Its success was simply par for the course for a performer of Beyoncé’s level. But the move felt like a transparent attempt to please everyone, and while the album generated some hits, including the smash single “Single Ladies,” and topped the charts, moving 482,000 copies, it wasn’t a very memorable album. By employing the gimmicky Sasha Fierce as an alter ego, she was able to silo different music genres on the album - R&B and pop, placed on separate discs - as a means of appealing to a broad audience.
One way of looking at the project is that she was splitting herself in two. That era presented the public with two Beyoncés: Beyoncé the entertainer and Beyoncé the person. In 2010, Beyoncé had just completed a successful world tour (grossing nearly $120 million worldwide) for her third solo album, 2008’s I Am. So how did Beyoncé go from clearly talented, but merely mortal pop star, to the woman behind some of the decade’s most memorable, politically radical works of art, credibly claiming the mantle of King of Pop? Through determination, self-discipline, and a notable thwarting of pop music conventions. Her 2011 album 4 became the lowest-selling record of her career, and her first attempt at documentary filmmaking, 2013’s Life Is But a Dream, was criticized for being shallow and self-involved.
(In fact, Beyoncé herself later admitted to Access Hollywood in 2011 that two previous solo albums, 2006’s B’Day and 2008’s I Am. Her solo music was upbeat and catchy she had bona fide hits with “Irreplaceable” and “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” both topping Billboard’s Hot 100 her dance moves sparked viral parodies and her vocal performances were commendable.īut in a world where a new class of pop stars were emerging - from the eccentric Lady Gaga, to the chameleonic Rihanna, to the hit-making machine Katy Perry, those traits were not enough for Beyoncé to stand out from her contemporaries in any significant way. She had always been a talented performer. It’s safe to say that by 2019, after dropping two critically acclaimed albums, a documentary and a film, winning 23 Grammys, and headlining Glastonbury and Coachella (the first black woman to do so), she’s undoubtedly made that happen.Īt the start of the decade, however, in 2010, Beyoncé was at a crossroads. “How would you like me to describe you?” asked journalist Liam Bartlett in a 2007 60 Minutes Australia interview with Beyoncé, who at the time was only 25 years old.
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