The 20 songs that chart Beyoncé's evolution as a music superstar

Can anyone turn being horny into art better than Beyoncé? While her early career stuff didn’t exactly shy away from sexuality, it wasn’t until her self-titled album, when she was ready to reflect on motherhood, love, and loss, that she was willing to coin phrases like “he Monica Lewinsky-ed all on my gown.” I’ve listened to Beyoncé plenty, and while it’s impossible to recreate the first listen to a surprise album, the deliciously sexy “Partition,” with its swaggering prelude “Yoncé,” still leaves me clutching my pearls. You get the sense that she enjoys shocking us, both with her explicit lyrics and her mind-melting rap abilities. [Jack Smart]

“***Flawless,” featured on Beyoncé’s self-titled album with the introduction “Bow Down,” marks the moment in which the singer not only recognizes her influence on a generation, but demands respect for her efforts. Throughout the song, she stares down the subjects of marriage, womanhood, and motherhood with 20/20 vision. The inclusion of writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie transforms “***Flawless” from a feel-good anthem into a Black feminist work, which Bey brought onto the main stage with subsequent performances. In 2013, when she stood with the word “feminist” on the wall behind her, she reintroduced the topic of feminism to the mainstream, and to an entire generation of young Black girls. While the song would spur viral phrases such as “Feelin’ myself,” and “I woke up like this,” it also signified Beyoncé’s entrance into the political sphere of music, which would continue to be a facet of her work. [Gabrielle Sanchez]

As Lemonade bursts forth with “Hold Up,” we hear Beyoncé in an entirely different context, with the likes of Diplo and Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig in the writing room. The track’s sprightly and airy composition lays itself bare for Beyoncé, setting the stage for a vulnerable and personal work. Lemonade is a deeply experimental project for Beyoncé—starting with “Hold Up”—which incorporates the sounds of standard hip-hop with classic alternative rock. Strokes of genius are witnessed with the use of the samples “Maps” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and “Soulja Boy’s “Turn My Swag On.” With “Hold Up,” Bey enters an entirely new league as an artist, becoming not only a musician but a visionary and risk-taker. [Gabrielle Sanchez]

Beyoncé’s collaboration with The Chicks may be the greatest crossover in the history of music. But even before that extended duet version of “Daddy Lessons” (which beautifully folds in a sample of her fellow Texans’ “Long Time Gone”) the song marked an important expansion of her musical tastes and abilities. “Here,” Bey seems to be saying, “watch me take on country music better than most country music artists.” In addition to being a straight-up flex, Lemonade’s reckoning with marriage and fidelity includes ruminations on both her own feminine independence and the pitfalls of masculinity; as with many of that seminal album’s tracks, “Daddy Lessons” filters tantalizing details from Bey’s personal life into jaunty tunes that can just be an excuse to dance if you like. [Jack Smart]

Much has been written about “Formation,” the award-winning song that would become the lead single for Lemonade and one of the most pivotal moments in Beyoncé’s career. But for all the reading into it, all the picking apart of its lyrics and all the analyzing of the video’s references, it’s one of those pieces of art that very much speaks for itself; Beyoncé rarely gives interviews or discusses meanings in her work because she doesn’t need to. What you see in “Formation” is correct. What Black, Southern girls see in “Formation” is correct. What the Black Lives Matter and Women’s March movements saw in “Formation” is correct. It’s Exhibit A of Bey’s cultural influence, the likeliest candidate for what future music and culture historians will point to as her legacy. [Jack Smart]

If the Lemonade song cycle gave Beyoncé an opportunity to work through her marital issues on the biggest platform possible—a process one imagines to be as cathartic as it was terrifying for a notoriously private couple—Everything Is Love felt like an announcement that she and Jay had come out the other side better and stronger. Even if the record itself felt more insistent than fans may have needed, the trap anthem “Apeshit” provided an engine for the comeback tour of their romance; Pharrell’s production leaned into the prevailing sound of the moment, even recruiting Migos members Quavo and Offset to deliver the kind of ad libs that communicate (well, try anyway) how little effort these superstars need to make to create something iconic. It’s a departure for a woman who had put so much of her heart on her sleeve in the years prior, but it proved she could deliver a good old fashioned turn-up anthem. [Todd Gilchrist]

It’s easy to look at Beyoncé’s historic performance as the headliner of the 2018 Coachella Music Festival as a victory lap, even for an artist so used to exceeding the expectations of her fans. But the carefully planned, meticulously staged show served as confirmation that she was not just an entertainer, but the entertainer, orchestrating a tireless set where she, an army of back-up dancers, an entire marching band, and a murderer’s row of guest stars delivered a nonstop barrage of unforgettable moments—culminating in a version of “Diva” that ends with a dance-off to O.T. Genasis’ “Everybody Mad,” where she moves with the kind of bad-bitch ferocity she’d been laying down on her records for a few years by that point. The whole concert is a blur of brilliance, but that interlude galvanized, and came to define, the show’s undeniable power. [Todd Gilchrist]

Released on Juneteenth 2020, at a moment vitally in need of voices amplifying marginalized people, “Black Parade” gave the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in the wake of George Floyd’s murder an anthem of righteous anger, empowerment, self-actualization and even hope. That’s a lot to project onto one song, even one by the Queen Bey, but as connective tissue between her role in Disney’s live-action remake of The Lion King and her extraordinary visual album Black Is King, the track accomplished multiple goals simultaneously, the most important of which was using her megaphone to touch on Black pride and identity, to spotlight activism, and to speak on behalf of too many people who feel voiceless. [Todd Gilchrist]

“Breaking the internet” had become a commonplace event for Beyoncé by the summer of 2022, but with “Break My Soul,” she not only delivered a banger of a lead-in single to her seventh solo album, Renaissance, but gave everyone a track that spoke to listeners’ frustrations and their desperation for a liberating moment. Reuniting with New Orleans icon Big Freedia (of “Formation” fame) over a sample of Robin S.’ house classic “Show Me Love,” she vacillates between venting frustrations (“I just quit my job”) and celebrating joy (“I just fell in love”) in a way that feels propulsive and inspiring, whether to make you fall in love or quit your job. Either way, it makes you want to work harder, pursue your dreams and, most of all, leave everything out on the dance floor. Freedia had long since advocated for people to “release your wiggle,” and Beyoncé was just cataloguing the reasons to do so in one of the most thrilling tracks of the year. [Todd Gilchrist]

At the heart of Renaissance is “Virgo’s Groove,” a funky, tender offering which hones in on the disco and groove-tastic influences of the album. Here Bey invites us to fully dissipate into the sound, and join her in this luxurious space. Spanning over six minutes, “Virgo’s Groove” presents Beyoncé at her most sensual, with all-consuming images of lust. Bey’s Virgo status remains an essential element of numerous her songs (see: “Gift From Virgo” and “Signs”), and this track is no exception. The swirling, romantic song will have you singing Virgo’s praises and looking to cuff someone on the dance floor. While Renaissance is quickly cementing its status as a “no-skip album,” musical magic happens in “Virgo’s Groove” which cannot be ignored. [Gabrielle Sanchez]

From its first single to its final track, Renaissance drips with the heritage of multiple musical genres and generations, weaving disco, house, classic soul, and more into a mesmerizing tapestry. By promoting the record as “Act 1” of three, it throws down a gauntlet that only Beyoncé can pick up. The final cut, “Summer Renaissance,” is a throbbing dance track that liberally samples Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.” The original song evokes dreamy, intoxicating, timeless hedonism, thanks to Giorgio Moroder’s atmospheric synthesizers, but only an artist with Beyonce’s voice is able to match Summer’s exuberant mid-coital coo, which she does both by unleashing her full vocal range and punctuating their combined melodic sounds with suitably contemporary, authoritative lyrics. As she does in so many of the most important moments of her career, Beyoncé reminds fans of the best of the past with an eye toward the future. [Todd Gilchrist]