100 Best Albums
- APR 23, 2016
- 13 Songs
- The Fame Monster (Deluxe Edition) · 2009
- 4 (Expanded Edition) · 2011
- B'Day (Deluxe Edition) · 2006
- Dangerously in Love · 2003
- I AM...SASHA FIERCE · 2008
- RENAISSANCE · 2022
- The Pinkprint (Bonus Tracks) · 2014
- BEYONCÉ · 2013
- I AM...SASHA FIERCE · 2008
- TEXAS HOLD 'EM - Single · 2024
Essential Albums
- Unique, strong, and sexy—that’s how Beyoncé wants you to feel while listening to RENAISSANCE. Crafted during the grips of the pandemic, her seventh solo album is a celebration of freedom and a complete immersion into house and dance that serves as the perfect sound bed for themes of liberation, release, self-assuredness, and unfiltered confidence across its 16 tracks. RENAISSANCE is playful and energetic in a way that captures that Friday-night, just-got-paid, anything-can-happen feeling, underscored by reiterated appeals to unyoke yourself from the weight of others’ expectations and revel in the totality of who you are. From the classic four-on-the-floor house moods of the Robin S.- and Big Freedia-sampling lead single “BREAK MY SOUL” to the Afro-tech of the Grace Jones- and Tems-assisted “MOVE” and the funky, rollerskating disco feeling of “CUFF IT,” this is a massive yet elegantly composed buffet of sound, richly packed with anthemic morsels that pull you in. There are soft moments here, too: “I know you can’t help but to be yourself around me,” she coos on “PLASTIC OFF THE SOFA,” the kind of warm, whispers-in-the-ear love song you’d expect to hear at a summer cookout—complete with an intricate interplay between vocals and guitar that gives Beyoncé a chance to showcase some incredible vocal dexterity. “CHURCH GIRL” fuses R&B, gospel, and hip-hop to tell a survivor’s story: “I'm finally on the other side/I finally found the extra smiles/Swimming through the oceans of tears we cried.” An explicit celebration of Blackness, “COZY” is the mantra of a woman who has nothing to prove to anyone—“Comfortable in my skin/Cozy with who I am,” ” Beyoncé muses on the chorus. And on “PURE/HONEY,” Beyoncé immerses herself in ballroom culture, incorporating drag performance chants and a Kevin Aviance sample on the first half that give way to the disco-drenched second half, cementing the song as an immediate dance-floor favorite. It’s the perfect lead-in to the album closer “SUMMER RENAISSANCE,” which propels the dreamy escapist disco of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” even further into the future.
- 100 Best Albums There’s one moment critical to understanding the emotional and cultural heft of Lemonade, Beyoncé’s genre-obliterating blockbuster sixth album—and it arrives at the end of “Freedom,” a storming empowerment anthem that samples a civil-rights-era prison song and features Kendrick Lamar. An elderly woman’s voice cuts in: “I had my ups and downs, but I always find the inner strength to pull myself up,” she says. “I was served lemons, but I made lemonade.” The speech—made by her husband JAY-Z’s grandmother Hattie White on her 90th birthday in 2015—reportedly inspired the concept behind this radical project, which arrived with an accompanying film as well as words by Somali British poet Warsan Shire. Both the album and its visual companion are deeply tied to Beyoncé’s identity and narrative (her womanhood, her Blackness, her marriage) and make for her most outwardly revealing work to date. The details, of course, are what make it so relatable, what make each song sting. The project is furious, defiant, anguished, vulnerable, experimental, muscular, triumphant, humorous, and brave—a vivid personal statement, released without warning in a time of public scrutiny and private suffering. It is also astonishingly tough. Through tears, even Beyoncé has to summon her inner Beyoncé, roaring, “I’ma keep running ’cause a winner don’t quit on themselves.” This panoramic strength—lyrical, vocal, instrumental, and personal—nudged her public image from mere legend to something closer to real-life superhero. Every second of Lemonade deserves to be studied and celebrated (the self-punishment in “Sorry,” the politics in “Formation,” the creative enhancements from collaborators like James Blake and Karen O), but the song that aims the highest musically may be “Don’t Hurt Yourself”—a Zeppelin-sampling psych-rock duet with Jack White. “This is your final warning,” she says in a moment of unnerving calm. “If you try this shit again/You gon’ lose your wife.” In support, White offers a word to the wise: “Love God herself.”
- 100 Best Albums When Beyoncé’s self-titled fifth album landed unannounced on the iTunes store in December 2013, the pop world trembled. Here was one of music’s biggest stars dispensing with the normal prolonged rollout of a major work, instead simultaneously alerting people to it and releasing it. That this was a visual album—with every song accompanied by a short film—only made Beyoncé’s flex more impressive, changing the game for how artists would handle releasing new music in the digital era. Surprise drops became something of a norm not just for pop’s top tier, but for any artist with a devoted fanbase—the month’s advance notice for RENAISSANCE seems almost quaint by comparison. But BEYONCÉ would have been a career achievement even if it had been released in an old-school way. Across its 14 tracks, Beyoncé pushes herself artistically and emotionally, opening up about her insecurities, her sexuality, and her happiness over songs that demonstrate the strength and versatility of her voice. Years after its release, BEYONCÉ remains a touchstone not just for Beyoncé, but for any marquee artist who wants to break from expectations, with Beyoncé’s forward-thinking, collaborative approach to creating art aiding its of-the-moment yet not-stuck-in-time feel. Opening with “Pretty Hurts,” a soaring ballad that dives into the body-image issues that even the most revered women have to endure, even as children, and closing with “Blue,” a swaying ode to her first child (who makes a cameo on the track), BEYONCÉ reveals where the pop star’s mind had wandered after the release of her monogamy reflection 4 two years prior. Eroticism is a large part of BEYONCÉ, both in sound and in subject matter—the spikily giddy duet with husband JAY-Z “Drunk in Love” and the slow jam “Rocket” are two of the most carnally delightful entries in Beyoncé’s catalog, while the massive “Jealous” examines what happens when desire fuels inner strife. The exploration of grief “Heaven,” the ferocious pop-feminist anthem “***Flawless,” and the jagged statement of artistic intent “Haunted” fill out the emotional and musical spectrum. The videos, too, run the gamut in both style and feeling, with prestigious directors like Hype Williams, Jonas Åkerlund, and Melina Matsoukas creating companion pieces for each of BEYONCÉ’s songs. The Williams-directed video for the gently funky “Blow” is a roller-rink fantasia; the Åkerlund-helmed clip for the dreamy “Haunted” channels Madonna’s groundbreaking 1990 short film “Justify My Love” through Beyoncé’s 21st-century luxe aesthetic. Pop’s sound had shifted at the turn of the decade, with electro-pop-influenced tracks taking the spaces on radio and on the charts where Beyoncé and other R&B-leaning artists had ruled during the 2000s. On BEYONCÉ, the singer and mogul showed that, radio play or no, she was still a member of pop’s ruling class—and she did so not by flipping pop’s script, but by drawing inspiration from its most enticing aspects while writing a completely new playbook. BEYONCÉ did feature culture-ruling collaborators like Drake, who plays B’s foil on the skeletal “Mine,” and Frank Ocean, who locks up with Beyoncé on the sumptuous Pharrell Williams production “Superpower,” but Beyoncé’s willingness to explore music’s edges and revel in its greatest moments resulted in the album existing on its own plane, aware of the pop world’s trends but diverging from them in thrilling ways. BEYONCÉ represents a major turning point for Beyoncé, beginning the stage of her career where she would define “pop stardom” not by chart placement but by following her own artistic path—on her own schedule and on her own terms.
- So long Sasha Fierce. Queen Bey goes back to the future with a fourth album that trades some of her strutting blockbusters for timeless mid-tempo finger-snappers (“Love On Top”) and slow-burning ballads (“1+1”, “Best Thing I Never Had”). Not that 4 is in any way a banger-free zone. “Party” packs squelchy 90s soul, and the Major Lazer-sampling “Run the World (Girls)” totally brings the house down.
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About Beyoncé
Above her strides as a multi-hyphenate star, few modern pop artists have worked as hard to put the culture and concerns of Black America in front of a broader audience as Beyoncé Knowles. Whether surveying civil rights (“Formation”), Black feminism (“***Flawless,” “Irreplaceable”), the collective pride of HBCU culture (HOMECOMING), Black LGBTQIA+ liberations of disco and house music (RENAISSANCE), or the reclamation of country music’s roots (COWBOY CARTER), Beyoncé’s work positions her as a first-rate musician and cultural archivist, one who knows the responsibility of uplifting the past while sowing seeds for the future. Entertainment, yes—but also a kind of ambassadorship. Born in 1981 and raised in Houston, she started singing and dancing as a child. (One teacher, Darlette Johnson, discovered she could sing when she started humming a song and Knowles finished it—a performance the shy Knowles wouldn’t reproduce until Johnson offered her a dollar.) In 1990, she joined Girl’s Tyme, which evolved into Destiny’s Child. Under the management of Knowles’ father, Mathew, they became one of the biggest forces in pop, blending the familiar comforts of the all-girl vocal group with notions of female empowerment, sisterhood, and a refreshingly contemporary mix of pop, R&B, and hip-hop (“Bills, Bills, Bills,” “Say My Name,” “Survivor,” “Soldier”). Her first solo feature was on a track by her future husband, rap phenom JAY-Z (“’03 Bonnie & Clyde”), marking the beginning of a fertile partnership and a point of enduring public fascination. From there, Knowles has been more or less unstoppable. As her fame has grown, her sound and approach have only gotten bolder, spawning intimate, relatively experimental albums like 2013’s BEYONCÉ and 2016’s Lemonade, alongside celebrations like the 2018 JAY-Z collaboration EVERYTHING IS LOVE (credited to THE CARTERS), 2022’s RENAISSANCE, which celebrated the liberated sound of Black queer disco and house, and 2024’s COWBOY CARTER, a sprawling homage to the often neglected roots of country music. It isn’t just the music—which has crisscrossed from dancehall to soul ballads to New Orleans bounce to the chopped-and-screwed sound of her native Houston to country and Americana—but also the figure she cuts in the culture. Here’s a woman who sang at a presidential inauguration (2009, the Obamas, Etta James’ “At Last”), revealed her pregnancy in front of an audience of millions (2011, the MTV Video Music Awards, “Love on Top”), and joined forces with the Chicks on a Nashville stage (2016, the CMA Awards, “Daddy Lessons”). She also joined ranks with Black Lives Matter (“Formation”), feminism (“***Flawless”), and LGBTQIA+ culture (“Break My Soul”) when her high-profile status had all but exempted her; who name-checked figures like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Audre Lorde, and Cornel West for people who might otherwise not have encountered them. Blurring the lines between genre and representation, Beyoncé’s brave leap into country music with 2024’s COWBOY CARTER unearthed its rich connection to Black music while carving out new sonic plateaus. She became the first Black woman to top the U.S. country chart with its smash lead single, “TEXAS HOLD ’EM,” sparking a surge of wide recognition for trailblazing Black female country artists like Tanner Adell and Linda Martell. It’s a testament to Beyoncé’s role as a pop star and cultural bearer—using her platform to elevate the marginalized and preserve Black history in the pop music sphere.
- HOMETOWN
- Houston, TX, United States
- BORN
- September 4, 1981
- GENRE
- Pop