Beyoncé

Houston to solo

Beyoncé Giselle Knowles was born in Houston, Texas, on 4 September 1981 and rose to fame in the late 1990s as lead singer of Destiny's Child. Their second album, The Writing's on the Wall (1999), sold 13 million copies worldwide, and the third, Survivor (2001), debuted at number one. During the group's hiatus she made her film debut as Foxxy Cleopatra in Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), and her solo breakthrough came as the featured vocalist on Jay-Z's '03 Bonnie & Clyde, which reached number four on the Hot 100.

Dangerously in Love arrived in June 2003 after sessions that ran from March 2002 to March 2003. It debuted at number one with 317,000 copies in its first week. Its lead single, Crazy in Love, spent eight weeks atop the Hot 100, and the album won five Grammys in 2004, including Best Contemporary R&B Album. It has sold more than 11 million copies worldwide.

Her own company

B'Day followed in 2006 and opened at number one with 541,000 copies. Its single Irreplaceable stayed at the top of the Hot 100 for ten consecutive weeks. I Am... Sasha Fierce (2008) was a double album that included Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It), another Hot 100 number one. With 4 (2011) she released her first album through her own company, Parkwood Entertainment, conceived as a traditional R&B and soul record. On 26 June 2011 she became the first solo female artist in over two decades to headline Glastonbury's Pyramid Stage.

A record with no warning

Work on Beyoncé began in mid-2012 at a rented 40-bedroom mansion in the Hamptons, where she invited producers and writers including Sia, Timbaland, Ryan Tedder, Justin Timberlake and The-Dream. Touring interrupted the sessions, and most of the album was recorded in 2013 at Jungle City and Oven Studios in New York. The plan had been to finish in a month and a half. It took a year and a half, and eighty songs were recorded. She first thought of a visual album in June 2013, with Michael Jackson's Thriller as the main influence, and the videos were shot in secret in several countries while she toured.

The album appeared on iTunes in the early hours of 13 December 2013 with no announcement. It sold 828,773 digital copies worldwide in three days, the fastest in the store's history by Apple's account, and debuted at number one in the United States with 617,213 copies, which made her the first woman whose first five studio albums opened at the top. Its songs included Pretty Hurts, Drunk in Love, Partition and XO. The surprise release prompted the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry to move Global Release Day from Tuesday to Friday.

Reception

Metacritic scored the album 85. Pitchfork's Carrie Battan heard her exploring sounds at the "grittier margins of popular music", and Spin's Anupa Mistry called it her best album and "more textured than its predecessors". At the 2015 Grammys it won Best Surround Sound Album, and Drunk in Love won Best R&B Song and Best R&B Performance. Rolling Stone placed it at number 81 on its list of the 500 greatest albums, and The Guardian put it at number 9 among the best albums of the 21st century.

Since

Lemonade followed on 23 April 2016, premiering as an HBO film with the album released the same day on Tidal. It sold 653,000 copies in its first US week, made her the first artist whose first six studio albums debuted at number one, and was the world's best-selling album of 2016 with 2.5 million copies. It won Best Urban Contemporary Album at the 2017 Grammys. Renaissance (2022) produced the number-one single Break My Soul, and Cowboy Carter (2024) took Texas Hold 'Em to number one. At the 2025 Grammys she won Best Country Album and Album of the Year.