Beyoncé is back.
Beyoncé Knowles-Carter has announced a new album, titled Renaissance, out July 29 according to a new listing for a Renaissance CD and products on her website. Several streaming services, including TIDAL and Spotify, also announced the forthcoming Beyoncé release on social media. No further details about the new album have been released.
Rumors of a new 2022 release first started to spread online June 9 after Beyoncé removed her profile pictures across all of her social media pages, with her highly organized fanbase the Beyhive theorizing the avatars signaled new material on the horizon.
Across her extensive career, Beyoncé has maintained her position as one of the most powerful, attention-commanding performers in music, reshaping pop stardom in the process. Though she last released a proper, solo studio album in 2016 with Lemonade, her second visual album that also premiered as an HBO film of the same name, Beyoncé hasn't been quiet, working in film, fashion and contributing to other artists' projects, including a 2020 feature on rapper Megan Thee Stallion's remix of "Savage."
"By all means, she appears to be the hardest-working entertainer alive, judging by the set parameters of the industry," critic Kiana Fitzgerald wrote of Beyoncé for NPR Music. "The title 'pop star' doesn't fit anymore: Bey has weaved together an entirely new matrix of celebrity."
In March, Beyoncé opened the 2022 Academy Awards with an elaborate, neon-clad performance of her song "Be Alive," from the film King Richard, which also earned the artist her first Oscar nomination. In 2019, she curated and produced the soundtrack album, The Lion King: The Gift, for the animated remake of The Lion King. The soundtrack featured the song "Black Parade," which won a Grammy in 2021 for best R&B performance, becoming her 28th Grammy Award. The win helped Beyoncé break the record for most Grammy wins by a female artist, and earned her a tie with Quincy Jones for most Grammy wins for a performer.
In 2018 Beyoncé became the first Black woman to headline the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Later nicknamed "Beychella," the performances featured revamped, freshly arranged versions of her biggest, most beloved songs and a set that channeled the marching band culture of HBCUs (historically Black colleges and universities.) The Coachella set was featured the next year in a behind the scenes Netflix documentary on the performances, as well as on HOMECOMING: THE LIVE ALBUM. NPR Music's Sidney Madden said of the performance: "She's created an entire world to encompass the music that she's put out over the last two decades of her career."
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