At the end of the day, the most important question surrounding the 2024 Democratic National Convention was: Where the hell is Beyoncé?
Answer: Not at the DNC.
To be clear, the idea of the planet’s greatest performer and arguably the biggest pop star showing up at Chicago’s United Center and playing a song to a sea of political dorks and lawmakers is, no doubt, far-fetched. But it didn’t come out of nowhere. All the clues were there. Or, at least, many people – including the media reporting the event – thought so.
The rumor mill started on Thursday afternoon, with an internal post that promised something huge. “If you thought the Oprah surprise was big, wait,” said a since-deleted post from an anonymous X user. Given Oprah’s gravitational pull on the culture, the list of those who might surpass her is, at most, 10 or more names long.
Beyonce Knowles is one of the few people in the world who is older than Oprah. While there was some requisite speculation about Taylor Swift, the fact that Harris was using Bey’s song “Freedom” in the campaign meant election-watchers and fans alike began to speculate that the singer was a secret VIP. There were reports from people inside the arena that the band was in the conference room Beyonce’s song was being used In the evening after the sound check, Journalists Note that the podium was set up for someone special!
As a whisper of a very famous and exciting guest who must have been Beyoncé, White House political director Amy Ruiz posted a bee emoji around 4:30 p.m. Bey calls her fans the Beyhive and Ruiz’s bee post throws gasoline on the fire. It’s Gotham City’s equivalent of lighting up the sky with Bat Signals.
Surely Bay was coming! (Later Ruiz claimed (who posted his 6-year-old bee.)
Then came the seemingly final confirmation: TMZ reported That Beyonce was going to show. While your mileage may vary on how TMZ reports deaths and arrests (generally talking to hospital staff and cops who shouldn’t leak that kind of personal information), they’re rarely wrong.
Sleuths then allegedly began piecing together more of the puzzle. Chicks, fellow Texans with whom Beyoncé has collaborated, were on the schedule. Like Pink, the singer was also obsessed with aerial tricks and adult gymnastics Once performed with Beyonce In a Pepsi ad. It was also on the docket Colin AllredHarris, a Democrat running for Senate from Bay’s home state, is speaking just a few slots ahead of the main event. People from Texas, ex-collaborators, ah yes, it all makes sense if you curl up tight enough and play Six Degrees of Separation: Beyoncé’s version.
Perhaps the most convincing connection is that supporting Kamala Harris seems to do something similar to Beyoncé. If Harris wins, she will be the first woman to become president and only the second person of color in history to ever hold the nation’s highest office. It’s a political and historical milestone that aligns itself with Beyoncé’s art and her lyrics about the strengths and weaknesses of being a black woman. He has endorsed multiple Democratic candidates in the recent past – from Barack Obama through Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden – and played at President Obama’s event. Inaugural Ball In 2009 and Inauguration In 2013.
Beyoncé’s cultural and political evolution over the past decade of her career has made her a legendary figure. Even more specifically, starting with liberation the renaissance In 2022, Singer is carefully building his work around a key concept: What is America? And more, what does it sound like? Who does it belong to?
Tap into house music in 2022 and then country this year Cowboy CarterBay highlights two distinctly American inventions and underlines how black men and women are integral to both genres. He’s challenging notions of America and reinventing it with every question and every song. What could be more emblematic of Beyoncé’s Americana than the nation’s first black, biracial, female president? What could be more on-brand than Beyoncé’s “Freedom,” singing the Harris-Walz campaign and introducing Kamala Harris?
Throughout the evening, while NBC and other outlets breathlessly speculated on the possibility that Beyoncé was just around the corner, Peacock spoke to audience representatives who seemed convinced. Just as the country went completely Bay-Pill, and the clock approached 10:30 CT — just before Kamala Harris accepted the nomination — the rumor was dispelled.
Harris received a video introduction, and Beyonce’s publicist “Don’t rumour,” she posted on Instagram. The Hollywood Reporter Also received a denial at about 10:15 pm ET. For Beyoncé fans and perhaps some independent voters, it would have been nice if the DNC or said publicist had broken the rumors hours earlier instead of blurting out Bey’s performance so close that we could savor it.
At this point, it might be helpful to remember that the point of the DNC, technically, isn’t to have a Beyoncé concert, but rather to introduce the country to the woman who wants to be president. And for a few hours, it seemed that both would happen! Still, the X account tells what this whole mess is all about Sorry for the erroras does TMZ.
