When we broke the news that Beyonce had released a full length visual album under everyone’s nose in secret, there was no telling what the outcome would be from the 17-track historical release. It turns out that the more people that got wind of Beyonce’s new album release, the more people wanted to get their ears and eyes on her creation.
In fact, within the first three hours of Beyonce’s new release, the artist managed to sell 80,000 units . To put that into perspective, Britney Spears’ new album, “ Britney Jean ” which saw the artist on a two-week promotional tour, came in at number 3 and her sales are below the original projected estimates at 219,000. If Beyonce can sell 80,000 in three hours, there’s no telling what the real figures will show for her promotion-free artistic creation.
Another historical moment with the release of Beyonce’s new album was the ultimate crash of iTunes. For the first time ever, iTunes, which is offering Beyonce’s album exclusively, couldn’t handle the traffic from all of the listeners, which lead to a malfunction that saw users loading their pages for ten minutes in full.
In order to explain the release of her top secret album, Beyonce released a documentary to talk about her process while showing the fans a behind the scenes look into how she managed to pull together material for a year and a half for this particular album. In part one of the docu-series of sorts, Beyonce stated:
“I see music. It’s more than just what I hear. When I’m connected to something, I immediately see a visual or a series of images that are tied to a feeling or an emotion, a memory from my childhood, thoughts about life, my dreams or my fantasies. And they’re all connected to the music.”
Beyonce recalls watching Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and how it was an immersive event around music, which is a component that is missing from today’s industry. Beyonce’s vision included collaborations by Drake, Jay Z, Frank Ocean, her daughter Blue Ivy, and writing credits by Justin Timberlake, Miguel, and Charlift’s Carline Polachek.
A sexually charged, and lyrically more mature Beyonce, the artist now more than ever seems to be fearless and comfortable in her genre of R&B/Pop. What she was always criticized for, which was being immensely private, has finally worked in her favor.
