5 Things You Didn’t Know About Beyoncé 🐝
Beyoncé and Jay-Z surprised fans on the London stop of their On the Run II tour with a new collaboration: no, not another addition to the family, but a brand new collective album, called Everything Is Love. After showing the stunning visuals for "APESHIT," one of the new tracks, in which Bey and Jay frolic through an empty Louvre museum, the iconic duo surprise-dropped the album, once again sending fans into total Beyhive frenzy.
Everything Is Love is a testament to the pair's reconciliation, the last in their trio of albums including Beyoncé's scorched earth Lemonade and Jay-Z's mea culpa 4:44. To find out even more about your fave, here's 5 things you didn't know about Beyoncé:
1. While many singers have adopted stage names to fit their performing personas, Beyoncé is in fact her given name—but it does have a bit of familial significance. Beyoncé is a variation of her mother’s maiden name, Beyincé. At the premiere of her HBO music documentary Life Is But a Dream, Beyoncé’s uncle shared the origin story of her name. “My sister Tina [Knowles] didn’t think we had enough boys in the family to keep the [Beyincé] name going, so she gave Beyoncé our last name as the first name,” he said.
2. Beyoncé’s singing ability was discovered by her childhood dance teacher, Darlette Johnson. “I hummed a song and she finished it, and it blew me away,” Johnson told CNN in 2013. “And I told her to sing it again and she wouldn’t sing it again because, once again, she was very shy. And I promised her a dollar and she sang it again.” When Beyoncé’s parents came to pick her up that evening, Johnson told them, “She can sing! She can really sing!”
3. In 2010, Beyoncé donated her entire salary from the 2008 film Cadillac Records, in which she portrayed singer Etta James, to open an eponymous cosmetology center at Phoenix House, a rehab facility in Brooklyn. She met with women in treatment there while preparing for the role of James, who battled drug addiction, and said the experience had a profound effect on her: “Through their stories, I realized that all of us have our personal struggles and we all have something to overcome.” Drug addiction, she went on, “has a stigma that must be removed. Addiction is a disease, and these beautiful women I met did not choose to become addicts, but they have chosen to get better.” Beyoncé also cited her childhood spent in her mother’s salon in Houston as another source of inspiration. “I saw that a salon was a place for women to socialize, share stories, cry, laugh, and get advice,” she said. “Most importantly, I saw the joy it brought my mother, knowing she was a part of their transformation.”
4. Beyoncé released her fourth studio album, 4, in 2011, but the significance behind the number is greater than suggested. “We all have special numbers in our lives, and 4 is that for me,” the singer has said. “It’s the day I was born. My mother’s birthday and a lot of my friends’ birthdays are on the fourth. April 4 is my wedding date.” Beyoncé and Jay Z have the Roman numeral tattooed on their ring fingers. And their daughter’s middle name, Ivy, is even rumored to be a play on the Roman numeral (IV).
5. During the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, Beyoncé revealed her pregnancy onstage while performing her song “Love on Top.” “I want you to feel the love that’s growing inside of me,” she said, before unbuttoning her sequined blazer and rubbing her belly in front of cheering fans. Her public reveal actually made history: It set the Guinness World Record for most tweets per second for a single event and made that year’s VMAs the most-watched broadcast in MTV’s history.
