Beyoncé is 40 today, and we don’t think there was ever a time where she wasn’t a global star. From winning awards as a member of Destiny’s Child to making history as a solo artist, being a brilliant actress, and having one of, if not the greatest fanbase ever, it is safe to say Beyoncé is the celeb’s celeb!
4 times Beyoncé broke the internet
From starring in the Lion King as Nala, to releasing a powerful African fused Lion King inspired album The Gift to creating a directory of Black-owned businesses from across the world and so much more, Beyonce is the queen of creating iconic moments but we for the sake of this article and in sticking with the theme 4, below are four major moments where the queen of the Beyhive got the world talking.
The Relaunch of Ivy Park
On April 4th, 2019, Beyoncé announced the Ivy Park collaboration with Adidas. Ivy Park was first launched in 2016 in a joint venture with Topshop. A week before the official launch, Beyoncé sent orange boxes of goodies to celebs like Reese Witherspoon, Ciara, Missy Elliot, Kelly Rowland, Hailey Bieber, Kim Kardashian West to Issa Rae, and more, the list is endless. We saw these stars go all out, we got photoshoots, mini-concerts, and the entire world got talking for sure!
The campaign was huge. Everybody wanted to see who was going to get the orange box from Beyoncé next, how they would pull off the looks, and what they were going to do, would it be a photo shoot or a creative video? We wonder if our orange box got lost in the mail because we would have loved one. As expected, the collection was sold out within six minutes on the official Adidas website.
The Release of Lemonade Album
Released on the 23rd of April 2016, Lemonade is Beyoncé’s sixth solo album. The album was based on Beyoncé’s emotional journey after her husband’s infidelity (which came as a major shock to us all) in a generational and racial context. It got everyone talking, and launching an investigation trying to decipher who “Becky with the good hair” was.
Lemonade is the most acclaimed studio album of Beyoncé’s career, receiving 9 nominations at the 59th Grammys and 11 nominations for visuals at the 2016 MTV video music awards of which it won 8. It was named album of the decade (the 2010s). The 65-minute film also titled Lemonade received four nominations at the 68th primetime Emmy awards. The album debuted number 1 on the US billboard 200 and at the end of 2016, the album sold 1.5million copies making it the third best-selling album of the year in the US.
Record-breaking “most Grammy award wins”
The 63rd Grammy award held March 14th, 2021 saw Beyoncé making history after winning Best Rap Performance for the song Savage by Megan Thee Stallion which she was featured in, and Best R&B Performance with “Black Parade,”. Winning these awards made her total Grammy wins 28 making her the singer with the most Grammy awards breaking the record set by Alison Krauss.
Pregnancy Reveals
Leave it to Beyoncé to shake the world with her pregnancy news. It started in 2011 after an energetic performance of her hit song Love On Top off her album 4. Queen Bey shocked the world when she took off her beautiful sequin jacket to reveal her baby bump, informing everyone she and husband Jay Z were pregnant with their first child who would become the young icon Blue Ivy who we all love today.
After setting the bar so high with pregnancy number 1, 6-years later on February 1st, 2017, Beyoncé took things up a thousand notches when she posted a beautiful picture of her in a garden, with a veil and a halo-like flower setting, revealing that she was having twins!
7 hours later, the image became the most-liked Instagram post of all time (at that time) with 11.18 million likes. Within 45 minutes of the post, Twitter had received half a million tweets, with the words twins and Beyonce at the top of the worldwide trends. Social media exploded and Beyoncé’s announcement became a sensation with many people recreating the now-iconic photo. Let’s not talk about the conversation the names of her 3 children from Blue Ivy to Sir and Rumi sparked.
What’s your favorite Queen Bey moment?