Arguably, Beyoncé has become the biggest popstar in the world. While Taylor Swift and Adele might just overtake her in sales, no one has a bigger cultural impact and holds more musical significance than Beysus does today.
When we were first introduced to the Houston-born singer in Destiny's Child in the '90s, no-one could have anticipated that Beyoncé would go on to have one of the most successful solo careers of all time. But what are the stories behind the hits that made Beyoncé the Queen B? We've delved deep into the archives to find out the surprising stories behind six of her songs…
1. 'Crazy In Love' was inspired by Beyoncé's reflection
Released in the summer of 2003, 'Crazy In Love' charted at No.1 on both the UK Official Singles Chart and the Billboard Hot 100 and has since sold well over 6 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling singles of all time.
Rich Harrison, the song's producer, recalls how, when he initially played the song's beat, none of his friends got it. Harrison decided to add a horn sample from Chi-Lites' 1970 song 'Are You My Woman? (Tell Me So)', and added some other instrumentation, all of which he played. However, he was still reluctant to play the demo for anyone. "I hadn't really shopped it much, because sometimes you don't want to come out of the bag before it's right. People don't really get it and you'll leave them with a foul taste in their mouth. So it was just something that I held on to until I got the call from B," he said to MTV.
Expecting Beyoncé to be a bit easy in the studio, Harrison decided to head out clubbing, and rocked up to the session the following day late and hungover. "I knew I was going to have to sell it a little bit," he recalled, after initially playing Beyoncé the song, "because when it comes on it doesn't sound like anything that was being done at the time." Beyoncé loved the idea, and gave Harrison two hours to write the song fully.
Legend goes that the song's title and main hook comes from Bey catching herself in the reflection of the studio glass and saying, "I look so crazy right now." This serendipitous moment gave way to Harrison's two-hour songwriting blitz, writing the verses, the book while leaving the bridges for Beyoncé.
Beyoncé's then boyfriend (and later husband) Jay Z dropped by the studio at a later date and wrote his rap interjection in less than 10 minutes.
Explaining the song in a Making Of… special, Beyonce said that the song was about "the first step of a relationship right before you let go, and you're still conscious of the things that you're doing. You're like, 'God, I'm looking crazy, I'm playing myself, I'm doing things that I would never do.' But you kind of don't care because you're falling in love with him; his love just got you buggin'."
But why is 'Crazy in Love' so undeniable? Beyoncé puts it all down to the hook. "It's the horn hook," she said, "It has this go-go feel to it, this old-school feel. I wasn't sure if people were going to get it."
Luckily, people did get it, as 'Crazy In Love' was the only song to chart at the No.1 spot in both the UK and the US in 2003.
2. 'If I Were A Boy' is about a bad experience with pizza
The lead single from Beyoncé's third solo album I Am…Sasha Fierce, 'If I Were A Boy' was the first Beyoncé song to debut at No.1 in the UK without having a featured artist and outside of Destiny's Child. The song was also the only track on I Am… that doesn't feature a co-write from Beyoncé.
BC Jean and Toby Gad wrote the song, with most of the lyrics stemming from a negative experience that Jean had with an ex-partner and, well, pizza. While her and Toby were walking through Times Square in New York, Jean claimed that she wished she were a boy so that she didn't have to worry about eating a slice of pizza (she was off carbs at the time). This prompted a discussion between the pair. "[Toby] was like, 'What else would you do if you were a boy?' And I was going through a really hard break-up with my first real love, so I said, 'I'd be a better man than my ex-boyfriend!'"
The pair rushed to a recording studio to lay down the track, as Jean recalls: "[Toby] had a guitar part. We recorded it that day; it was so simple. I remember Toby looking at me and going, 'We just wrote a smash.' I thought he was crazy. I was like, 'Really?'"
Initially, Jean - who was a struggling artist trying to get signed at the time - thought that the song was going to be for her debut album. However, after losing out on a record deal, it seems that her co-writer had other plans for the track.
It came as a bit of a shock when it ended up on Beyoncé's album. "At first I was confused, because I never thought of myself as writing songs for other people," Jean explained to the Hartford Courant. "I had always written for myself and was trying to get signed and do the whole artist thing as well. It's an amazing compliment, but I was like, 'That's great, but it's going to be on my album!'"
Initially, Beyoncé apparently stealing one of her songs perturbed Jean. Taking to MySpace, she wrote candidly that, "I have been reading some of these comments and to set the record straight from the horse's mouth – IF I WERE A BOY is my song; YES, I wrote this song; It is my story; a painful one, and the song is very dear to me. You can hear the original version on my myspace site."
Ultimately, a deal was brokered between Camp Bey and BC Jean, with the latter accepting that she hadn't quite understood how publishing rights worked. "Having someone like Beyoncé record your song about an ex-boyfriend, kinda makes it the best break-up ever," she said to AOL. "It started off as a simple therapeutic writing session and it turned into the best thing that ever happened to me."
While Beyoncé's then manager, her father Mathew Knowles, felt that the song was a hit, the singer herself felt trepidatious about recording it. However, after being inspired by the likes of Aretha Franklin and Etta James while starring in the film Cadillac Records, she decided to give it a go. "I remember Aretha Franklin said a great singer can sing anything and make it her own," she recalled in an interview with Essence magazine. "Etta expressed herself; she was bold. That inspired me to do a lot of things musically that no-one else is doing."
And thus, Beyoncé's rendition of 'If I Were A Boy' came to fruition.
3. Was 'Halo' really meant for Leona Lewis?
It's a truth universally acknowledged that Beyoncé will close her live sets with 'Halo' for the rest of eternity, until Ryan Tedder recalls the publishing rights and forces Beyoncé to swap it out for 'All Night' in the year 2056 (this is a fact). But seriously, 'Halo' is that Beyoncé song; it's the one that everyone from your nan to your 4-year-old niece knows, loves to sing along to and have a mini-cry at.
The song itself was written by Evan Bogart and Ryan Tedder, from the band OneRepublic, with the aim to capture something similar to Ray LaMontagne's 'Shelter'. At the time, Ryan had ruptured his Achilles tendon and had been forced to cut short a OneRepublic Tour. "On [Ryan's] first day back in LA I was going to take over some food and hang out with him. When I got there, he was like, 'Dude, we should write. We should write a song,' and I'm like, 'Well, you're not supposed to be writing. You're supposed to be in bed'," Bogart recalled to Singersroom. "Eventually we ended up in his studio and, with him on crutches, we wrote 'Halo' in three hours."
Tedder recalls the session saying that Beyoncé had specifically requested a song from him. "I had this idea for a patch of this weird choir of angels thing, started playing it and within three hours we had 'Halo'," he said.
Refuting claims that Beyoncé 'steals' writing credits for songs, Tedder told The Guardian that 'Halo' actually had a different bridge, that was ultimately scrapped. "Basically, she came in, ditched that, edited it, did her vocal thing on it and now it's become one of my favourite parts of the song," he said. "The whole melody, she wrote it spontaneously in the studio. So her credit on that song stems from that."
Also, remember that rumour that 'Halo' was originally meant for Ms. Leona Lewis? Well, Mr. Tedder debunked that in an interview with Key 103's In:Demand.
"What happened was that Beyoncé waited long enough to record that song that I had no communication with her and didn't know if she was going to do it or not," Tedder explained. "I thought this would be a brilliant first single for Leona, which it would have. When you have a song as special as 'Halo', you don't want anyone else to sit on it. So sometimes you have to pull the whole, 'Well, I'm going to get someone else on it', to prove a point.
"What I did was foolishly say to Leona's camp, 'I have it on hold for another A-list artist and I'm pretty sure they'll take it, but if they don't, I just want to know if you like it enough to consider it.'
"I sent it to them and they flipped on it. They loved it and instantly said they wanted to do it. I was like, 'Wait, wait, wait, no, it's not free yet! It's just in case'."
Well, let that be a lesson to you Ryan Tedder.
4. 'Sweet Dreams' was initially a Beautiful Nightmare
In what would be the first of multiple leaks of Beyoncé's music - something that would force her hand and lead to her "digital drop" - 'Sweet Dreams' appeared eight whole months before the release of I Am…Sasha Fierce.
The track was initially called 'Beautiful Nightmare' and was co-written by James Scheffer, Wayne Wilkins, Rico Love and, of course, Beyoncé herself. Upon its leak, the track actually charted on Billboard's Hot Dance Club Songs chart at No. 45 after heavy radio play. When will your faves?
When the song leaked, Beyoncé decided to acknowledge it on her website. "Yesterday, Beautiful Nightmare, a demo I've been working on for possible inclusion on my next album, leaked on some websites," she wrote. "I want to thank all my fans for the positive response to the song, but I want to tell you that this is just a work in progress. It is not my time to put out new music."
The song's co-writer, Rico Love, recalled the leak to MTV, saying that it was "frustrating". "I was more concerned that she would feel that we did it," he said.
However, he did remember what it was like working with Bey. "Aw man, that was the experience of a lifetime working with one of the greatest vocalists of all time," he said. "She came in and cut the song in a hour. She had to go. Jay Z was opening up the tour with Mary J. Blige and B came in. She wasn't prepared to record, but heard the song and said, 'Let's do it.' It's actually my background vocals in the hook. She liked the way it sounded so we kept it."
Ultimately, 'Sweet Dreams' would become the sixth single from I Am…Sasha Fierce, a last-minute decision in order to capitalise on the upbeat nature of summer. "It's very rare to find an up-tempo song that means something," Beyoncé said to Giant, "that's not just about going to a club or partying or being a sexy girl."
5. 'Drunk In Love' was written while Beyoncé was actually getting drunk
While 'Drunk In Love' wasn't meant to be the lead single off of Beyoncé's self-titled visual album, the way the record was released and the fact that radio execs were just sent the whole record to pick the songs they wanted to play, meant that sheer popularity forced the track into public consciousness.
In a making-of video uploaded to YouTube, Beyoncé said that she wrote about 80 songs for the project. "[I]t was the songs that were more effortless for me that stuck around that I still love that I loved a year ago when I recorded them," she said. When it came to 'Drunk in Love', she explained how they recorded the song with producers Details and Timbaland while drinking little D'Usse (that's cognac). "I kind of freestyled the verse, and Jay went in and he started flowing out his verse...we just kinda had a party," she recalled. "It was so great, because it wasn't about any ego, we weren't trying to make a hit record... we were just having fun... and I think you can hear that in the record."
There was some contention, however, about who actually wrote the song. Firstly, the rapper Future claimed that he and producer Details came up with the song. "I demoed the song with the producer. I demoed it first for her to listen to," he said. "I guess she had done the record and she was saving the record."
Future claims that his song, 'Good Morning', which features a similar medley to Bey's 'Drunk In Love', was pushed to the sidelines and ultimately cut from his album Honest because of the drama. "I was like, 'What I'mma do with 'Good Morning' now? This one of our favourite songs," he said, before claiming that Details never really got back to him about what they were going to do with the song.
The next claim would come from Hungarian folk singer, Monika Miczura Juhasz, who actually sued Beyoncé, Jay Z and Timberland. She claimed that the song featured elements of recorded music from 1995. However, the case was thrown out of court.
6. 'Daddy Lessons' is Beyoncé's life
Okay, we know that 'Daddy Lessons' might not be one of Bey's biggest hits, and we're sure that it might not even end up being a single from Lemonade, the singer's second visual album and sixth studio album overall. However, that doesn't stop the story behind the song being an interesting one.
In fact, 'Daddy Lessons' is probably the biggest sonic departure for Beyoncé in her entire career - the song is a southern country track, that follows the narrative songwriting style that country music so often favours.
The track was originally written by Kevin Cossom and Wynter Gordon. Cossom recalls how the pair were in a condo in Miami when the song was written. "Wynter just wanted to do something from scratch. I called over a good friend of mine, Alex Delicata, who is also co-producer and writer. He played the guitar, wrote it and we pretty much pressed record on the laptop and sang it down - harmonies, stomping and clapping, and that was the vibe," he recalled to Billboard. "We knew that we had something. Wynter wanted to take it to Bey. She wanted to keep it just as organic, as simple as possible. That situation was an awesome session as far as us being free, open and organic and not being contrived to what we think radio is looking for."
Gordon, who now goes by the name Diana Gordon, explained to Entertainment Weekly that while she didn't have a father growing up, she wrote the song as a kind of fantasy, something that Beyoncé vibes off. "When I played it for her, I was like, 'This is one of my favorite songs.' She was like, 'This is my life.' I told her, 'You know what, take it, do what you want with it.' She went and re-produced it, she changed some words, added the bridge, it's hers."
In fact, Gordon was honest about working with Bey, saying that when it came to songs the Houston-born singer was like a "scientist of songs". "I've never seen anyone work the way she works," she explained. "She definitely changes the song structures. She can take two songs, say, 'I like two lines, I like the melody then let me use that for a verse and a bridge and write the whole middle.' It's more of a collaboration. You never know what she'll like."
