Beyoncé shuts down hope for Renaissance and Cowboy Carter music videos

Abandon hope, all Beyhive who enter here: there will not be any visuals to go with Renaissance or Cowboy Carter. That dream more or less died two years ago when Beyoncé neglected to release any music videos with Renaissance, and then started selling “You are the visuals, baby” t-shirts in response to fan clamor. But the singer answered the question definitively in a new interview with GQ—which was conducted by email, because much like releasing videos, Beyoncé does not sit and talk to journalists anymore. 

Here’s Bey’s explanation for foregoing the music video: “I thought it was important that during a time where all we see is visuals, that the world can focus on the voice. The music is so rich in history and instrumentation. It takes months to digest, research, and understand. The music needed space to breathe on its own.” She told GQ, “Sometimes a visual can be a distraction from the quality of the voice and the music. The years of hard work and detail put into an album that takes over four years! The music is enough. The fans from all over the world became the visual. We all got the visual on tour. We then got more visuals from my film.”

No one can deny that the most-awarded woman in Grammy history puts an excessive amount of work into all her projects. The only reason it’s really surprising there were no visuals for her most recent albums is because she pioneered the modern music video, redefining the visual album with 2013’s self-titled record, then topped herself with 2016’s Lemonade, and experimented even further with the 2020 musical film Black Is King. That’s on top of film projects like Homecoming and Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé. Perhaps she’s being honest that she wanted music like the Cowboy Carter album to simply stand on its own, or perhaps she just really didn’t want to put in all the extra effort this time around.

That’s fair enough, because she’s got nothing left to prove, and all the effort to achieve perfection and reinvention time and again must be exhausting. But Beyoncé told GQ that the work isn’t a burden—in fact, the work is liberating. “It is fame that can at times feel like prison,” she said. “So, when you don’t see me on red carpets, and when I disappear until I have art to share, that’s why.” Nevertheless, she recognizes times in her career where she’s pushed past her limits: “There aren’t many of us from the late ’90s who were taught to focus on mental health. Back then, I had little boundaries, and said yes to everything. But I’ve paid my dues a hundred times over. I have worked harder than anyone I know. And now I work smarter.”

Maybe working “smarter” means delegating effort where possible, not necessarily investing in creating an entire new visual language when she’s got other things to do (like spending time with her family or, apparently, building a whiskey brand). Beyoncé spoke about evolving as an artist as she gets older, noting to GQ that “My knee injury was an opportunity to transition into a new animal.” She explained, “I retired from the formula of the pop star a very long time ago. I stopped focusing on what’s popular, and began focusing on the qualities that get better with time and experience. Good music and strong messages will never retire.”