Beyonce and Solange at Coachella, 2014 (Global Music Tribune)
This post was originally published on January 19, 2017. It has been updated from the original.
Solange (Beyonce’s younger sister and a talented artist in her own right) performed a set at Coachella in 2014. While singing “Losing You,” off her EP “True,” Beyonce joined her little sister onstage to dance to the song.
Solange returned the favor by joining Beyonce onstage for her elder sister’s historic headlining set at Coachella 2018.
Lauryn Hill, Grammys 1999 (The Drop FM)
When Lauryn Hill’s album “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” was released in 1998, it instantly became #1 on the Billboard 200 chart, and set a record for “first-week sales by a female artist.”
Hill won Album of the Year for “Miseducation” at the 1999 Grammy Awards. The album also won four other awards; it had been nominated for 10 Grammys. Hill set another record that night both with her number of wins and nominations.
Hill was the last black woman to win the Grammy for Album of the Year.
Beyonce performs at the Grammy Awards, 2017 (Billboard)
No surprise here: Superstar/icon/QUEEN Beyonce was ranked the highest-paid woman in music for 2017 by “Forbes” for their annual Highest Paid Women in Music list. Beyonce earned $105M (!!!) in pre-tax income.
Here’s how “Forbes” arrived at this number:
We looked at pretax income from June 1, 2016 through June 1, 2017, and did not take out fees charged by agents, managers and lawyers. We gathered data from Nielsen SoundScan, Pollstar, the RIAA and interviews with industry insiders.
Beyonce has had one hell of a streak. She released her popular and critically acclaimed album “Lemonade” in April 2016. “Lemonade” handily become her sixth #1 album. Beyonce’s Formation world tour (which occurred during the timeframe) netted her “a quarter of a billion dollars.”
In personal news, she also took some time off to give birth to her twins Rumi and Sir. It’s safe to say that she would’ve earned even more without the break.
Beyonce’s earnings put her far ahead of the pack: The second-highest-paid woman in music was Adele, who earned $69M during the measured timeframe.
Beyonce’s performance at the 2017 Grammy Awards (The Fader)
It seems like almost every female celebrity is pregnant right now (and that almost all of them are pregnant with twins). But instead of lying low and taking it easy during their pregnancies, many of these women are stepping it up, and making pregnant and non-pregnant women alike look like slackers.
First case in point: Beyonce. Leave it to Queen Bey to put us all to shame. The superstar performed a set during this year’s Grammy Awards. One portion featured her leaning back in a chair perched at a very precarious angle. (I don’t know about you, but my heart was in my throat for that whole portion. And I audibly exhaled when she got off that chair.)
Beyonce had also been scheduled to perform at Coachella before withdrawing. But we can’t fault her for that, considering she’s done more while pregnant than many people do in their lives.
Serena Williams is widely acknowledged to be the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) tennis player in the world. Last month, she announced her pregnancy. When she announced the news, Williams was 20 weeks along. Someone very smart (and awesome) did the math and realized that Williams had recently played in a match while pregnant. And, as Laura Wagner at “Deadspin” put it, this wasn’t just any match:
Serena Williams won the 2017 Australian Open, her record-breaking 23rd major, without dropping a single set, while nine fucking weeks pregnant. She is the greatest of all time.
Elsewhere in entertainment, Gal Gadot has been preparing for her upcoming movie “Wonder Woman.” Last November, she shot reshoots for the movie…while also five months pregnant. And she was probably doing more than a few stunts. NBD.
It’s great that we’re seeing so many women dominate during a time in life when women traditionally have been relegated to the sidelines.
Beyonce’s Instagram pregnancy announcement, 2017 (Time)
OK, we all know that Beyonce is PREGNANT with TWINS, right? (And if that’s the first time you’re hearing this, OMG!!) The music icon announced her pregnancy on February 1st via an Instagram post on her personal account. (Later, she released an entire pregnancy photoshoot that was shot by Awol Erizku.)
As much fuss was made about Kim Kardashian breaking the Internet in 2014, Beyonce actually *did* the damn thing. Beyonce now has the most-liked photo on Instagram.
Here are some numbers to put this fact in context:
Likes on Beyonce’s 2017 Pregnancy Instagram Announcement (#): 10,468,451
Beyonce’s Instagram Followers (#): 94.8M
Pregnancy Announcement User Engagement (# of likes/# of followers): 11.04%
Number of Likes the Pregnancy Announcement Received within 30 minutes of posting: 1.2M+
Number of Likes the Pregnancy Announcement Received within 1 hour of posting: 2.4M+
Amount of time it took for the pregnancy announcement to become Instagram’s most-liked photo: Less than 8 hours
Number of Likes the Pregnancy Announcement got to become Instagram’s most-liked photo: 6.33M
Second most-liked Instagram photo of all time: Selena Gomez sipping a Coke
Number of Likes for second-most-liked Instagram photo of all time: 6.4M
Bjork Headlining Coachella, 2002 (Snakkle)
The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival (also known as…Coachella) runs over two weekends in April. Headliners were announced earlier this month, and music superstar/feminist/legend for our times Beyonce will headline each Saturday’s performance at the main Coachella stage.
Why is this significant?
Coachella festivals (#): 18
Total female headliners (#): 3
Bjork headlined in 2002 and 2007.
Unique female headliners (#): 2
Female headliners (%): 16.67%
Main stage acts (approximate #): 135
*Source: Coachella Festival line-ups page on Wikipedia
Beyonce and Solange at Coachella, 2014 (Global Music Tribune)
Solange performed a set at Coachella in 2014. While singing “Losing You,” off her EP “True,” Beyonce joined her little sister onstage to dance to the song.
Beyonce will be headlining Coachella on Saturday, Apr. 15th and 22nd.
Beyonce and Solange Knowles (ET Online)
Musicians/performers/all-around FLAWLESS women Beyonce and her sister Solange each have achieved something many artists dream of: cracking the Billboard 200 chart. And now each have achieved the distinction of having an album reach #1.
But they also sit in a rarefied strata: Beyonce and Solange are only the third pair of siblings to make the Billboard 200 chart. They’re also the only sisters to achieve this feat.
Since this is such an impressive distinction for the Knowles sisters, here are some numbers that put their joint accomplishment in perspective:
Number of Siblings Who’ve Also Scored #1 Albums: 2
Number of Siblings Who’ve Also Hit #1 in a Calendar Year: 1
Number of Times the Knowles Sisters’ Albums Have Hit #1:
Number of Times Beyonce Hit #1 With Destiny’s Child Albums: 2
Number of Solo Albums Each Knowles Sister Has Released:
2016 Album that Hit #1 for Each Knowles Sister:
Number of Units Consumed Within First Week of 2016’s Album Release (includes full albums, streaming- and track-equivalents):
Number of Sales Within First Week of 2016’s Album Release:
Best-Selling Album for Each Knowles Sister:
Solange, ‘True’ (The Jewel Wicker Show)
It’s no secret I’m a fan of Beyonce. I’ve seen her three times in concert (The Mrs. Carter Tour 2013, On the Run 2014, and Formation 2016) because I think she’s one of the performers we’ll tell our grandkids about.
I also really like Solange, Beyonce’s sister. And the release of her new album “A Seat at the Table has led me to revisit “True,” her 2012 EP. The above still is from her song of the same name, which Solange filmed in Cape Town, South Africa with members of Les Sape Society. The entire video is beautiful, so definitely watch it if you haven’t yet. The EP’s excellent, too.
Singer Rihanna performs “Umbrella” at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards in Las Vegas September 9, 2007. Rihanna won the award for Monster Single of the Year for the song. REUTERS/Mike Blake (UNITED STATES)
When the nominees for MTV’s Video Music Awards (VMAs) were announced earlier this summer, acclaimed rapper Nicki Minaj pointed out the glaring absence of women of color in the Video of the Year category. She had a point: The video for her song “Anaconda” broke VEVO viewing records, racking up 19.6M+ views in 24 hours, and propelled a huge cultural impact. (I know you know of at least one person who dressed in one of Nicki’s outfits for Halloween.) To have Minaj’s video snubbed ignores all of those not-insignificant achievements.
I had a sneaking suspicion that the numbers were pretty dismal, not just for women performers of color, but also for women performers in general. I wanted to see exactly how skewed the numbers were, so I looked up the data.
First, some context:
31: Years the Video of the Year Award has been presented (this year will be the 32nd)
69: Number of solo musicians who’ve been nominated
16: Number of solo musicians who’ve won
67: Number of groups who’ve been nominated (including feature artists, not counting 2015 nominees)
15: Number of groups who’ve won (including feature artists)
Let’s look at the stats of the women:
13: years where women solo artists or groups won
0: years after the award began that the first woman artist was nominated (Cyndi Lauper in 1984, nominated during the Award’s first year)
6: years after the Award began that the first woman artist won (Sinead O’Connor in 1990)
4: times Madonna has been nominated
1: time Madonna has won (1998)
And the stats of women of color:
9: years after the Award began that a female group of color was nominated (En Vogue in 1993)
11: years after the Award began that a female group of color won (TLC in 1995)
1: times a women of color group won (TLC in 1995)
1: time Missy Elliott has been a double-nominee in the category (2001)
2: winners that have won twice (Missy Elliott in 2001 and 2003, Rihanna in 2007 and 2012)
1: time that Beyoncé has won (2009)
2: times that Beyoncé has been nominated, not counting her 2015 nomination (2007 and 2009)
You don’t have to be a math genius to see that Minaj was correct about the institutional bias in the music industry with regards to awards, and that this should not be tolerated.
This year’s VMAs will air on Sunday, Aug. 30th.
Sex & Stats: Where Numbers Come to Bang 