Trivia / Beyoncé

• Banned in China: Beyoncé cancelled a gig in Kuala Lumpur and moved it to Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, after the Malaysian government told her she couldn't wear what she planned to because it didn't conform to Islamic Dress. Strangely, Indonesia thought it was okay even though it has more Muslims than Malaysia; the Moral Guardians there just aren't as powerful.
• Chart Displacement: Beyoncé has had 9 #1s mostly consisting of signature songs, but other signatures like "Halo", "Drunk in Love", "'03 Bonnie & Clyde" (with her husband Jay-Z) and "Cuff It" didn't make the cut. One was "Perfect", which she shares with Ed Sheeran (which wasn't originally recorded as a duet but the single released with her made #1), and the other two are "Baby Boy" and "Check On It" which are popular but not as well-known.
• Creator Breakdown: A lot of ink was spilled over how Lemonade was inspired by Beyoncé dealing with infidelity on Jay-Z's part, especially with it being the rumored cause of the infamous security footage of Solange attacking him in front of her.
• Denial of Digital Distribution: Lemonade was released on Tidal on April 23, 2016, and made available for digital purchase the following day. Physical copies became available on May 6. However, the album first appeared on Spotify and Apple Music three years after its initial release.
• Fan Community Nicknames:
  • The Bey Hive. Also, The Beygency, from a Saturday Night Live skit.
  • Some of her uh, more intensely dedicated fans have earned the pejorative "Roach Hive" for their often intense and occasionally misjudged overreactions towards what they perceive as slights against her. One case in point, attacking celebrity chef Rachael Ray's social media in the mistaken belief that she was the woman with whom Jay-Z allegedly had an affair. That woman’s name is Rachel Roy. Both of their social media were attacked.
• Invisible Advertising: Although there had been word of a new album that was supposedly going to be released in 2013, there was no publicity or information (or even a title) for the album until Beyonce was released on iTunes at midnight on December 13, 2013.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: She's been the center of several of these over her long career:
  • The oldest long running urban legend was that she was older than she claimed, having been born in either 1974 or 1979 instead of the claimed 1981. There were even some conspiracy theories that she was actually her sister Solange's mother and that her parents hid a Teen Pregnancy with the 1974 birthdate. However, the state of Texas released a slew of birth certificates to an ancestry website and hers was among them with the 1981 birthdate.
  • When she was pregnant with Blue in 2011, there were conspiracy theories that she was faking being pregnant herself and used a surrogate. This started when she was doing promo for 4 on an Australian talk show. When she sat down, there was a video taken from an odd angle where her dress bunched up around her bump in a way that made it look like it had folded over◊. This urban legend persisted for many years until she finally addressed it in the Lemonade short film with a video of her only wearing a bra that proved she'd really been pregnant. She and Jay-Z got in front of any such rumors when she was pregnant with the twins. Her social media post announcing her pregnancy was in a bra as well and she had to have a c-section with them and has the scar to prove it. She’s only directly addressed this once, saying that it offends her that people would consider her so vain that she would ask someone else to carry her children for her so she wouldn’t put on weight and in the process also deny herself the beauty of creating life.
• Real-Life Relative: Has done several songs with her husband Jay-Z, on both her albums and his. Those songs include: Crazy in Love, '03 Bonnie and Clyde, Upgrade U, Déjà Vu, On the Run (Pt. ll) and Drunk in Love, which ultimately culminating with their very first album together as the Carters in 2018, titled Everything is Love.
  • Romance on the Set: She first met Jay-Z on the set of a photo-shoot, and they fell in love shortly after, with the music video more or less confirming their relationship.
  • She and her sister Solange has been working on several songs together. Solange was even a part of Destiny's Child for a brief time.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Because she filmed "If I Were A Boy" and "Single Ladies" back to back, her music video budget pretty much ended up going to the former. The lack of budget left for "Single Ladies" forced her and her team to go minimalist.
• Reclusive Artist: Ever since she parted ways with her father as her manager and the release of her self-title album in the early 2010s, she's become way more reclusive than she had previously been. She'd been on an every other year release model prior to that but has only put out three studio albums since then, two of those came as surprise releases with no marketing. Although she has kept busy with other projects such as an album with her husband and curating the soundtrack and making a short film for the 2019 version of Lion King. She gives an interview perhaps once a year and even then is highly selective about to whom she gives said interviews, usually they're to Vogue. Her social media is rarely updated save for charity work and her clothing line with Adidas. She also became notably more camera shy with her twins (who were born in 2017) than she was with her oldest, Blue, when she was little. She, Jay-Z, and Blue are seen in public fairly often but the twins faces' have only been shown a handful of times on her own terms and they've never been publicly photographed. You will never see one of her kids unless she wants you to.
• Referenced by...: Has it's own page.
• Sequel Gap: While she still put out collaborations, soundtracks, and a Live Album in the interim, 2022's Renaissance ended a six-year gap since her last studio album, Lemonade.
• Streisand Effect: In 2013, her publicist motioned for BuzzFeed to remove some photos of her Super Bowl performance because they were "unflattering". They politely declined.
• Throw It In!: The kid leaning in for a kiss at the end of the "Grown Woman" video makes Beyoncé crack up.
• What Could Have Been:
  • "Pretty Hurts" was actually written by Sia for Katy Perry. However, Katy didn't check her email when Sia pitched her the song, so Sia pitched it to Beyoncé instead, after Rihanna's management also rejected the song.
  • According to The Dream, one of her frequent producers, her fifth album was actually going to be inspired by the legendary Fela Kuti and "Grown Woman" was a part of that before she changed her mind. (Incidentally, her former Destiny's Child bandmate Michelle Williams portrayed the role of Kuti's wife in the musical about his life.)
  • There was supposed to be a Just Dance-style game featuring Beyoncé's dances and music (and even featured her dancing in motion capture!) but was scrapped because she decided she wasn't happy with the final product.
  • Her song "Apeshit" with Jay-Z was originally recorded by Migos, however she and Jay-Z recorded the version of the song that was officially released. The versions are similar enough that Quavo and Offset get songwriting credits.
  • Cowboy Carter (2024), was originally supposed to be released before Renaissance (2022), however Beyonce felt that the dance music album Renaissance was more appropriate to release post-pandemic.

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