Good Bad Billionaire: Beyonce

10:53Zing Tsjeng:That's fascinating, isn't it? So they didn't think they were going to be a big enough deal to micromanage them. So they let them kind of do their to do their own thing. And the album thing is interesting because in the mid 90s, mid to late 90s, album sales are still where a lot of the money comes from. It's huge. It's huge. It's not like now you get one streaming or two streaming hits, whatever. Album sales were kind of like the bulk of your earnings.

11:14Simon Jack:Well, in 1999, Destiny's Child took that artistic freedom and they brought out an album which became critically acclaimed, something called The Writings on the Wall. Do you know any songs from this era?

11:25Zing Tsjeng:I think, am I right in saying that Say My Name is on this album? Absolutely. Oh, there we go.

11:30Simon Jack:So Say My Name, Jumping, Jumping, Bills, Bills, Bills.

11:34Zing Tsjeng:Okay.

11:34Simon Jack:hugely influential pop songs, which actually great music videos that still stand up.

11:39Zing Tsjeng:Okay. And it sold 8 million copies, three number one singles. But often with these kind of confected pop bands in a way, the band was actually at war. So members Latavia and Latoya filed a lawsuit against Beyonce's dad and the group alleging he stole their money and threw them out of the group when they tried to seek new personal terms. In fact, they only found out They'd been sacked when they watched the video for Say My Name and saw two new members lip syncing to their voices. Ouch. Oh, that is brutal, isn't it? This is a bit like the guy who played Darth Vader who didn't realise that his voice had been replaced by James Earl Jones until he actually saw the film.

12:16Simon Jack:That's got to hurt.

12:17Zing Tsjeng:Anyway, but Matthew said the allegations are totally untrue. He also said he owned the name Destiny's Child as a Texas corporation. And therefore, he could decide who the members are. Perhaps legally, that's right. The lawsuit was settled out of court later that year.

12:30Simon Jack:So by the third album, there were just three members of Destiny's Child, the ones that we all know, Beyonce, Kelly, a new girl called Michelle, and their 2001 album, Survivor, was Beyonce's very first number one album. The title and the lyrics were actually about the band's turmoil. So there's a line in there that says, you thought I wouldn't sell without you, sold nine million. I always thought when I was growing up that that was about a nasty ex-boyfriend who didn't believe in Beyonce or the rest of the girls. But actually, it's about all this internal struggle going on within the band at the time.

13:03Simon Jack:And also by that point, by the way, there was no denying this was the Beyonce show. She was front and center. She was also getting major writing and production credits on the album, which we know from the Taylor Swift episode is so crucial to making money. And Survivor sold 10 million. That's a lot. But it's always tricky to find out exactly how much money artists are making from their music.

13:23Zing Tsjeng:Yeah. In 2016, entertainment website The Jasmine Brand reported on the terms of the original deal. Destiny's Child signed with Sony. Apparently, they got an$85 ,000 advance for the first album. The second album, they would get between$350 ,000 and$700 ,000. Similar amounts for the third and so on. And their royalty rates were set at 28 % for the first album. But the rates would rise if an album sold over 500 ,000 copies. However, and this is fairly standard, all the money the label paid to cover producer fees and promotion marketing would be recouped by Sony from the album profits.

13:54Simon Jack:So we don't know if the advances were split equally. Latavia and Latoya have claimed that they weren't. But it's hard to be at the stage sure if Beyonce had personally made a million. And in order to do that, Beyonce needs to go solo. So at the end of 2001, Destiny's Child announces a hiatus. She's only 21 at this stage. She's on her own. And Beyonce releases a collaboration with a rapper, the man who would later on become her husband, Jay-Z. And according to Beyonce, she was not flush with cash at the beginning of their relationship. She says, we used calling cards and Skype when we were falling in love.

14:30Simon Jack:I couldn't afford the international hotel bills, so I would literally get international calling cards to call him.

14:36Zing Tsjeng:Okay, famously expensive, those phone calls from your hotel room. At this point, though, Beyonce started diversifying her revenue stream. Now, that sounds all very businesslike in my comfort zone. She's starting to cash in on sponsorship. She replaced Britney Spears as the face of Pepsi. She's dipping her tone to acting. She starred in an MTV made-for-TV film Carmen, a hip-hopperer, grown. And then the big screen is Foxy Cleopatra in Austin Powers' Gold Member. I don't remember that.

15:05Simon Jack:I remember this. And she also did a song for it from memory. Did she? A song which is quite good, I think, but, you know, forgot into the mists of time.

15:13Zing Tsjeng:But things are about to get really big for her.

15:15Simon Jack:Exactly. So things exploded in 2003 when she released her debut solo album, Dangerously in Love. It debuted at number one in the States. It earned her five Grammy Awards. And it was a truly global hit. In fact, she became the first female artist and the fifth artist ever to simultaneously top both the singles charts and the album charts in the US and the UK. That is really, really difficult. And most importantly for Beyonce's journey to a billion, Dangerously in Love became one of the best-selling albums of the 21st century. So between this, the acting jobs, the Pepsi gig, it feels fair to say that Beyonce is a millionaire in 2003 at the age of 22.

15:56Zing Tsjeng:Just 22.

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17:55Simon Jack:OK, so Beyonce is now a millionaire and next up we're going to track her journey onto a billion.

18:01Zing Tsjeng:But you've got a long way to go to get from a million to a billion. A billion is a thousand million for new listeners, just to remind you of that. So as much as we love them, well, we both love the music. I think you know it better than I. We're going to have to fast forward to the next few albums, which are? B-Day. Is it short for Birthday or Beyonce Day?

18:19Simon Jack:Well, I think both, actually.

18:20Zing Tsjeng:Okay, got it.

18:21Simon Jack:Then there's I Am, dot, dot, dot, Sasha Fierce and Four. And I think you will know the big hits from this.

18:28Zing Tsjeng:I want to say Single Lady, Crazy in Love, we're not there yet, are we?

18:32Simon Jack:No, we are. So, Singles from the Albums Irreplaceable, you know that one?

18:37Zing Tsjeng:You will probably Don't hum it, for copyright reasons, we mustn't sort of go there because we'll get sued or probably.

18:43Simon Jack:Exactly, so Irreplaceable, Ring the Alarm

18:47Zing Tsjeng:Single Ladies Now that, I do know, I love that tune and also I think it was one of the standout videos of all time.

18:55Simon Jack:Exactly Yeah. If I Were a Boy?

18:58Zing Tsjeng:No.

18:59Simon Jack:Run the World, Girls?

19:01Zing Tsjeng:Like I say, you know, if you sang it, which you're not allowed to, I'm getting a massive F on this one. But lots of people did know them and they sold tons.

19:09Simon Jack:Yeah. So we can say that they amassed over 75 million album sales worldwide.

19:15Zing Tsjeng:That's astonishing. But we're interested also in Beyonce, the businesswoman, and she has said men often have the luxury of being perceived as a strategist, the brains behind their ventures. They're given the space to focus on the product, the team, the business plan. Women, on the other hand, especially those in the limelight, are frequently pigeonholed into being the face of the brand or the marketing tool. Interesting quote.

19:37Simon Jack:So let's jump to 2008 when she founds a company called Parkwood Entertainment, which is named after the street that the Nose Big White House had been on. So Parkwood is her kind of in-house production and management company. It produces the tours, the music, the films, the documentaries that will follow this move. And it also fronts most of the production costs. But this means it allows her to retain more back-end revenue. She's no longer having the record label siphon it off. And so this decision was part one in Beyonce becoming an independent woman.

20:07Zing Tsjeng:Yeah. So again, that thing we've talked about before about very few people were going to write you a check just to do something like a salary or, you know, well done for doing this. You need to own the company like Oprah did with her production company. Part two of what you just said was part one came in 2011 when she announced that her father, Matthew, was no longer her manager. Now, according to Beyonce's press release, they had spit amicably. She said, I've only parted ways with my father on a business level. He is my father for life and I love my dad dearly. But a few months later, this version of Vents was called into question somewhat when Matthew filed a lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment for turning his daughter against him.

20:47Simon Jack:Now, Matthew claimed that he was fired by Beyonce. He alleged this was because Live Nation Entertainment had told her he'd stolen money from her, as in his own daughter, quite the allegation. So Beyonce had to then get a lawyer to conduct an audit, which allegedly concluded that Matthew had indeed taken money.

21:04Zing Tsjeng:Now, we should say that Matthew, her dad, completely denied taking any money from his daughter and argued that Live Nation was lying with the goal of getting rights to Beyonce's tour, something Live Nation denied. Ultimately, the lawsuit didn't seem to go anywhere. Live Nation and Beyonce did not publicly comment on it. But probably worth noting, this was also around the same time that Matthew conceived a child with another woman during an 18-month affair, which led to him and Tina divorcing. I don't know if this contributed, but, you know, it probably didn't help. You know, tensions were clearly running high.

21:35Simon Jack:And this moment, I think, feels like a real turning point for Beyonce because she's about to turn 30 years old. Big moment in anybody's life. She makes herself CEO of Parkwood Entertainment and she starts managing herself. She said, I felt like I wanted to follow the footsteps of Madonna and be a powerhouse and have my own empire and show other women when you get to this point in your career, you don't have to go sign with someone else and share your money and your success. You do it yourself. And just weeks after parting with her father, she releases a song that I mentioned, Run the World Girls.

22:07Zing Tsjeng:Okay. But business had to be put on hold the next year. Beyonce had a miscarriage, describing it as the saddest thing I've ever been through. Beyonce and Jay-Z, by the We had married in 2008. And interestingly, in the modern world, no photographs of the wedding were leaked, which shows how impressively tight a lid they kept on that relationship. And she gave birth to her first daughter, Blue Ivy Carter, in 2012. And she described becoming a mother as the biggest accomplishment of my life. She would have twins five years later, by the way.

22:36Simon Jack:So shortly after Blue Ivy was born, Beyonce filed an application to trademark her daughter's name. This began a legal battle that has been going on ever since involving objections from a wedding planner. There was also a clothing brand who already held that name. According to Jay-Z, the reason was people wanted to make products based on our child's name. And you don't want anybody trying to benefit off your baby's name.

22:59Zing Tsjeng:No, if anyone's going to do that, it's going to be me. That's right. Shay to the Beckhams here.

23:04Simon Jack:Oh, yeah, definitely. or other kind of showbiz family dynasties where you can tell mum and dad are angling for their child to get into the same business. And I think you can definitely see that. The most recent Met Gala, we saw Blue Ivy on the red carpet next to her mum.

23:19Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, I think you should trademark your name. It's really cool. Maybe. I'm not sure. Before anyone else does it first. I'm not sure it might be trademarkable. But like many mothers, particularly driven ones like Beyonce, she got back to work very quickly. Four months after giving birth, She performed four consecutive shows in Atlantic City and said that was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Rehearsal started three months after I gave birth. I was nervous that I wouldn't feel the same. I think a lot of people coming back from childbirth think that. And when I still feel the need to work just as hard and I still felt the same release, I was like, OK.

23:51Simon Jack:Well, 2013 is the year that Beyonce went stratospheric. She performed at the Super Bowl halftime show in front of 110 million viewers.

24:00Zing Tsjeng:People don't know about American football. the halftime Super Bowl show is one of the biggest set pieces in the global entertainment calendar. You know, people like Michael Jackson famously did it and caused a sensation. Always a subject of great cultural, you know, debate and analysis. For example, when Bad Bunny did it recently, it was a political storm.

24:21Simon Jack:So it's a big deal, right? Exactly. Well, artists actually, and this is interesting, they're not paid a performance fee for the halftime show, But she had actually just re-signed with Pepsi for an estimated 50 million, which included a half-time commercial. And Forbes described this deal as an unconventional multi-year deal because Beyonce would have an element of creative control with a multi-million dollar fund to support the singer's chosen creative projects, presumably including the Super Bowl.

24:49Zing Tsjeng:Yeah. So every part of your Beyonce's life now is a product in a way. And that year she wrote, produced and directed and starred, of course, in a documentary called Life is But a Dream. And she's always stressed her hands on approach. She was actually on Final Cut Pro, that software which you use to edit video. She said, I spent a year editing. I went through hundreds of shows worth of footage. And that experience taught me to love the filmmaking process. So, you know, an early adopter then of this kind of self-execing, you know, I'm thinking of Taylor Swift here as well.

25:21Simon Jack:Exactly. The Beckhams have done it recently as well. I know some documentary filmmakers who actually hate this kind of form of documentary filmmaking because they say if the talent or the subject gets to make the show, it's not really going to be truthful.

25:34Zing Tsjeng:Yeah.

25:34Simon Jack:If Beyonce is on Final Cut Pro kind of editing together everything, you know, is it going to be an objective portrait of the truth? Who knows?

25:41Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, in general, everyone needs an editor, right? And that editor shouldn't be you.

25:45Simon Jack:Unless maybe it's Beyonce.

25:46Zing Tsjeng:Beyonce can edit me anytime. Okay. And that was the year she ripped up the music industry rule book. She dropped her fifth solo album, which was a visual album called Beyonce, totally out of the blue. And it broke the record as the fastest selling album in iTunes history. And again, it was one of those things that must have been like this Manhattan project. It must have been kept very secret because it would have been a big deal to release it from nowhere. I mean, David Bowie did this towards the end of his life. That's a different thing. He was not the kind of global superstar with everyone's eyes on them that Beyonce was at the time.

26:19Simon Jack:You can imagine the number of lawyers that Beyonce must have hired just to write the NDAs to keep everyone silent.

26:24Zing Tsjeng:Yeah. And, you know, it's an interesting sort of study in control, isn't it? In an interview, the journalist from GQ magazine noted that Beyonce's ground rule was that she filmed everything. The tape would become part of her temperature-controlled archive, includes private footage compiled by a visual director that Beyonce employs who has shot practically her every waking moment up to 16 hours a day since 2005. As GQ magazine said, ready to be summoned and monetised at the push of a button. So this is like a real-life Truman show, isn't it?

26:56Simon Jack:That's exactly what I was thinking. Yeah. Except she's doing it to herself, consensually, willingly.

27:00Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, exactly, rather than being ignorant of it.

27:02Simon Jack:That year, Beyonce went on a huge tour of 132 shows. and every night after performing she'd apparently watch a dvd of a show that she'd performed so she'd critique herself her dancers her cameraman and the next morning everyone would receive pages of notes and this i think attention to detail which i think if you're on her team must come with kind of like pulling your hair out stress i mean it brings results because gross revenue from that tour was 230 million dollars and that's by the way how much the tour brought in total not her earnings from it.

27:33Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, so we know how much she earned that year. Forbes estimated her earnings to be$115 million. And just breaking that down a bit, you've got the album sales. Her deal with Sony at the time was rumoured to be structured more like a joint venture. Usually you get a royalty rate around 20%. She was getting 50 endorsements with Pepsi and H &M. She was making big money from her celebrity fragrances. Heat, Pulse, Rise. They were making tens of millions a year. Apparently Heat has actually got seven spin-off scents. Do you own any celebrity fragrances?

28:03Simon Jack:No, I have to admit I was not one for the celebrity fragrance era.

28:07Zing Tsjeng:I know. Anyway, so all of that adds up.

28:09Simon Jack:Yeah, exactly. So all this combined, Forbes named Beyonce the most powerful celebrity in the world that year based on the money she was earning and her fame. But she's only got about a quarter of a billion at this point only. Peanuts. So let us fast forward to 2016 for her next big business move.

28:26Zing Tsjeng:Okay, first of all, the music. In 2016, she released Lemonade. Now, again, this was a surprise release, a fully visualised album. It was personal this time. It was all about the infidelity of her husband, Jay Z. You'll remember this controversy better than I because it had lots of tongues wagging. What were they saying?

28:44Simon Jack:Oh my God, how do I even... This was a whole kind of odyssey that all the Beyonce fans had to go on, right? So basically...

28:50Zing Tsjeng:I'm going to strap myself in.

28:52Simon Jack:Okay, get the popcorn. So basically the Met Gala, one of the most highly public, big showbiz events organized by Vogue to raise money for the Met Museum in New York. Someone leaked footage of Solange, Beyonce's little sister, kicking and hitting Beyonce's husband Jay-Z in the lift. It's kind of wild because Solange doesn't just go for him once. She goes for him several times. And Beyonce's sort of like in between two of them, but she sort of stood against the wall of the lift, not doing anything. which suggests he kind of maybe approves. And everyone thinks this is because that was the night that Beyonce and Solange found out about this woman that she refers to on her album as Becky with the good hair, the woman that Jay-Z had been having an affair with.

29:35Zing Tsjeng:Right, okay.

29:36Simon Jack:And so this became this whole kind of, for my money...

29:39Zing Tsjeng:Freeding frenzy.

29:40Simon Jack:Exactly. And this is the first time you ever get a crack in Beyonce's perfect image, right? Right, okay. Where it's like her husband has cheated on her and she makes this album, Lemonade, all about that.

29:49Zing Tsjeng:OK, and people presumably absolutely loved it.

29:53Simon Jack:Oh, yeah, it was commercially a success, critically a massive hit. Critics loved it. It was included in every end of year list. It topped Rolling Stone's greatest albums of the 21st century. It even won a Peabody Award.

30:05Zing Tsjeng:It actually outsold some other big names that year. We're talking about Adele, Kanye, yay these days, Drake, Rihanna. beat them all and to support the album she went on the Formation Tour playing 49 Dates, the first ever all-stadium tour by a female artist. That's interesting. I thought Madonna might have done that before but no. The tour grossed 256 million. That's five million dollars every night.

30:28Simon Jack:Yeah and I do remember seeing this and this was a real, I mean this was a real phenomenon when it came to London. In 2016 she also made a major move into fashion so she'd actually tried this before. In 2005 she launched a brand called House of Derry On with her mum Tina which was kind of denim, skirts, dresses started off okay. But in the early 2010s, House of Derrion was quietly shuttered. But then in 2016, she started tapping into the growing athleisure market with a line called Ivy Park. And if you want to hear more about athleisure, you can check out our episode on Ben Francis. So the Gymshark.

31:02Simon Jack:Gymshark.

31:02Zing Tsjeng:Okay, that's interesting. I have to say House of Derrion, as names go, I'm not a fan.

31:07Simon Jack:No, yeah.

31:08Zing Tsjeng:Ivy Park, much more like it. In fact, I remember the launch of that because every day when I come to work, I have to walk past the flagship store of Topshop. And it was all over. The branding of Ivy Park was all over that for months. And it was because she'd met with the owner, Sir Philip Green, another one of our billionaires. Check out that episode. And Beyonce said of him, I think he was originally thinking I wanted to do an endorsement deal like they'd done with other celebrities where they just basically sign up, you know, say, I wear this other product. But I wanted a joint venture. I presented him with the idea, the mission statement, the purpose, marketing strategy, all in the first meeting.

31:45Zing Tsjeng:I think he was pretty blown away. And so he agreed to a 50-50 partnership. I mean, why wouldn't you want to be a partner with Beyonce at that time? You don't need much business acumen to say this might be a good thing. So they launched Ivy Park just a week before Lemme came out with a big cover interview in some of the magazines, including Elle, selling that new line.

32:03Simon Jack:But in 2018, Beyonce bought Topshop out of that partnership after Philip Green was named as having taken legal action to prevent the publication of allegations of sexual harassment of staff. Accusations, by the way, that he categorically and wholly denies. Instead, in 2019, Ivy Park announced it was partnering with Adidas. And this was turning a bad situation into an opportunity because Adidas is the second richest sportswear company in the world. They offered her creative control. and meanwhile Philip Green's Arcadia Group, which owned Topshop, was actually collapsing.

32:36Zing Tsjeng:Boy, do I remember that. I was reporting on that a lot at the time and often with late-like phone calls with Sir Philip himself and it was true that at that time Sir Philip Green was being called the unacceptable face of capitalism. He was a bit of a toxic brand. There's no way someone at Beyonce wanted to be hooked to that wagon at all. So there's no surprise that that partnership broke up. But the Adidas one didn't last long either. it. In 2023, they mutually parted ways due to creative differences. Love that. Behind those differences, poor sales, though, they were down more than 50 % to around 40 million in 2022, which is pretty bad for a business the size of Adidas, because they projected$250 million in sales.

33:17Zing Tsjeng:Ivy Park had been losing money for Adidas, which is a surprise to me, I must say. But there we go.

33:23Simon Jack:Not a good time for Adidas, but also not a problem for Beyonce, because the original deal she signed guaranteed her about 20 million in annual compensation, regardless of sales. Great fine print there. When the split was announced, it said that Beyonce was excitedly looking to reclaim her brand. But I think we can safely say that, you know, fashion is not Beyonce's route to a billion because Ivy Park has not operated since then.

33:46Zing Tsjeng:So if that's not going to work, let's try something else. So she tried her hand at some other consumer brands. Got a hair care brand called C-Cred? C-E-Acute. C-Cred.

33:57Simon Jack:Although if people are struggling to pronounce it, perhaps not the best name for your brand.

34:02Zing Tsjeng:Yes. It's hard to tell how successful that's been so far. It's reported estimates it's generating 200 million in annual revenue in the first year. But she chose, interestingly, not to be the face of this brand, saying, I made a conscious decision not to appear in the ads. The brand's first impression needed to stand on its own merit, not to be swayed by my influence.

34:22Simon Jack:Interesting.

34:22Zing Tsjeng:If you've got influence like that, why not use it? I think that's a really, really interesting departure.

34:26Simon Jack:Well, she's also launched a whiskey, which is called Sir Davis, named after her great-grandfather. This is a joint venture with Moe Hennessy, and it follows in the path of her husband, Jay-Z, who got into business with LVMH, who owned Moe Hennessy years ago. His champagne, Armand de Bruynac, was the biggest contributor to him becoming a billionaire back in 2019 when Forbes estimated it was worth$310 million to him. but it remains to be seen whether or not Beyonce's whiskey will be as profitable.

34:55Zing Tsjeng:Yeah it's interesting one isn't it I don't see Beyonce and whiskey as two things that go together whereas I do see the bling of Jay-Z and champagne I don't know I could be totally wrong what do I know but it did work in one other way because the whiskey became part of Beyonce's cowboy era because in 2024 she released Cowboy Carter the second in a trilogy of albums the first was renaissance or renaissance as the americans would say in 2022 again critical commercial success um beyonce had the power to sell with the ensuing cowboyification and i have to say i do remember this bit although i never went to one of her live shows there was a period in london when everyone on the tube wherever you went was wearing boots and a cowboy hat and denim i was like what's going on is there some kind of country and western festival and in a way there was because it was basically Beyonce's cowboy era.

35:45Simon Jack:Exactly. Well, I mean, unsurprisingly, brands also wanted to help Beyonce capitalize on this new aesthetic. Levi's paid her an estimated 10 million for a series of commercials. And she got an estimated 50 million for a special halftime show for Netflix's first Christmas Day NFL game.

36:01Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, but unlike her husband, Jay-Z, and her contemporary Rihanna, it doesn't really seem that Beyonce's billionaire status is down to all these product things like Rihanna with Fenty and what have you was a huge part of her billionaire status. Her fortune is kind of like a good old fashioned musician's fortune, like Taylor Swift is down to touring and the value of the music catalogue. That is massive.

36:23Simon Jack:Right, because Forbes also estimated her music catalogue had increased in value to 300 million. And through Parkwood Entertainment, she has significant ownership and control over her master recordings, especially from her self-titled 2013 album Onward.

36:37Zing Tsjeng:And remember how important that is because Taylor Swift went to the length of re-recording her original album so that she owned the masters of, you know, the Taylor's version. So that's a huge part of their wealth because that's an asset which keeps on giving. Every time it's used in an advert, every time it's played on the radio, every time, whatever, some money drops on the mat for many, many years. And so you can actually kind of work out the value of what the future revenues would be at the time. That adds up to a lot of money and a big part of these people's wealth.

37:04Simon Jack:Exactly. And there are so many people making money off of historic, older albums, tracks, songs right now. You know, it's something that private equity has also started injecting itself into.

37:15Zing Tsjeng:Because in the old days, you go in and buy an album. Let's say you bought, you know, Writings on the Wall or whatever. Your financial relationship with that band could be over at that point. But with streaming, you know that you're going to keep getting bits of money for years to come. And therefore, it becomes a whole different kind of financial creature. Exactly.

37:38Simon Jack:And even after you die, you probably get an even bigger bump in the amount of revenue you get from that.

37:42Zing Tsjeng:Yeah. And so by the end of 2023, she was worth 800 million. You add in Cowboy Carter in 2024, that tour made 400 million ticket sales, 50 million merchandising. So all that meant by the end of 2025, Forbes declared Beyonce a billionaire worth$1 billion. dollars.

38:03Simon Jack:But what next for Beyonce? She said, I can only work on what liberates me. It's fame that can at times feel like a prison. So when you don't see me on red carpets and when I disappear until I have art to share, that's why.

38:17Zing Tsjeng:Sometimes you've had a career, you rinse it a bit too much and it's hard for her to fly much higher. So let's see how her altitude in terms of fame and earning power goes from here.

38:25Simon Jack:Well, remember, she's currently in the middle of recording that trilogy of albums. Carbo Cotto was the second one. The rumour is that the third album will be a rock album. Could come out at any minute. It could be a surprise drop. So we'll see how Beyonce does rock and roll. Watch this space.

38:41Zing Tsjeng:That is the Beyonce Knowles story so far. Let us try and score Beyonce on our billionaire categories. This is for a bit of fun. We rate our billionaires on a series of categories from zero to ten on wealth, controversy, power and legacy. So let us start with wealth.

39:01Simon Jack:Well I mean she's not particularly high under wealth stakes right so she's currently about 3 ,300th in the world today but there are very few music billionaires. Obviously Taylor Swift is one of them but all in there's probably less than 10 in the world.

39:16Zing Tsjeng:Yeah she came from a bit of Often we talk about how far they come from rags to riches. So we know that she started out in a very comfortable, pretty successful middle class household in Houston. But boy, she knows how to spend it, doesn't she? In 2023, her and Jay-Z spent$200 million for a Malibu beachfront mansion, which we think is the highest price ever paid for a property in California. And you're up against some pretty stiff competition in California.

39:42Simon Jack:I mean, you're up against what? Movie stars. Yeah.

39:45Zing Tsjeng:And also, of course, as a couple, they liked to splash the cash, didn't they? I can't think of a more, they were the power couple, weren't they?

39:52Simon Jack:I mean, you could do an entire podcast about how those two as a couple have navigated getting older together and having kids, right? Because she was so young when they met. He was older. He came from, you know, we've done the episode on him. He literally came from the housing projects of New York. And she comes from this nice middle class background. How those two have continued to go on and create a business despite the infidelity, despite Becky with the good hair and had three kids. I mean, it's really intriguing. But yeah, they do love to spend it.

40:22Zing Tsjeng:Okay, so let's give them a wealth rating. She's entry level for our purposes, because it's only just crept into the billionaire category. So not that. But on the kind of lifestyle and the aspirational stuff and the way they flaunt it, I'm going to give them a five. Give her a five.

40:38Simon Jack:I feel like as someone who spent personally quite a lot of money on Beyonce tours, I feel like I have to give her slightly more. So maybe I'll give her a six out of 10. Okay.

40:47Zing Tsjeng:All right. What about controversy? I mean, one of the most written about women in history, probably. A lot of think pieces about whether she's a feminist or not. Discuss.

40:55Simon Jack:Yeah, I mean, it is interesting because obviously she'd had that whole run the world girls era where, I mean, the lyric is literally girls, we run the world. And she stood in front of a giant screen that basically said feminist and included spoken words from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's We Should All Be Feminists essay. If you remember that and you can, you know, look it up, it's like the VMAs. and there is an argument to be had that you know Beyonce is this feminist icon she's shown young women and girls especially black women that you can be the star you can be the mogul in the same way that Jay-Z is.

41:30Zing Tsjeng:Yeah not just the star but the mogul that's an important distinction isn't it?

41:33Simon Jack:Right the black Bill Gates basically. Yeah. But then you know there's also a strand of feminism that says actually all you're doing is kind of kowtowing to the temple of capitalism at the end of the day you're just telling people that you can do it through you know hard work through making money when that maybe isn't how society is set up, especially not for people of color. So I think it's an ongoing tension in her work, really. You know, I think Beyonce, when you listen to her, when you read her interviews, she has a pretty, you know, strong idea of, you know, what her feminism consists of. I mean, she said, I'm not really sure people know or understand what a feminist is, but it's very simple.

42:07Simon Jack:It's someone who believes in equal rights for man and woman. Ask anyone, man or woman, do you want your daughter to have 75 cents when she deserves a dollar? what do you think the answer would be? I think that's pretty dead on.

42:18Zing Tsjeng:Okay, fair enough.

42:19Simon Jack:I think the whole controversy over whether Beyonce is a feminist or an arch-capitalist, honestly, it just depends on which side of the coin you like.

42:27Zing Tsjeng:Controversy. Some would say ruthless. We use that word sometimes. I mean, if you look at the Destiny's Child era, there was chopping and changing. I mean, her dad saying wanting to put her front and centre. I go and see, you know, people with their kids in the football pitch on a Sunday afternoon, and every dad wants their son to be centre forward. Do you know what I mean? It's a little... No one wants them put in goal. Apologies to goalies out there. But do you know what I mean? I don't think that a parent angling to put their talented daughter somewhere front and centre in this thing, given that you've given up your job for it, I don't think that's entirely surprising.

43:00Zing Tsjeng:So I'm not going to blame them for that. I mean, she fired her dad as her manager, but we've seen that before in these things. Yeah, exactly. I'm going to give her quite a low score for controversy.

43:09Simon Jack:I'm going to give her a three. I think I would give her a two out of ten. I mean, she's not, you know, in the grand good bad billionaire stakes. Three for me, two for you.

43:18Zing Tsjeng:Okay, power.

43:19Simon Jack:If she called up the White House, would the president pick up? Oh, yeah, definitely.

43:24Zing Tsjeng:Yeah.

43:24Simon Jack:Any president.

43:25Zing Tsjeng:Mr. President, Beyonce, on line one, you'd take it, wouldn't you?

43:28Simon Jack:Oh, 100%. The president of any country, I think.

43:31Zing Tsjeng:Yeah, for sure. Which is quite a feat. Also, in terms of her economic power, she can influence whole nation's economic statistics when her entourage comes to town. I think it's in Sweden. Tickets for her show and hotel bookings spark such a frenzy that Sweden reported higher than expected inflation. Visit Stockholm described the boom in tourism to the city as the Beyonce effect.

43:55Simon Jack:Yeah, not a million miles away from Swiftonomics, which is the exact same thing which happened when Taylor Swift's eras were rolled into town in various cities around the world.

44:03Zing Tsjeng:And can she influence things like fashion? I mean, her forays into fashion didn't work that well, but she can influence the look for Cowboy Carter.

44:11Simon Jack:Exactly. I mean, my God, I don't think I've ever seen as many cowboy boots as I did when Beyonce's tour rode into town.

44:19Zing Tsjeng:So power, I'm going to give a pretty high rate. I'm going to give a seven.

44:23Simon Jack:I think I'm going to give her higher. I think I'm going to give her an eight out of 10. When you not only become, is it a mononym where you're just first name only, like Cher, Madonna, Beyonce.

44:34Zing Tsjeng:Or even a letter.

44:35Simon Jack:Exactly. Or B. That says a lot about the amount of power you have.

44:39Zing Tsjeng:Yeah. Legacy. She holds a lot of records.

44:41Simon Jack:Yeah. So most number of Grammy wins ever. 35, which is kind of crazy. You know, obviously she's been a huge figure in the black community. You know, she's been called incredibly influential. shows she's been cited as being inspiring within beyond music alone. She popularized feminism among people who might not have embraced it before. You know, she said, you see my husband, Jay-Z, and you see these male artists that become moguls and the female artists might become legends, but there's not enough of us that become moguls. And I think there are many ways to get there.

45:14Zing Tsjeng:Okay. Interesting distinction between legend and mogul, like owning the rights to production, as we talked about before. So Legacy, we'll be talking about Beyonce for as long as my lifetime is, you know, as long as I've got left.

45:27Simon Jack:Oh, 100%.

45:28Zing Tsjeng:So yeah, I mean, Legacy, I mean, pretty high. Nine?

45:31Simon Jack:Oh yeah, I think nine out of 10.

45:33Zing Tsjeng:Okay, she gets nine out of 10 from both of us. So final reflections. There's not that many pop stars that push through to every walk of life so that you would have to be living under a very big rock indeed, not to know who they were, have some familiarity with their work, appreciate their influence on society. She's a superstar in every way.

45:54Simon Jack:I think that if I did the kind of single ladies dance where you're like, I mean, people know that. And that is incredible for something to cut through that deeply into society, into the world, into culture. I mean, very few people manage to do that consistently. And I think Beyonce is one of them.

46:13Zing Tsjeng:Yeah. So the final question, of course, is for you. is Beyonce good, bad or just another billionaire? What do you think?

46:21Simon Jack:So you can email goodbadbillionaire at bbc.com or drop us a WhatsApp on 001 917 686 1176 to tell us what you think about Beyonce.

46:33Zing Tsjeng:And don't forget to include your name as we may read out your message in a future episode.

46:36Simon Jack:We also want to hear from you if you have personally had any encounters with billionaires. We actually heard from one listener who remembers a billionaire's carpet being so thick and luxurious it was like stepping on a cloud. Are you the groomer to a doggy owned by a billionaire? Have you sold a billionaire some bling? Are you a private jet pilot? These guys have the good stories.

46:56Zing Tsjeng:Have you signed an NDA? If not, we want to hear from you.

47:02Zing Tsjeng:So who do we have next episode?

47:05Simon Jack:Well, we have the man who's the most commercially successful movie director in history and made people afraid to go in the water.

47:12Zing Tsjeng:It is, of course, Steven Spielberg, the movie mogul who transformed cinema and kind of invented the blockbuster with Jaws.

47:22Simon Jack:That's Steven Spielberg on the next episode of Good Bad Billionaire.

47:29Zing Tsjeng:Good Bad Billionaire is a BBC World Service podcast produced by Hannah Hufford. The editor is Paul Smith and it's a BBC Studios production.

47:37Simon Jack:For the BBC World Service, the senior commissioning producer is Sarah Green and the commissioning editor is John Manel.

47:54Simon Jack:Thanks for listening. Remember, Good Bad Billionaire won't usually be here in the documentary.

47:59Zing Tsjeng:So if you'd like to hear more episodes, search Good Bad Billionaire wherever you get your BBC podcasts.