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Bey VibeZ

Forty-eight tracks tracing a twenty-year career that moved from teenage pop stardom to something closer to a body of work.

Beyoncé is The Queen of the Long Braid | Vogue

Beyoncé

The interesting thing about Beyoncé's catalogue is how completely the second half rewrites the first. Up to about 2011 she was the most technically accomplished pop singer of her generation, making excellent records within a form that was already settled. After that she started making records that changed the form.

BEYONCÉ (2013) arrived with no announcement and a video for every track, which changed how albums were released industry-wide. Lemonade (2016) was structured as a visual essay with chapter headings. Homecoming documented a Coachella performance built entirely around historically Black college marching-band traditions. RENAISSANCE (2022) was a study of Black and queer dance music's history.

Whatever one makes of the results, the ambition is not in doubt, and this playlist is at its most interesting where it moves between the eras.

What to listen for

"Love On Top" is the pure singing showcase — four key changes in the final ninety seconds, executed live at the time without visible effort.

"Hold Up" and "Sorry" come from Lemonade and show how far the production had travelled; "Hold Up" is built on a Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Andy Williams interpolation, which tells you something about the sourcing.

"CUFF IT" and "PLASTIC OFF THE SOFA" are the RENAISSANCE selections, and the second is the best-sung thing she has recorded in years — almost entirely unadorned.

"Before I Let Go" from Homecoming is the Maze cover, and turning that record into a marching-band arrangement is one of the smartest things anyone has done with a standard.

The Carters tracks — "APESHIT", "SUMMER", "BLACK EFFECT" — are the joint album with Jay-Z, and they are better than their reception suggested.

"Party" with André 3000 and "Superpower" with Frank Ocean are the best guest pairings, and "Standing on the Sun" with Mr. Vegas is the deep cut.

"Dangerously In Love" and "Me, Myself and I" are the early-career reminders that the instrument was always there.

Go deeper

Lemonade (2016) and RENAISSANCE (2022) are the two albums to hear whole, and both are structured to reward that.

For the lineage RENAISSANCE is drawing on: Frankie Knuckles, Robert Hood, Donna Summer and the Chicago and Detroit house catalogues it explicitly credits.

How the second half rewrites the first: the early records are a superb singer working inside a settled form; the later ones change the form — surprise releases with a video per track, albums structured as visual essays, a record built as a history lesson about Black and queer dance music. Played in sequence, this list is a document of an artist deciding to stop being excellent at something already solved.

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