interwoven throughout the 30-some song setlist as well: futuristic outfits, ancient apocalyptic motifs, and even a hyper realistic cathedral interior projected on screen for “Church Girl.” The creative team spared no details, and it added intensity to the production.

Few solo artists have had careers quite as illustrious as Beyoncé’s, and her longevity was displayed in the middle of her set with past hits “Get Me Bodied,” “Love on Top,” “Crazy in Love,” and “Naughty Girl.” Her dedicated fans loved every single throwback, of course, but notably went just as rabid for RENAISSANCE material. 

And she delivered it, right up until the venue’s midnight curfew. “SUMMER RENAISSANCE” closed out the show, performed from the saddle of the giant silver horse that carried Beyoncé through the air around the stadium. As she was whisked higher, she became the shimmering human disco ball she requested, mirroring the joy that surrounded her. 

Story by Taylor Knauf Photos courtesy of  Beyoncé

Taylor Knauf

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Review: beyoncé’s ‘renaissance’ tour is a powerful tribute to black and queer pioneers.

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The Renaissance World Tour is ballroom. Beyoncé is beat for the gods, rocking shimmering mesh bodysuits and fierce BeyHive ensembles. She moves with robotic precision, making stank faces that cut through the camera. 

The Black Parade was in full swing in Minneapolis Thursday evening, with a two-and-a-half-hour performance by Beyoncé that included nine costume changes, 34 songs, 22 backup dancers, and four backup singers. 

Minneapolis was Beyoncé’s fourth U.S. stop on the tour for her seventh studio album, “Renaissance,” which celebrates club culture and Black and queer music pioneers. The 41-year-old performed for more than a million fans earlier this year on the European leg of the Renaissance World Tour. 

Huntington Bank Stadium on the University of Minnesota campus was alive with a dazzling display of fashion . Attendees wore shimmering bodysuits and silver sequin dresses, and adorned themselves with rhinestone fringe cowboy hats and thigh-high boots—the signature ensemble for Beyonce’s Renaissance rodeo. 

A sea of 35,000 fans eagerly immersed themselves in the rhythmic and celestial world of the one and only, Queen Bey. 

Embracing Black girlhood

Although Beyoncé’s generation preceded mine by a few decades, her music possesses a timeless quality that continues to resonate with fans across multiple generations. From my earliest memories, Beyoncé’s music has been the ever-present soundtrack of my life. My sister and I spent hours choreographing dance performances for our family, bickering over which Beyoncé verse to sing and deciding where we would stand on our imaginary stage. 

In the middle of our living room, two Black girls passionately reimagined Beyoncé’s early discography, belting out, “Na, na, na, diva is the female version of a hustla.” 

Now, at age 21, it was surreal to find myself in the presence of someone I had admired for many years, and who played a pivotal role shaping my journey to embracing my own Black girlhood. 

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Long before “Renaissance” was released last summer, Queen Bey’s commanding presence and music had earned her the title of “that girl,” and her songs have the power to make listeners feel that same level of fierceness. 

The concert’s grand entrance Thursday featured a colossal Progress Pride flag, which supports LGBTQ communities of color, displayed on a towering video screen, creating a space where queer people felt seen and celebrated . 

Bey served as her own opening act, captivating the audience with six soul-stirring slow ballads from “Dangerously In Love” and “Flaws and All” to “1+1+” and “I Care.” Her soulful renditions also included tributes to Rose Royce’s “I’m Goin’ Down” and Tina Turner’s “River Deep, Mountains High.” 

While she may have departed from some of her more commercially popular hits, her artistic integrity and willingness to explore new creative territories solidify her status as a trailblazing force in the music industry. 

Queen Bey performed 14 songs from “Renaissance,” remixing the tracks with fresh energy and a powerful sense of liberation. 

Her decision to center “Renaissance” and weave in bold choices that deviated from mainstream crowd-pleasers demonstrated her commitment to celebrating diverse and underrepresented voices in the music world.

During “Break My Soul,” Beyonce paid homage to the trailblazing Black female musicians who paved the way for future generations, from the iconic Rosetta Tharpe to the soulful Aretha Franklin. Their names were displayed across the screen as Bey infused their legacies into the song’s outro. 

Queen Bey’s tribute extended to contemporary artists who continue to redefine the landscape of music. She acknowledged the talent of Lizzo, Tierra Whack, and the influence of Lauryn Hill, Janet Jackson and Missy Elliot. Not forgetting her own family’s legacy, she also recognized her sister, Solange Knowles. 

‘Get your fork and your spoon’

The concert, divided into six thematic segments with titles like “Opulence” and “Motherboard,” took the audience on a futuristic odyssey that also captured the vibrant underground ballroom culture of the 1990s. 

The “Renaissance” album departed from Beyoncé’s three prior albums by not featuring an accompanying “visual album” of visually opulent music videos. However, the concert embedded cosmic, queer, and glamorous visual interludes between each segment that more than made up for this absence, satisfying the audience’s craving for the artistic visuals the music of “Renaissance” evokes. 

Acknowledging this absence, Queen Bey addressed the crowd during the introduction to “Formation.” The resounding voice of drag legend Kevin JZ Prodigy (also featured in “Pure/Honey”), echoed throughout the arena: “You’ve asked for the visuals. You’ve called for the queen. But a queen moves at her own pace, bitch. She decides when she wants to give you a fucking taste. So, get your fork and your spoon if you got one.” 

The visuals transported the audience to an all-chrome sci-fi intergalactic disco world. A giant silver horse occupied the center of the stage through some songs. Beyoncé’s voice on the video reverberated through the crowd: “My Renaissance, my house of chrome, where I’m reborn. Where you at?” 

A moment of existential questioning followed as a voice asked, “Is this all there is?” Fans remained attentive as the video screen unveiled a robot version of Beyoncé. 

In her performance of “Plastic off the Couch,” Beyoncé emerged from a larger-than-life seashell while fireworks erupted from the stage. The world of “Cozy” enveloped the audience in a dreamy sea of pink.

And as if the show couldn’t get any better, Beyoncé surprised the audience by bringing out her 11-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy, during “My Power.” Introducing her as “kinfolk,” Blue Ivy emerged from beneath the stage dressed in the same red uniform as her mother and the backup dancers. 

Blue Ivy first appeared on the tour in Paris, where she initially displayed some shyness while dancing. However, any nerves she may have had seemed to vanish as she confidently kept up with seasoned dancers, infusing her movements with unparalleled energy, precision, and personality. The young prodigy effortlessly commanded the stage, leaving the audience in awe of her undeniable star power. 

As I watched her command the stage with her larger-than-life presence, I couldn’t help but wish for a more intimate glimpse into the woman behind the superstar persona. A brief moment of vulnerability, a personal story shared, or a heartfelt interaction with the audience could have added a touch of intimacy that would have made the experience even more unforgettable. 

Nonetheless, there was no denying that Beyoncé’s talent and passion shone through every moment of the show. The magnetic pull of her performance invited the audience to let go and fully immerse themselves in the moment. We were not mere spectators, but active participants, guided by the queen herself because after all, ballroom is a collective experience. 

For Black queer individuals like myself, the concert offered an empowering space to revel in a celebration of identity, liberation, and pure joy. “Renaissance” is a testament to Beyoncé’s ongoing reign as the queen of both the stage and our hearts. 

“I hope you feel seen,” Beyoncé said at the end of the concert. “I hope you feel safe. I hope you feel loved. I hope you feel connected.” 

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Myah Goff is a freelance journalist and photographer, exploring the intersection of art and culture. With a journalism degree from the University of Minnesota and a previous internship at Sahan Journal,... More by Myah Goff

Beyoncé Announces ‘Renaissance’ 2023 World Tour

By Larisha Paul

Larisha Paul

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Another Ticketmaster war is on the horizon as the BeyHive prepares for battle. After weeks of speculation, Beyoncé has officially confirmed a world tour in support of Renaissance , scheduled to make stops in stadiums across the world in 2023 .

The musician confirmed the news on Wednesday morning. The tour will begin in Europe this May before landing in North America on July 8 with back-to-back nights at Toronto’s Rogers Centre. The tour will make stops in Philadelphia, Nashville, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Miami, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and more.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Beyoncé (@beyonce)

The Renaissance tour marks Beyoncé’s first extended stretch on the road since the On the Run tour, which made 48 stops across North America and Europe in 2018. Those shows were proceeded by the singer’s redefining Coachella performance, which arrived as the Netflix concert film Homecoming the following year.

The clips sparked multiple viral moments, the most notable being Beyoncé’s new vocal arrangements on familiar records, including “Drunk in Love” and “Countdown.” The private concert, notably, did not include any Renaissance tracks on the setlist, even the chart-topping lead single “Break My Soul.”

The tour announcement arrives as a saving grace for a starved BeyHive, still yearning for any meaningful visual companion pieces to the singer’s acclaimed seventh studio album. If Beyoncé is heading on the road again, maybe the wait for the music videos she teased in the record release trailer won’t be too much longer.

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“As is customary for her, she layers the album with enough totems to fuel a million think pieces and dissertations,” Rolling Stone shared of Renaissance . “Yet it’s also possible to simply dance and vibe to the music. This is Beyoncé at her joyous peak, and you won’t get it unless you pull the “plastic off the sofa,” “drop it like a thottie,” and enjoy Queen Bey at her thrilling best.”

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Fans are fretting about Beyoncé tour ‘spoilers’ – but live music thrives on gossip and excitement

As the star kicks off her Renaissance dates, fans are battening down the hatches and avoiding coverage until she hits their city. Why have gigs become the equivalent of a Marvel plotline?

B efore I went to bed last night, I already knew that Beyoncé had crawled inside a robotic vagina on the opening night of the Renaissance tour in Stockholm. I knew that she had flown on a bedazzled horse called Reneigh, dressed as a cyber bee in a nod to the BeyHive, opened with a surprising string of ballads, and perturbed fans by apparently not dancing as much as they’d hoped – or was it that she had a leg injury? I was 1,400 miles away and I didn’t even go looking for this information; it just came to me ambiently as I clicked around my regular diet of culture sites. Vulture , Rolling Stone and Pitchfork were among the outlets liveblogging the show through the medium of embedded TikToks and tweets from those at the Friends Arena. My lucky friend Jeff was one of them, posting from the front row: when I watched his Instagram Stories, I too was close enough to almost get a strand of Beyoncé’s wind machine-blown hair in my mouth during Break My Soul.

I don’t mind knowing the ins and outs of the Renaissance tour before it hits London later this month. (Admittedly it’s kind of my job to know.) But for many Beyoncé stans, these dispatches are tantamount to spoilers: as if her hair flicks and song segues were plot points out of the latest Marvel film or episode of Succession . Online, many fans are declaring that they’re muting hashtags and any accounts liable to give the game away before they get their own chance to see her in the flesh; our reviewer, in his five-star rave , spoke to one man who had travelled from Brazil in order to get the freshest possible perspective: “I want everything to be a surprise,” he said.

How has spoiler culture come for gigs – which especially at stadium level, are more or less the same every night? In a way, these complaints are a weary acknowledgment of the fact that any conversations about banning phones at shows now seem about as antiquated as the notion that the Gutenberg press was ungodly. That genie is long since out of the bottle: one viral TikTok from last night showed a man who had jerry-rigged his phone to the front of his head so that he could livestream for friends, presumably keeping his hands free to do Lil Uzi Vert’s Just Wanna Rock dance along with Beyoncé.

Major tours are now designed for social media : in January, creative director Tobias Rylander told us that his staging, including for the 1975 ’s current At Their Very Best show , has become increasingly “Instagram-ready”. And superstar social media #content – whether about Beyoncé, Taylor Swift ’s current Eras tour , Lady Gaga ’s Chromatica Ball – is cheap SEO bait for pop culture websites. What happens on stadium tours has become the latest watercooler moment: what did it mean when Swift and the 1975’s Matty Healy, who are reportedly dating, both recently mouthed “this is about you, you know who you are. I love you” at their respective headline shows?

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Older music fans might argue that documenting gigs means you’re never in the moment and can’t really enjoy them properly, though for a younger generation, fandom has become a participatory endeavour, particularly at massive pop shows. Filming key moments affirms your presence, but sometimes plays a wider purpose too. In an age of ticketing sale catastrophes , expensive dynamic pricing and the fundamentally limited physical capacity of an arena, many fans can only afford to watch from afar. Although those who bought tickets may argue that spoilers undermine their hard-won investment, those illicitly broadcasting from the room are democratising the experience for those at home.

A particularly young generation came of age during the pandemic, where you could only see live music through a livestream, and that expectation of access hasn’t gone away (not least among fans with disabilities , and rightly so). There was outcry when Frank Ocean’s recent set at the first weekend of Coachella wasn’t part of the official livestream, so one teenage musician in the front row took it upon herself to broadcast the whole messy affair . Thousands of viewers tuned in (including, reportedly, Lorde , whose own shows have been pored over in this way). “I felt that I had not only witnessed but participated in something significant – not in spite of but because of the spontaneous stream,” critic Jenn Pelly wrote of the experience in the New York Times .

The musician, 18-year-old Morgan Lee, also didn’t seem to mind the virality, and was interviewed by Pitchfork about her experiences . Maybe personal microfame is another motivation (if your clip is the one to go viral, you can always drop a self-promotional link in a follow-up tweet ), though creating a communal, open-source archive of an artist’s work seems like the greater project for fans here – the latest iteration of a pastime as old as pop itself, from personal scrapbooks and zines to meticulous Geocities clippings sites.

With acts such as Beyoncé and Swift, who seldom give interviews and maintain tight control over their images, it’s in capturing the unscripted moments at shows that we witness previously unseen flashes of personality, like Swift mouthing “what the fuck!” when part of her staging didn’t open on time at a recent show. It can capture moments of artistic evolution onstage: Rosalía debuting her song Despechá, which became the viral hit of last summer before she had even released the recorded version; Lorde telling fans that after the mellow Solar Power , she was approaching writing “bangers” again. For chaotic artists such as the 1975, fan footage captured the vicissitudes of Healy’s mood as he swerved between eating raw meat onstage, kissing fans and admitting, in the wake of a recent scandal, that his “asshole era” was over. You might scoff at the documentation of apparent trivialities, but think how much money Bob Dylan fans spend on his Basement Tapes series to hear micro-variations on a beloved song; how Beatles fans hunger to chronicle every minute of their existence. Fandom is about intimacy.

The idea of spoilers raises questions about what the live music experience is in 2023. Part of going to a big pop show used to be about playing into the illusion that this highly rehearsed endeavour was a uniquely individual experience – one that might be undermined by knowing too much in advance. But a setlist isn’t a plot, and any super fan who’s been to see an artist multiple times, whether Status Quo or Harry Styles, knows the joys of witnessing microshifts in how they approach a song, or in the performers’ moods: I once saw the National play five times in six days, my own personal test match of melancholy, and in time, my adrenaline synced to their arrangements. And since pop stars have grown more human in the age of social media, there’s every chance that each date of a big show will reflect where they’re personally at that night, whether they cry, swear or slip up.

That’s part of the joy of attending concerts, too: the experience depends on what you bring to it, the air in the room that night: what psychologist Richard Gerrig termed “narrative transportation” . Whenever Swift’s Eras tour hits the UK, the amount of content I’ve already consumed means I won’t be surprised by her outfits or setlist, but I know being there screaming along with my “Swiftageddon” WhatsApp group pals will induce a rare high that no amount of pre-seen TikToks could steal. And often what you’re expecting to have an emotional response to isn’t the trigger at all. When I saw Paramore at London’s O2 Arena recently , I thought it would be Hard Times that got me after I listened to it a lot during some recent … hard times. In fact, it was Hayley Williams doing a high kick that jolted the tears out of me. Why? Who knows! I don’t even remember what song they were playing, but I remember the chest-punching feeling of that moment: a little reminder of being alive that no amount of forewarning can spoil.

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Beyoncé is going on a world tour. Why she shouldn’t ignore Africa

Doctor of Music Candidate, University of Pretoria

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James Chikomborero Paradza does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Beyoncé announced her highly anticipated Renaissance World Tour on the first day of Black History Month – an annual observance in the US that honours the African diaspora. Social media erupted and ticketing websites crashed briefly as fans worldwide rushed to secure tickets. Following her record-setting 32nd win at the 2023 Grammy Awards for her album Renaissance , the US singer-songwriter’s tour is the most sought-after musical event of the year. It will run from May to September 2023, with performances so far scheduled only across Europe and North America.

African fans were disappointed, but no doubt not surprised – Africa is almost always excluded from major world tours organised by global record labels. To be clear, it’s not just Beyoncé.

Read more: Beyoncé has helped usher in a renaissance for African artists

Still, this particular exclusion is compounded by Queen Bey’s love of the continent – especially of former South African president Nelson Mandela – and the influence she’s drawn from it in her work. Of course, hope remains for her African fandom that destinations could still be added to the tour.

As a popular music scholar, I’m interested in how Beyoncé addresses social issues in her music – and how this is perceived by listeners in Africa. I argue that African destinations should be included – and not just because Beyoncé incorporates African elements in her music. But because of how large and fervent her fanbase is in Africa and how her social awareness messages resonate with these fans.

Snubbing Africa

In a capitalist commercial music industry , stadium world tours significantly affect an artist’s revenue and exposure. Almost without fail, African countries are erased as possible destinations, leaving many fans asking why.

While we may never know the answer – unless record labels blatantly state their perspectives – many are left to wonder if big name artists and their management teams think that Africa does not have adequate infrastructure to accommodate their grandiose sets. Or if they believe that stadiums will not fill up with patrons such as those across the global north do.

One of the ways that we can start to make sense of Africa’s exclusion is by applying an intersectional lens to western popular culture. (This is a framework to understand the distribution of power – social, economic, political and cultural – in society, how it is maintained, and why certain groups of people are marginalised.) By thinking particularly about the relationships between class and geographic location, western popular culture can be viewed as a product of a capitalist society that prioritises the generation of profit. Capitalist record labels put making money first.

In popular culture, Africa has traditionally been cast as a backward continent plagued by famine, poverty and war. This shapes how the continent is viewed when assessing its capabilities to generate profits. The management teams and record labels of global pop musicians could see Africa as a high-risk, low-reward destination. They would rather travel to destinations where profitability is guaranteed based on infrastructure and previous experiences .

However, some major artists have had successful tour performances in Africa, such as Ed Sheeran in 2018 and Lady Gaga in 2012. Even though both performed only in South Africa, they did not wholly snub the continent. And their South African dates were commercial successes.

Beyoncé and Africa

What further confounds many African fans is that it seems such a natural fit for Beyoncé to revisit the continent. Her love for Africa is evident. Her visual album, Black Is King , is a testament to this. She explores and celebrates her African heritage through it. At the same time it highlights the diverse tapestry of culture and tradition on the continent and across the diaspora. Various musical, visual, language and wardrobe elements from Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa are fused in it.

Beyoncé may never have brought a world tour to Africa, but she is one of the few major global pop musicians to perform here. In 2003 she appeared at the 46664 Concert in Cape Town. Hosted by Mandela, the concert aimed to spread awareness of HIV/AIDS in the country. In 2018 she headlined the Global Citizen: Mandela 100 Festival in Johannesburg together with her husband Jay-Z. Interestingly, most tickets for the performance were earned through acts of social activism, so we will never know if it was a commercial success. But the stadium was filled to capacity.

It’s probably not a coincidence that Beyoncé’s two African performances were at events connected to Mandela. In 2018 she expressed her adoration for the late president, highlighting his lessons of forgiveness. These lessons she portrayed through her desire to break generational curses in her seminal Black feminist visual album Lemonade .

Both concerts raised awareness of growing inequalities across South Africa and the continent. Beyoncé has advocated for social justice and calls attention to power relations that marginalise people based on elements such as race, gender and class.

Why she should return

Undoubtedly, Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour tickets would sell out as fast in any African city as a city in the global north. (Sheeran sold 230,000 tickets for his stops in Johannesburg and Cape Town.)

In addition to her musical and dancing talents, Beyoncé addresses social issues in a way that many people can understand. She reminds people who have been marginalised that they are greater than the dominating forces have led them to believe. She encourages self-care and self-love within a capitalist society that values productivity over the individual.

Moreover, her love for Africa has recast the continent’s image within popular culture, bringing various African art forms to the forefront of media and music. And finally, Beyoncé has the power to trigger a music industry renaissance and reform the west’s perceptions about touring in Africa.

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Fatima Robinson Talks Beyoncé's Renaissance Tour, Crowns Her ‘The Michael Jackson of Our Time'

Beyoncé may be riding high off Cowboy Carter right now, but Renaissance is the gift that keeps on giving.

In a revelatory conversation with Ahmir Questlove Thompson on his Questlove Supreme podcast, renowned choreographer Fatima Robinson revealed how Beyoncé came up with stage design and concept for the Renaissance World Tour during the pandemic - and why the superstar shifted her approach to dance on her most recent trek.

"That was Beyoncé sitting in a pandemic with a lot of time on her hands and coming up with the most incredible, creative stage that I had ever gotten to work on," Robinson gushed of the Renaissance World Tour stage. The sold-out stadium tour featured two separate platforms connected by a moving ramp, a main stage complete with a sprawling flatscreen, a B stage that stretched into the crowd, and a slew of props including, a tank, pyrotechnics, a laser show, a giant clam shell, robot arms, a flying "disco horse" and various levitating platforms.

In Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé - the box office-topping documentary concert film chronicling the conception and execution of the tour - Queen Bey revealed that the tour was planned over four years, and three identical stages were developed for the show. The $580 million-grossing tour also featured 22 dancers, including her eldest daughter, Grammy winner Blue Ivy Carter .

"She has quite a few choreographers across her span of music," said Robinson. "We gave me the title ‘director of choreography' because I was the point person that all the choreographers worked under and with. It was such a big boulder to get up a hill, that show."

While Robinson has worked with Beyoncé in the past - most notably on 2006's Oscar-winning Dreamgirls and her "Be Alive" performance at the 2022 Oscars - she joined forces with several other choreographers for the Renaissance tour, including her two other team members, Chris Grant and four other choreographers who worked on numbers sporadically.

Her first solo concert tour since 2016's Formation World Tour , the Renaissance World Tour presented a notably different Beyoncé. While the three-hour show was still a feast for the eyes and ears, the performance included less intense choreography than her past tours - partially due to a knee injury she suffered before those 56 sold-out shows.

"We were having a lot of conversations around when is enough enough? " Robinson explained. "You have nothing to prove, Bey. You are our Michael Jackson of our time. We're like athletes, at a certain point, you have to just say "Okay, I'm gonna do it, but I'm gonna also take care of myself and be mindful of what my body is telling me right now."

Robinson's revelations echo sentiments Beyoncé herself shared in Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé . Throughout the documentary, Queen Bey mused about looking to her idols to inform how she moves in her career. The Renaissance tour was a celebration of that, from a surprise appearance from Diana Ross to a multi-city tribute to the late Tina Turner .

"Look at how Prince was when he passed away, he had those hip replacements because of all those splits and stuff," noted Robinson. "Look where Michael [Jackson] is. We want you around performing for years to come, so let's not put that kind of pressure. Let's ease into it, let's stand there and be powerful and step into a different kind of power, and guess what? They gon' come with you!"

That approach to performing also resulted in a very Beyoncé take on the concept of an opening act. For each show, Beyoncé began with a set of ballads , introduced by a beautiful piano-led rendition of 2003's seminal "Dangerously In Love 2."

"I turned to her and I was like, ‘This is really fly, starting with ballads,'" recounted Robinson. "She laughed and she said, "I'm opening up for myself!"

In addition to the Renaissance World Tour, Robinson also worked on 2023's The Color Purple movie musical, which topped the domestic box office on opening day and earned one Oscar nomination.

Click here to watch the full clip of Fatima Robinson describing the creation of the Renaissance World Tour.

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Renaissance

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August 1, 2022

Over the last decade, every Beyoncé project has become an integral part of a larger Beyoncé Project. Though she hasn’t released a proper studio album since 2016’s sprawling visual statement Lemonade , she’s made a film ( Black Is King ), released a collaborative record with her husband Jay-Z ( Everything Is Love ), lent her voice to a Disney film ( The Lion King ), dropped a series of singles, and masterminded her sportswear line Ivy Park—all while making clear that she’s intensely focused on celebrating the long legacy of Black musicians and artists, of which she is a part and beacon. Her global reach is a reminder that Beyoncé, the billionaire pop icon, does not and could not exist in a vacuum.

Recall 2019’s Homecoming , the live album and concert movie documenting her vaunted “Beychella” festival set, in which she indelibly framed her entire discography within the larger history of contemporary Black American performance. By centering her music within the context of HBCU culture, incorporating a massive marching band, a step show, and J-setting choreography, she delivered a tectonic performance that also ensured all her fans would see the lineage of Black art receive the credit it’s due.

And when the pandemic hit, Beyoncé caught on to what her fans missed most: the unfettered joy of gathering together in the club, rolling face and sweating as a collective body. As our biggest pop stars increasingly turn to dance music for inspiration, Beyoncé focused her famous work ethic on the nuances of club culture for a challenging, densely-referenced album that runs circles around her similarly minded, Billboard-charting peers. For nearly a decade she has made pop music on her own terms, uninterested in the dusty edicts of the music industry and pointed about her intended audience; now pop fans bend to Beyoncé, not the other way around.

Beyoncé is hooked on the feeling of self-expression. In the liner notes posted on her website, she writes that Renaissance , her seventh solo album and “Act I” of a mysterious trilogy, is a “safe place, a place without judgment… a place to be free of perfectionism and overthinking.” In turn she pays homage to the true safe places for many of her fans, celebrating the clubs made by and for Black women and queer people, Black Chicagoans and Detroiters and New Yorkers who created house and techno, Black and Latinx ball and kiki houses . Inside Renaissance ’s vast tent, there’s a safe place at the roller rink (“Virgo’s Groove”), at the disco (“Summer Renaissance”), at the subwoofer contest (“America Has a Problem”), at Freaknik (“Thique”), in church, at the NOLA hole-in-the-wall hosting the bounce party after church, at the ball in the Harlem community center, right underneath the basketball hoops. She’s under a strobe, flipping her hair, twirling that ass like she came up out the South, as she raps on the ebullient “Church Girl,” praying to god over a Clark Sisters sample and then squaring the propriety on a Trigger Man beat , bussing it with the godly state of being “born free.”

Renaissance is a feat of imagination, daydreaming about partying in the pandemic, capturing the feeling of thinking about all the places you wish you could have gone when you were just stuck in the crib. Unlike Lemonade or 2013’s Beyoncé , Renaissance sticks to the dancefloor—no ballads or breakup paeans, just pure energy, propulsive BPMs, and fuck-’em-all strut. The love songs are almost entirely aimed inward, to the self and her crew, and the songs about a “boy” are underpinned with a libidinous frankness. (Beyoncé has never been this horny in public.) Release your job , sure—if you can afford it; Beyoncé is her own boss, after all—but most importantly, revel in who you are . She dedicates the album to her “godmother,” Uncle Jonny, who died of complications stemming from HIV, and to the “pioneers who originate culture… the fallen angels whose contributions have gone unrecognized for far too long.” She enlists Grace Jones, Sheila E., Nile Rodgers; samples Teena Marie, Chicago house artist Lidell Townsell , and Atlanta rapper Kilo Ali ; belts with abandon and fealty to styles from the 1970s through the 1990s that signify a loose writing process, implying the notorious perfectionist meant what she said.

Maybe Beyoncé and her extensive array of producers and co-writers, which includes mainstream names like Raphael Saadiq and The-Dream as well as more underground artists like the Black trans DJ/producer Honey Dijon and the Dominican musician and visual artist Kelman Duran , spent the last two years digging in the crates. It’s hard to imagine that Beyoncé’s been able to go to the kinds of clubs celebrated on Renaissance since, say, 1999. Maybe she joined one of the copious DJ sets streamed on Zoom and Twitch in 2020 with a burner account, as many of us were dreaming of people outlined by wisps of a fog machine, craving sound-system affirmations that we were still corporeal entities too.

Renaissance is inherently about bodies undulating in the dark, under strobes; sexual agency; and the Black queer and trans women who are both politicized and the most endangered people among us . As physical movement was necessarily constrained during pandemic isolation, the dissociative effects of being unseen became both detrimental and liberating . Renaissance is a commanding prescription to be perceived again, without judgment. Listening to the album, you can feel the synapses coming back together one by one, basking in the unfamiliar sensation of feeling good, if only for its hour-long duration.

Dance music necessarily centers on the immediate present—the seconds ticking along during the transcendent act of unleashing on a dancefloor—but it thrives on the fluidity of sampling, of elder respect, and of reimagining classic sounds to invent the new. ( Renaissance has approximately 100,000 credits thanks to all the samples and many tiny contributions from artists and friends.) This is how we get PC Music proprietor A. G. Cook and Lady Gaga ’s go-to producer BloodPop on a low-key love song deconstructing techno (“All Up in My Mind”), and how Skrillex ended up doing Afrobeats through a ketamine filter (“Energy”) with Bey drawling lyrics so minimal and onomatopoeic they exist mostly in service to the vibe, a melodic extension of percussion. This approach is perhaps better than in other places, where the lyrics are jarring enough to disrupt the ambiance, like when she raps, “You said you outside but you ain’t that outside” in the middle of the house single “Break My Soul.” But in general, she adheres to the sweaty demands of club music, singing and rapping to the carnal id. In contrast to past albums, her emotion here is devoted to looking good, dancing good, and fucking good. (Though her propensity for sexual detail à la “Drunk in Love” continues apace; call me if you can figure out how to get over “Motorboat, baby, spin around” on “Virgo’s Groove.”)

Beyoncé’s focus on dance music extends to Renaissance ’s samples, where she lets her intent speak through the art of her predecessors. The stunning “Pure/Honey” alone braids together decades of ballroom, taking samples from ’90s club hits by drag icons: Kevin Aviance’s hit “ Cunty ,” from 1996, and Moi Renee’s “ Miss Honey ,” from 1992. It also nabs a bit from “ Feels Like ,” a 2012 track by MikeQ , legendary ball DJ and DJ for HBO’s Legendary , and Kevin Jz Prodigy , the ball commentator and musician whose vocals—“cunt to the feminine what”—lead the song. The production on “Feels Like” builds on the work of Vjuan Allure, who passed in 2021 , and who pioneered the sound of contemporary vogue fem ballroom by reworking what’s known as the “Ha” from Masters at Work’s seminal “ The Ha Dance ,” from 1991, which has long been a voguing staple, but was originally meant for b-boys in Latin clubs. That’s years of history in just one song, and just one magnifying-glass example of the ways Beyoncé uses Renaissance to put some respect on these club legends’ names.

But it’s also part of Beyoncé’s deep appreciation for the sprawling tapestry of Black music and culture throughout pop history. She is positioning herself as an archivist, and also just flexing her true music-nerd passions with more disregard for preconceived notions of marketability—and label returns—since the indubitable B’Day . On “I’m That Girl,” Tommy Wright III and Princess Loko’s “ Still Pimpin ” are placed upon the ghost of a dembow riddim, threading Shabba Ranks to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic via Kelman Duran. The deep house track “Cozy” features two Black trans women—Honey Dijon and actor Ts Madison—and seems to be a dedication to trans self-determination (“Might I suggest you don’t fuck with my sis”). “Alien Superstar” channels Vanity 6 as an old-way house anthem. The end of “Heated,” a pulsing Afrobeats track with some of her silkiest vocals on the album, finds her commentating in a vocal register that, at points, barely scans as Beyoncé, embodying the growl and propulsion of the runway.

In the 2018 book Fabulous: The Rise of the Beautiful Eccentric , professor and musician Madison Moore captures the innovation of certain queer aesthetics: “The fact that beautiful eccentrics put themselves on the line every day despite the odds shows how important they are not only as aesthetic geniuses but political activists too.” Beyoncé, of course, has a gigantic bank account and a team of people to help her look extravagant—“It should cost a billion to look that good/But she make it look easy ’cause she got it,” as she vamps on “Pure/Honey”—and to make the kind of fantasy she’s crafted on Renaissance plausible, from the Swarovski-encrusted imagery to the refinement of the album’s song choices. But using her global proscenium to showcase the work of marginalized people, as the political and legal scapegoating of their existences ramps up to a terrifying degree—including draconian legislation in her home state of Texas—is important, even a rejoinder to 2014’s big FEMINIST sign moment, a subtle kiss-off to people who’ve made vilifying trans women a cornerstone of their feminism by making space for all sorts of femme expression.

Renaissance reinvents Beyoncé again, and she trusts that her fans will be up for the challenge. She is 40 years old, the age society at large tends to start writing women artists (and women in general) off as creatives who still have something to offer, but she refuses to submit to that bullshit, making herself impossible to ignore. “I’ve been up, I’ve been down,” she sings on “Church Girl,” “Felt like I move mountains/Got friends that cried fountains.” It’s the most plaintive moment on the album, and then, in full Beyoncé fashion, she comes back more determinedly: “I’m gonna love on me. Nobody can judge me but me.” It’s a transcendent, beautiful, deceptively simple moment. She extends a diamond-encrusted, gloved hand—an invitation to a better kind of party.

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Beyoncé’s Country Is America: Every Bit of It

On the bold, sprawling “Cowboy Carter,” the superstar plays fast and loose — and twangy — with genre.

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By Jon Pareles

The first song on “Cowboy Carter,” Beyoncé’s not-exactly-country album, makes a pre-emptive strike. “It’s a lot of talking going on while I sing my song,” she observes in “Ameriican Requiem” over guitar strums and electric sitar, adding, “It’s a lot of chatter in here.”

That’s an acknowledgment that a pop superstar’s job now extends well beyond creating and performing songs. In the era of streaming and social media, Beyoncé knows that her every public appearance and utterance will be scrutinized, commented on, cross-referenced, circulated as clickbait and hot-taked in both good faith and bad. Every phrase and image are potential memes and hyperlinks.

It’s a challenge she has engaged head-on since she released her visual album “Beyoncé” in 2013. For the last decade, even as her tours have filled stadiums, she has set herself goals outside of generating hits. Beyoncé has deliberately made each of her recent albums not only a musical performance but also an argument: about power, style, history, family, ambition, sexuality, bending rules. They’re albums meant to be discussed and footnoted, not just listened to.

“Cowboy Carter” is an overstuffed album, 27 tracks maxing out the 79-minute capacity of a CD and stretching across two LPs. It flaunts spoken-word co-signs from Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton that interrupt its flow; it includes some fragmentary, minute-long songs. Its sprawl is its own statement of confidence: that even half-finished experiments are worth attention.

The “Cowboy Carter” album cover is an opening salvo, brandishing western and American symbols: Beyoncé holding an American flag while riding a white horse sidesaddle, with platinum-blond hair proudly streaming. In a red-white-and-blue outfit, high-heeled boots and a pageant sash that reads “Cowboy Carter,” she’s a beauty queen and a white-hatted heroine claiming her nation — her country, in both senses. The politics of her new songs are vague and glancing, but the music insists that every style is her American birthright. As a pop star it is: Pop has always breached stylistic boundaries, constantly exploiting subcultures to annex whatever might make a song catchier.

Beyoncé grew up in Texas, where country music has long mingled with styles from jazz to blues to hip-hop — and where, in fact, early cowboys were enslaved Black men . Beyoncé met a racial backlash when she performed “Daddy Lessons,” a country song from her 2016 album “Lemonade” about gun-toting self-defense, with the (then-Dixie) Chicks at the 2016 Country Music Association Awards. Presumably that’s what she alluded to when she wrote on Instagram that there was “an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed.”

She wasn’t daunted. Instead she pushed further, and the mere prospect of Beyoncé releasing a country album stirred things up. Even before its release, “Cowboy Carter” prompted reminders of country’s obscured Black roots — like the African origins of the banjo and the genre’s long cross-pollination with the blues — and pointed at, yet again, its historical exclusion of nonwhite performers, despite a handful of exceptions like Martell, Charley Pride and, more recently, Darius Rucker, Mickey Guyton and Kane Brown.

What Beyoncé drew from country is productions that feature hand-played instruments — guitars, keyboards, drums — rather than the programmed beats and glittering electronics that propelled her 2022 album “Renaissance,” which also had Beyoncé on horseback on the cover and was subtitled “Act I.” That album was Beyoncé’s time-warped, multilayered homage to the electronic dance music that emerged from Black gay subcultures. “Cowboy Carter,” subtitled “Act II,” also scrambles eras and styles, with samples, electronics and multitracked vocal harmonies unapologetically joining the guitars.

The advance singles from “Cowboy Carter” paired “16 Carriages,” a booming arena-country song about Beyoncé’s industrious career and artistic drive, with the foot-stomping, banjo-picking “Texas Hold ’Em,” about enjoying Texas-style good times away from home. “Texas Hold ’Em” seized No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart, making Beyoncé the first Black woman to do so, and topped the all-genre Hot 100.

If Beyoncé had merely wanted to make mainstream country hits, she could have hired a seasoned Nashville producer and had her pick of expert Music Row songwriters. But “Cowboy Carter” has different aspirations, and Beyoncé brought her own brain trust, including producers known for hip-hop and R&B. “This ain’t a Country album. This is a Beyoncé album,” she wrote on Instagram. That’s true.

“Cowboy Carter” leans into its anticipated discourse, openly interrogating categories and stereotypes and pointedly ignoring formulas. With historical savvy, Beyoncé enlisted Linda Martell — the Black country singer whose 1970 album, “Color Me Country,” included the first charting country hit by a Black woman, “Color Him Father” — to provide spoken words. For the intro of “Spaghettii” — which features Beyoncé rapping — Martell says, “Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they? Yes, they are. In theory, they have a simple definition that’s easy to understand. But in practice, well, some may feel confined.”

Beyoncé gathers young Black women currently striving for country careers — Brittney Spencer, Reyna Roberts, Tiera Kennedy and Tanner Adell — on a remake of the Beatles’ veiled civil-rights song, “Blackbird.” It’s a careful gesture, though it might have been more substantial to write a new song with them.

The album includes some understated, largely acoustic contenders for country or adult-contemporary radio play — notably “II Most Wanted,” a duet with Miley Cyrus that harks back to Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide,” and “Levii’s Jeans,” a boast about being a “sexy little thing” that she shares with a besotted Post Malone. In the steady-thumping, Motown-tinged “Bodyguard,” Beyoncé plays an amorous, jealous but selfless partner in an uncertain romance. And in “Protector,” an acoustic-guitar lullaby, Beyoncé personifies a loving, supportive parent singing about “lifting you up so you will be raised.”

Beyoncé also reworks Parton’s “Jolene” — a country classic about a dangerous temptress — by turning it inside out. Where Parton’s 1973 original had her “begging” Jolene to stay away, in 2024 Beyoncé isn’t one to cede power. She starts out by “warning” Jolene and raises the threat level from there, reminding her target, “I know I’m a queen.”

Martell returns to introduce “Ya Ya,” explaining, “This particular tune stretches across a range of genres. And that’s what makes it a unique listening experience.” The song is a hand clapping, 1960s-flavored garage-rock stomp that samples Nancy Sinatra, quotes the Beach Boys and brandishes lines like “There’s a whole lot of red in that white and blue/History can’t be erased,” then moves on to dancing and lust. It’s not geared for any radio format. It’s just a romp.

It’s the odder, genre-fluid songs that give the album its depth. “Just for Fun” — a hymnlike duet with Willie Jones, a Louisiana songwriter who draws on country and R&B — plunges into Beyoncé’s somber low register as she sings, “I need to get through this/Or just get used to it.” “Riiverdance” deploys intertwined Celtic-tinged guitars and close-harmony backup vocals to sketch an enigmatic relationship that encompasses murder and resurrection and weekend seductions. And “II Hands II Heaven” is equally cryptic and celebratory; using an electronic pulse drawn from Underworld’s “Born Slippy (Nuxx),” it has Beyoncé and backup voices singing about whiskey, coyotes, God, sex and “Lost virgins with broken wings that will regrow.”

Beyoncé has been a stalwart of the full-length album, sequencing and juxtaposing songs in synergistic ways. But “Cowboy Carter” is a bumpier ride than “Renaissance,” “Lemonade” or “Beyoncé.” It suggests that Beyoncé wanted to pack all she could into one side trip before moving on elsewhere. Perhaps she’s already immersed in Act III.

Beyoncé “Cowboy Carter” (Parkwood Entertainment/Columbia)

Jon Pareles has been The Times’s chief pop music critic since 1988. He studied music, played in rock, jazz and classical groups and was a college-radio disc jockey. He was previously an editor at Rolling Stone and the Village Voice. More about Jon Pareles

• Entertainment
• Why Beyoncé Fans Are Asking Her to Hold Off on Announcing a <i>Cowboy Carter</i> Tour

Why Beyoncé Fans Are Asking Her to Hold Off on Announcing a Cowboy Carter Tour

R umors that Beyoncé will announce a tour to support her eighth studio album, Cowboy Carter , have been swirling online since the project came out last week. And though the singer has not announced plans for a tour as yet, the speculation has many fans already anticipating steep ticket prices.

“BRB gonna apply for a new credit card,” wrote one person on X in response to a post from a pop culture account that suggests Beyoncé will announce a tour on Friday. “I mean, we don’t have money, but we will be there,” wrote another. 

Beyoncé is rumored to announce her "COWBOY CARTER" tour on Friday. pic.twitter.com/6mQyZss0NQ — Pop Tingz (@ThePopTingz) March 31, 2024

https://t.co/cnkMzKudZI #actii pic.twitter.com/rAeLRieo6Y — BEYONCÉ LEGION 𐚁 (@BeyLegion) April 3, 2024

While there has been no official announcement of a new tour, the singer’s most followed fan accounts fueled rumors on Thursday by sharing a link on to a site called BeenCountry.com, which takes users to a page of photos of Beyoncé and one of her mother when she was younger with her maiden name, Celestine Beyince.

As rumors fly, fans are begging Beyoncé to hold off on announcing a tour, joking that they still need to financially recover from her last one. The Renaissance World Tour, which wrapped up in Oct. 2023 and was her first since the On The Run Tour II in 2018. According to Billboard , tickets for the Renaissance Tour ranged in price depending on the reseller. The average fan could expect to pay around $400 to $550, Billboard reported, with resale tickets for her Houston show going for as low as $279.

“NO TOUR UNTIL 2025,” one post said, and it was met with support from other commenters. “I ain’t going to the cowboy carter tour y'all,” another post says, “I thought I had more time. I thought I had more time.”

NO TOUR UNTIL 2025! NO TOUR UNTIL 2025! NO TOUR UNTIL 2025! NO TOUR UNTIL 2025! https://t.co/7Vm9aW1iL9 pic.twitter.com/kLXTT604JE — raymond (@Raymond_Miguel) April 3, 2024

Another person joked that they wouldn’t be able to eat real food because they knew the concert would be expensive. According to Billboard , the Renaissance Tour tickets ranged in price depending on the reseller. They report that the average fan could expect to pay around $400 to $550, with resale tickets for her Houston show going for as low as $279.

what i’m eating if beyoncé announce this tour https://t.co/CfI1Vm3XuG — 𐚁 onii 𐚁 (@__Onixivy_) April 4, 2024

cowboy carter tour becoming more and more likely pic.twitter.com/wOZSY89nYv — e! (@ethxooo) April 4, 2024

cowboy carter tour cuz half the fandom is broke pic.twitter.com/BX6qrQDmKo — 𝕯𝖆𝖒𝖎𝖊𝖓 (@6inchlena) April 4, 2024

Cowboy Carter Tour bc half of the hive is broke: pic.twitter.com/jkXwS7AjMJ — tyler carey 𓄋 (@mimiscatalog) April 4, 2024

I went to the renaissance, bought the merch, went to the movie premiere, bought more merch, bought cé nior, bought so much cécred, and cowboy carter merch. lmaoo sister hold that tour for a lil bit. — wh✩tney (@thewhitneyce) April 4, 2024

the beyhive praying for no tour is killing me 😭😭😭 — Bada$$ery 🪭 | fan account (@thebaddestbeys) April 3, 2024

The rumors of a new tour are still unfounded, but not impossible—although it would come faster than Beyoncé’s announcement for the Renaissance World Tour, which arrived several months after she released the album in 2022. It would not be unlike Beyoncé to have a few tricks up her sleeve, some that delight her fans—and some that throw them into a frenzy.

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The banjo is a star of Beyoncé's new album. Turns out it has African roots

Aaron Cohen

Beyoncé accepts the Innovator Award at the 2024 iHeartRadio Music Awards on April 1. Her new album is "Carter Country" and it features a banjo on the hit song "Texas Hold 'Em." At right: a gourd banjo was an early American incarnation of an instrument that originated in Africa and was played by African Americans. Michael Buckner/Billboard via Getty Images; Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images hide caption

Beyoncé accepts the Innovator Award at the 2024 iHeartRadio Music Awards on April 1. Her new album is "Carter Country" and it features a banjo on the hit song "Texas Hold 'Em." At right: a gourd banjo was an early American incarnation of an instrument that originated in Africa and was played by African Americans.

Pop superstar Beyoncé released "Texas Hold 'Em" a few weeks ago and it features an instrument that she had never emphasized before. This hit song, on her new (and hugely popular) Cowboy Carter album, is both an invitation to dance and an assertion of African American cultural identity.

And the banjo, an instrument often associated with American Appalachian bluegrass music, has an overlooked cultural identity of its own — rooted in Africa, where a traditional instrument with a long neck and a body fashioned from a calabash gourd is clearly a banjo ancestor.

The banjoist on Beyoncé's album is the Black American musician (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Rhiannon Giddens. She's part of a group of musicians and musicologists who have been looking into the African origins of the banjo as well as its important place in the Black music legacy.

Pulitzer Prize-winning musician Rhiannon Giddens plays banjo on Beyoncé's hit single "Texas Hold 'Em." Above: Giddens performs on banjo with her band. Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images/Getty Images hide caption

Pulitzer Prize-winning musician Rhiannon Giddens plays banjo on Beyoncé's hit single "Texas Hold 'Em." Above: Giddens performs on banjo with her band.

Giddens is especially active in correcting the banjo's narrative through her own performances on the instrument and initiatives like her video series, "Uncovering the history of the Banjo with Rhiannon Giddens: From African Roots to American Music."

Giddens, who grew up in North Carolina, said in her video that she did not initially know about the banjo's multifaceted history.

Giddens knowingly explores the globe in her presentation, with Gambian akonting player Laemouahuma Daniel Jatta as a central source (he appears at the 10:51 mark in the video). For years, musicologists had suggested such West African stringed instruments as the ngoni and xalam as foundational to the banjo's origins. Jatta has demonstrated that the akonting is a more direct source.

The Banjo's Roots, Reconsidered

Jatta's advocacy for his instrument's connection to the banjo received a platform on NPR in a 2011 report: "The Banjo's Roots, Reconsidered." In correspondent Greg Allen's story, Jatta describes how his three-stringed akonting resembled what he saw and heard from American country banjo players while he was studying in South Carolina.

Jatta told NPR that while he pursued undergraduate and graduate degrees in the United States, he learned everything he could about the origins of the banjo. Eventually, he reached a conclusion.

"Among all the instruments ever mentioned as a prototype of the banjo from the African region," he said in 2011, "the akonting to me has more similarities, more objective similarities than any other that has ever been mentioned."

The 2011 story added that the akonting looks like a banjo. Like early banjos, it has a long neck that extends through the instrument's gourd body. And it has a movable wooden bridge that, as in banjos, holds the strings over the skin head.

But for Jatta, and other banjo scholars, what's most convincing is how the akonting is played. Players use the index finger to strike down on one of the long strings, and the thumb sounds the akonting's short string as the hand moves back upward. When Jatta looked at early banjo instruction books from the mid-1800s, he found that they described an almost identical playing style.

"What struck me was when they mentioned the ball of the thumb and the nail of the index or middle finger. I knew straight away my father was using this same style," Jatta said. "This was never a surprise to me, because I have seen this since I was 5 years old."

Banjo player and roots enthusiast Chuck Levy of Gainesville, Fla., studied with Jatta in Senegal and the Gambia. He adds that documents from centuries ago show shared physical characteristics between the akonting and the banjo.

"Starting in 1600s, there were drawings and accounts of African instruments that were sometimes called guitars but resemble modern banjo," Levy said. "The akonting does not have a tuning peg to tighten the string. The string is knotted on the bamboo neck. Instruments then started to appear with pegs and this is probably a European influence that is now being adapted to this hybrid instrument."

The Banjo Project , launched in 1997, is an online archive that traces the instrument's trajectory. This site describes the story of enslaved Africans bringing stringed instruments to the Americas and how the banjo derived from their innovations. This was during a time when slaveowners and authorities prohibited drums, which they saw as subversive.

Crucial African American musical genres also included the banjo into the 20th century. Jazz artists, like Johnny St. Cyr of Louis Armstrong's Hot Five, doubled on guitar and banjo in the 1920s.

You Can Tour This Banjo Museum Without Getting Up From Your Couch

Gradually, the instrument became a staple of bluegrass, folk and country. Due to the banjo's role in these idioms, it's been frequently characterized as an instrument of white musicians. Rhiannon Giddens says her earliest impression of the banjo was that it's played by "a white man in overalls." What's more, the banjo was prominently featured in degrading blackface minstrel shows. As a result, its Black origins were often buried.

This history does not just flow in one cross-continental direction. After the banjo became a popular and mass-produced instrument in the Americas, England and Ireland during the 19th century, British colonizers took it to West Africa. Musician and professor Chris Waterman's liner notes to the 1985 compilation album, Juju Roots 1930s - 1950s (Rounder), describes how British companies brought banjos (as well as guitars, mandolins and country music records) to Nigeria. Some musicians in Lagos, like Tunde King, played the banjo in a popular new music they created called juju, which later on featured electric guitars.

While contemporary global popular music continues to overwhelm traditional acoustic sounds everywhere, the akonting still has devoted practitioners. One such artist is Sana Ndiaye, who divides his time between his native Senegal and Massachusetts.

Another Senegalese musician who has emerged recently, Elisa Diedhiou, is one of the comparatively few women to play the akonting. She released her Ears Of The People album on Smithsonian Folkways in the United States last year.

Meanwhile, Jatta has continued his mission of performing as well as educating scholars, musicians and fans about the akonting and its connection to the banjo. This included publishing the Banjo Models: The Akonting and Other Folk Lutes of Senegambia: and I Never Allowed Poverty to Destroy My Life in 2022. He interweaves the study of the instrument and its relatives with his autobiography.

Jatta would like to return to the United States to perform and teach and is excited about the people from around the world who are reaching out to him for his thoughts. He is also seeking funds for his educational center in the Gambia.

"What you know of yourself is what you learn from your culture," Jatta said via a WhatsApp conversation from the Gambia. "If you don't know your culture and rely on people to tell you what you are, that's a problem. We have to know what we are before we become what we want to be. That's why I want to make sure to not only have this instrument played the it has always been played but to teach new generation for us to know our culture. People without a culture is like a tree without roots. You have nothing to make us stable."

Forming multicultural partnerships to trace the connections remain just as crucial, according to Jatta.

"The foundation of most of the music that America is playing today — blues, jazz, country, rock and roll — all come from banjo culture," Jatta said. "Everyone needs to have a better way of understanding it. It's the reality. We need to have this understanding to come up with a narrative that everyone can share."

And now Beyoncé's music is part of that narrative.

Aaron Cohen is the author of Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power (University of Chicago Press), Amazing Grace (Bloomsbury) and is the co-author of Ramsey Lewis' memoir, Gentleman Of Jazz (Blackstone) . He teaches humanities at City Colleges of Chicago and regularly writes about the arts for such publications as the Chicago Tribune , Chicago Reader and DownBeat .

• Texas Hold 'Em
• cowboy carter
• Rhiannon Giddens

Will Beyoncé announce the 'Cowboy Carter' tour? Fans think she may be hitting the road again soon

• Beyoncé released her new album "Cowboy Carter" on Friday.
• Some fans think she's gearing up to tour again, though many say they don't have the funds to attend.
• The Renaissance World Tour wrapped last October in Kansas City. It was hailed as a must-see event.

Less than a year after the Renaissance World Tour wrapped, it might already be time for the Beyhive to dust off their boots and head back out to see Beyoncé live again.

The Renaissance World Tour was hailed as a once-in-a-lifetime event , a bona fide status symbol , and a blockbuster concert movie that awed audiences while near-singlehandedly boosting AMC's revenue . The 56-show run wrapped on October 1, 2023, in Kansas City.

On its heels, Beyoncé has released her new album " Cowboy Carter ." The triumphant country-inspired project is billed as "Act II" in a three-part "Renaissance" series.

So it would stand to reason — financially and thematically — that Beyoncé would plan another tour leg for "Cowboy Carter."

Her team seemed to hint that something is coming by launching a new website, " Been Country ." The landing page shows a photo of young Beyoncé performing at the Texas Sweetheart Pageant, as well as a childhood photo of her mother, Tina Knowles-Lawson , and an image of a banjo.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Slayonce Avenue (@slayonce_avenue2)

A fan account on Instagram shared a rumor that the tour announcement is scheduled for Friday, exactly one week after the album's arrival. Knowles-Lawson liked the post, adding more fuel to the rumor's flame.

Beyoncé's longtime collaborator The-Dream, who produced 10 of the new album's 27 tracks, also alluded to a forthcoming tour. He celebrated the release of "Cowboy Carter" on X, writing, "This tour bout to B' Incredible!"

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Fans grabbed screenshots of The-Dream's post, though it has since been deleted.

'The-Dream' via Twitter: “This tour bout to B’ incredible!” The singer-songwriter is Beyoncé’s longtime friend, and worked on 10 songs on her new album #CowboyCarter . pic.twitter.com/KNHQOuqFI9 — COWBOY CARTER TOUR (@CowboyCarterWT) March 31, 2024

However, the six-month turnaround since Beyoncé's last concert does cast suspicion on these theories. Thanks to "Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé," we know the Renaissance World Tour took four years to ideate and execute.

It's unclear if plans for a "Cowboy Carter" show were also in the works during that time, but if not, fans may have to wait a bit longer to watch Beyoncé perform. As she's already made clear, " A queen moves at her own pace ."

Even so, a delay may come as welcome news, even for dedicated members of the Beyhive.

Many fans have been posting about their lack of ticket funds on X, playfully begging Beyoncé to put off touring until next year.

- I don’t want https://t.co/QqyQduNfkr to be a tour because we https://t.co/icyUqbLR1L . pic.twitter.com/XZ5WHMUqyL — Rob Milton (@therobmilton) April 3, 2024

She can announce it for 2025 but in 2024 we are at capacity https://t.co/Gtg7f2jvSG — Antoinette “Asst (To The) Regional Manager” Childs (@TheFancyFriend) March 31, 2024

. @Beyonce keep the tour announcement for next year…I have trips planned for this summer pic.twitter.com/GPhRrW1GiF — Nicolas is happy (@niggaolas) April 3, 2024

what i’m eating if beyoncé announce this tour https://t.co/CfI1Vm3XuG — 𐚁 onii 𐚁 (@__Onixivy_) April 4, 2024

i'm begging beyoncé to tour in 2025 and not this summer pic.twitter.com/Nqw68434Bu — zae (@itszaeok) March 27, 2024

the whole fandom begging beyoncé not to announce a tour is HILARIOUS! we are BROKE DOWN pic.twitter.com/YXDFHuzELM — j. (@virgosgrooviest) March 27, 2024

Representatives for Beyoncé did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Watch: The Taylor Swift effect: How a pop star created her own economy

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Beyoncé's "Cowboy Carter" breaks streaming records

By Caitlin O'Kane

April 2, 2024 / 9:48 AM EDT / CBS News

Last week, Beyoncé released "Cowboy Carter,"  a 27-track country album the bends the genre and has already made history. Fans clearly can't get enough of the album, which has already broken streaming records on several platforms.

Spotify announced on social media last week that on the day the album dropped, Friday, March 29, it became the platform's most-streamed album in a single day in 2024 so far. 

"Cowboy Carter" also earned the title of most-first day streams of a country album by a female artist on Amazon Music. The album also saw Beyoncé's biggest debut on the streaming platform, Amazon Music shared on social media .

Ahead of the album's release, Beyoncé dropped two singles on Super Bowl Sunday: "Texas Hold 'Em" and "16 Carriages." The former debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Country Charts, making Beyoncé the first Black woman to top that chart, according to Billboard .

"Texas Hold 'Em" itself bends genres, landing on nine U.S. charts including pop, adult alternative, country, rhythmic, urban and R&B. 

The album debuted at No. 2 on Apple Music charts and 26 out of 27 songs are currently on the streaming service's top 100 list.

Beyoncé, a Houston native who is also the album's executive producer, said in a statement it is "the best music I've ever made." 

The album features collaborations with stars like Miley Cyrus and versions of iconic songs like Dolly Parton's 1973 hit "Jolene." Parton and Willie Nelson also lend their voices to vignettes on the album, as does Linda Martell, the first commercially successful Black woman country artist. 

Beyoncé also covers the 1968 song "Blackbird" by the Beatles, featuring Black country singer-songwriters Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Tiera Kennedy and Reyna Roberts. Her song "Protector" features audio from her 6-year-old daughter, Rumi, and she collaborates on two songs with rapper Shaboozey.

She also samples Nancy Sinatra's 1966 song "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" on the track "Ya Ya." 

Sinatra reacted to the song on social media , writing: "To have a little piece of one of my records in a @Beyonce song is very meaningful to me because I love her. She represents what is great about today's music and I'm delighted to be a tiny part of it. This may be the best sample of 'Boots' yet! And the beat goes on."

Parton also posted about Beyoncé's cover of "Jolene," a scornful song with lyrics that warn a woman to stay away from your man. "Beyoncé is giving that girl some trouble and she deserves it," Parton wrote .

• Beyoncé
• Entertainment

Caitlin O'Kane is a New York City journalist who works on the CBS News social media team as a senior manager of content and production. She writes about a variety of topics and produces "The Uplift," CBS News' streaming show that focuses on good news.

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