Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter ( bee-ON-say; born September 4, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, and businesswoman. Known as "Queen Bey", she has been widely recognized for her boundary-pushing artistry, vocals, and performances. Her contributions to music and visual media and her concert performances have led her to become a prominent cultural figure of the 21st century. She was named the eighth-greatest singer of all time by Rolling Stone in 2023.Beyoncé started performing in various singing and dancing competitions as a child. She rose to fame in the late 1990s as a member of the R&B girl group Destiny's Child, one of the best-selling girl groups of all time. Their hiatus saw the release of her debut album Dangerously in Love (2003). She then released the commercially successful solo albums B'Day (2006), I Am... Sasha Fierce (2008), and 4 (2011). In the mid-to-late-2010s, after creating her own management company Parkwood Entertainment, Beyoncé's artistry achieved widespread acclaim for releasing the sonically experimental visual albums Beyoncé (2013) and Lemonade (2016), which explored multiple societal themes such as infidelity, feminism, and womanism. Following the release of the LGBT-inspired dance album Renaissance (2022), she became the first solo artist to have their first seven studio albums debut at number one in the United States. Its namesake concert run later became the highest-grossing tour of all time by a woman.Some of Beyoncé's most notable songs include "Crazy in Love", "Baby Boy", "Irreplaceable", "If I Were a Boy", "Halo", "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)", "Run the World (Girls)", "Love On Top", "Drunk in Love", "Formation", "Break My Soul", and "Cuff It." Her collaborative music ventures include Everything Is Love (2018), an album with her husband Jay-Z, as the Carters, and the musical film Black Is King (2020), inspired by the music of the film soundtrack The Lion King: The Gift (2019). Homecoming: The Live Album (2019), a project encapsulating her 2018 Coachella performance, has been heralded as one of the best live albums of all time, lauded for wide-reaching curation from many eras of black musical history. Outside of music, she has starred as an actress in multiple films such as Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), The Pink Panther (2006), Dreamgirls (2006), Cadillac Records (2008), Obsessed (2009), and The Lion King (2019).
Having sold over 200 million records worldwide, Beyoncé is one of the best-selling music artists of all time. Her accolades include 32 Grammy Awards, 26 MTV Video Music Awards (including the 2014 Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award), 24 NAACP Image Awards, 35 BET Awards, and 17 Soul Train Music Awards, all of which are more than any other artist in the music industry. Her success during the 2000s earned her recognition as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)'s Top Certified Artist of the Decade and Billboard's Top Female Artist of the Decade. In 2014, Billboard named her the highest-earning black musician of all time. She is the most successful black touring act in history according to Pollstar. Time magazine included her as one of the 100 women who defined the last century.
