Beyonce: The pop culture phenomenon

It is another milestone in a list of feats that keeps growing: Beyonce has now won 32 Grammy Awards, breaking a record previously held for 20 years by Hungarian-British conductor Georg Solti, with 31 wins.

Queen Bey, as she is known by fans, has been setting new records at the Grammys for years. She became the first female artist to win six Grammys in one night in 2010, and has retained the title of the female artist with the most wins since 2020.

The icon of pop culture is also tied with her rapper-producer husband, Jay-Z, with the record for the most Grammy nominations ever — 88 apiece.

She was inducted in the 2023 Guinness World Records last September, already holding 20 record titles at the time.

But beyond the record-breaking achievements, Beyonce keeps pushing boundaries and rewriting the rules of the music industry, all while embodying empowered self-representation and Black culture.

An early start

Born in Houston, Texas, on September 4, 1981, Beyonce Giselle Knowles won her first school talent show at age 7.

Two years later, she entered the pop world as part of the all-girls' group, Girl's Tyme.

The band failed to meet expectations, but Beyonce's father left his job as a successful Xerox sales agent to become the girls' manager. They changed their name to Destiny's Child in 1996.

It's with the band that Beyonce won her first two Grammys in 2001, with the single "Say My Name." A year later, another one of their best-known hits, "Survivor," also won a Grammy.

The power couple

Beyonce then went solo, first appearing on Jay-Z's song "O3 Bonnie & Clyde" (2002) and releasing her album "Dangerously in Love" in 2003. She was the executive producer of her debut solo album and co-wrote most of her songs. Among them was the exuberant single, "Crazy in Love," which also featured Jay-Z. Their collaborations fueled rumors about their romance.

They are said to have met in 2000, when Beyonce was 18, on a plane to Cancun to the MTV Spring Break festival. They kept details of their relationship private for years. In a secret ceremony, the hip-hop mogul, whose real name is Shawn Corey Carter, married Beyonce — who then became Mrs. Knowles-Carter — on April 4, 2008.

Today, they are the highest-earning couple in Hollywood history. Together, they are estimated to be worth around $1 billion.

They have collaborated on two world tours, which led them to break the record of the highest-grossing music tour by a duo.

The Carters have also released an album together, "Everything Is Love," in 2018, which explored the ups and downs of their relationship, their fame and wealth, all while tackling issues such as racism and Black pride.

The video to the album's single "Apes**t" expressed all of those ideas. Shot in the Louvre museum, with Black dancers taking over the halls filled with iconic art pieces, the ambitious production gave an unusual boost to the Paris venue, which reached a record 10.2 million visitors in 2018 — the most for any museum in history, according to the Louvre.

Social media queen

Beyonce and Jay-Z have three children. Blue Ivy Carter was born in 2012; their twins Rumi Carter and Sir Carter came in 2017.

The picture announcing Beyonce's pregnancy in 2017 became the most-liked image on Instagram at the time, gaining 6,335,571 likes within less than eight hours and gathering nearly 10.8 million likes altogether.

Beyonce's fan base, known as the Bey Hive, is particularly active on social media. One of Bey's other Guiness records includes "Most current Twitter engagements (retweets) for a female musician."

Unsurprisingly, her millions of fans also celebrate her on TikTok. The dance trend for "Cuff It," off her 2022 album "Renaissance," contributed to turning the single into a hit. It won the Grammy for best R&B song.

An icon of Black feminism

But despite having achieved the status of the music industry's royal couple, Jay-Z and Beyonce's relationship went through a stormy phase, which the superstar explored on her concept album "Lemonade" (2016).

Beyond dealing with the painful topic of her husband's infidelity, Beyonce's "Lemonade" also chronicled society's oppression of Black women in the US in a way that had not yet been expressed in mainstream media.

From samples of a Malcolm X speech declaring "the most disrespected person in America is the Black woman" to references to the mothers of victims of police brutality, Beyonce expressed the rage of unheard people, all while experimenting with a great variety of genres.

"Lemonade" was critically acclaimed as Beyonce's magnum opus, and was also the best-selling album of 2016.

Her 2022 album, "Renaissance," is not as overtly political, but has also been unanimously praised for celebrating Black musical cultures and subcultures. Also, "I'd like to thank the queer community for your love and for inventing the genre," she said in her acceptance speech at the 2023 Grammys. Through her impeccably curated references to queer-dominated club music, from '70s disco to Chicago house and Detroit techno, she created a post-pandemic bash to reunite fans on the dance floor.

Through its emancipatory spirit, "Renaissance" demonstrates that beyond breaking records, Beyonce is above all interested in celebrating self-expression and making music on her own terms.

Edited by: Louisa Schaefer