Beyonce announces new album in Super Bowl commercial

AFTER days of speculation and online sleuthing by fans – just another week, in other words – Beyonce used her appearance in a Super Bowl commercial on Sunday (Feb 11) to announce that she would soon be releasing new music.

In a Verizon ad that ran shortly after halftime, Beyonce joked with comedian Tony Hale about doing something that would “break the Internet” (for example, Verizon’s 5G network). She ran through a few riffs, including “Beyonc-AI”, and a Barbie-like “Bar-bey”.

Then, she said “drop the new music” before the commercial ended. Soon after, Beyonce’s website updated with the announcement that a new album, identified as Act II, would be released on Mar 29.

It appeared to be the second part of Beyonce’s Renaissance album project, and perhaps one with a country-rock theme, given the sound and look of two new songs – Texas Hold ’Em and 16 Carriages – that quickly appeared online.

Texas Hold ’Em begins with rapid-plucked guitar and moves into a stomping beat, with Beyonce rhyming “Texas” and “Lexus” and singing lines such as “It’s a real live boogie and a real live hoedown.”

On 16 Carriages, an epic ballad, the guitars swell with organ-loud percussion as Beyonce sings about looking back at a life after losing innocence “at an early age”.

The visuals for both songs show Beyonce in cowboy hats – a feature of last year’s Renaissance World Tour and Beyonce’s continued style signature, as seen last week at the Grammy Awards.

As with the first Renaissance, the new album announcement represents a kind of shift in communication for Beyonce. She released her 2013 album, Beyonce, with no warning – instantly grabbing global attention and setting off a music-industry craze for surprise “drops”.

Its follow-up, Lemonade, in 2016, was teased by a Super Bowl appearance but still made an instantaneous splash. In the Renaissance era, Beyoncé’s revelations have been more like conventional advertisements.

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When Beyonce unveiled Renaissance in July 2022, she posted a statement on Instagram that explained it was merely part one of a “three-act project” that she recorded during the pandemic. She referred to that album as Act I and described it as “a place to dream and to find escape during a scary time for the world”.

That album, with a 1990s retro dance theme, went to No 1 and was the centrepiece of her tour last year, which sold US$580 million in tickets, according to the trade publication Pollstar – second only to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.

Beyonce dabbled in country music on Daddy Lessons on Lemonade, and a remix which featured the Chicks. She teamed with the Nashville group for a performance on the Country Music Association Awards that November, which received a mixed reception from country fans online but was vigorously defended by the singer’s loyal fans.