Today, Beyoncé Knowles dropped her latest album, Lemonade. This is the latest accomplishment in a long list that includes everything from gracing the cover of Time magazine’s 100 most powerful people to starring in seven films, marrying none other than Jay-Z, touring the world, topping the charts, and giving birth to a beautiful baby girl. Let’s face it; when it comes to Beyoncé’s achievements, her list of feats is about as endless as her list of super-human talents.
Here, we honor the world-conquering diva with a review of the top nine times Beyoncé’s female-empowerment anthems have left us with a little extra swagger in our step.
In case there were any doubts, women can work it as well as men can. In fact, according to Bey, the female race is just a group of unstoppable, flawless goddesses.
The song’s hook, along with an excerpt from a TED Talk by Nigerian feminist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie about how society places limits on the ambitions of women, has transformed the ballad from a pop tune into a cultural mantra for women everywhere.
Destiny’s Child’s 2001 hit ‘Bootylicious’ became such an important expression in pop culture that the word actually entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2004 as an adjective meaning “shapely and sexually attractive”.
Single Ladies (Put a Ring on it) is widely considered to be the anthem of un-attached females. Queen Bey preaches that, if your man wants you in his life, he should make it official, and if he doesn’t want to commit, then someone better will.
In this ballad, Beyoncé makes a powerful commentary on gender-related behavior – highlighting what men get wrong in their treatment of women.
