Beyoncé Never Left R&B, Despite What Many Fans Think

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Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” tour finale with a surprise Destiny’s Child reunion has left fans in an absolute uproar.

The trio that redefined girl groups for decades reunited in Las Vegas last Saturday. Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams, dressed in matching golden chaps, joined the superstar on stage to perform songs like “Lose My Breath” and “Bootylicious.”

Their reunion is the first time the group has performed on stage since 2018, when Beyoncé headlined Coachella. Seeing the group reunite on stage, harmonizing and glimmering under the lights, looking like they did in their prime, has left fans feeling several waves of nostalgia. Many are speculating and hoping that Beyoncé’s Act III album to be a new DC album. Other fans have gone as far to say how much they miss Beyoncé’s older music and want her to tap back into that sound altogether.

It is not very surprising, fans of the multi-Grammy Award winner have often stated that with many of her newer projects, she has strayed much too far from her roots in Rhythm and Blues and Pop. I mean, that is where she got her start as an artist when she was in DC4 with hits like “Say My Name,” “Bills, Bills, Bills,” and with DC3’s popular “Survivor,” “Independent Women,” and eventually going solo and becoming one of the world’s most renowned entertainers.

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It is a criticism that many musical greats have received in their lifetime at least once in their career. In 1996, after the release of his 19th studio album “Emancipation,” Prince said several critics and fans expressed whether he would ever match the success of previous albums such as “Purple Rain,” an album that came out nearly over a decade beforehand at the time.

“Purple Rain and that whole situation, that was a time period,” Prince said in a 1997 interview with MTV, “The Beatles are never gonna capture what they did in the beginning if they continue working. If we all continue working, we all continue growing.”

Whitney Houston received criticism throughout her career regarding her pop-genre sound in music, despite her soulful roots in gospel and R&B, which was reflected in her music. In 1989, the artist was booed by awardgoers due to her music not sounding “authentically black”— whatever that may mean.

Even the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, received relentless judgment for branching out of his signature sound that deemed him the King title in the first place. In 1995, after the release of Jackson’s “History: Past, Present, Future” double album, Rolling Stone writer James Hunter called the album “odd” and Jackson desperately trying to regain his glory years.

“‘HIStory’ unfolds in Jackson’s outraged response to everything he has encountered in the last year or so,” Hunter said in the article. “It makes for an odd, charmless second chapter to a first that includes miraculous recordings like “Billie Jean,” “The Way You Make Me Feel,” “Black or White,” and “Beat It.”

But, as the message Beyoncé had stated by the great country vocalist Linda Martell across her latest project “Cowboy Carter” says: “Genres are a funny little concept, aren’t they?”

There is no point in noting that the superstar has been in the music industry for well over three decades, and with a vast career such as hers, she’s allowed to experiment with her sound and grow. Or how an artist such as Queen Bey has always redefined genres, such as her greatest predecessors like Prince, Michael Jackson, Tina Turner or Diana Ross, to name a few.

What it truly boils down to is that many fans who claim that Beyoncé has strayed too far from her R&B roots have not even given her newer music a fighting chance. But many of these “fans” probably have not listened to an album since “B’Day” or “I Am… Sasha Fierce.”

So, we will make it easy for you. Here is a compiled playlist of 10 songs Beyoncé has released over the last decade or so that stand under the umbrella of R&B and Pop, but still showcase magnification and growth in her musical career.

1. XO — Beyoncé (2013)

2. Sandcastles — Lemonade (2016)

3. All Night — Lemonade (2016)

4. OTHERSIDE— The Lion King: The Gift (2019)

5. Make Me Say It Again — Ronald Isley & Beyoncé 2022

6. PLASTIC OFF THE SOFA — RENAISSANCE (2022)

7. VIRGO'S GROOVE — RENAISSANCE (2022)

8. II HANDS II HEAVEN — COWBOY CARTER (2024)

9. PROTECTOR — COWBOY CARTER (2024)