How much history can one live music festival performance make?
If Beyoncé's on the stage, the answer is: A whole lot.
And now, there's a documentary that shows us exactly how the reigning queen of pop transformed
Coachella into Beychella.
Here's everything we learned from Beyoncé's Homecoming.
Surprise!
In April 2019, the "Formation" singer released a 40-track Homecoming live album along with
a documentary of the same name... and she also finally put Lemonade on every major streaming
platform that Jay-Z doesn't already own.
The documentary offers a glimpse into the many sacrifices Beyoncé made so that Coachella
could happen… and she did it all just a year after the traumatic pregnancy that almost
claimed the life of one of her twins.
In other words: there's basically nothing Bey can't do… except eat carbs.
One thing's for sure: Queen Bey is the master of surprises.
A year after the royal highness of hip-hop hit the desert for her groundbreaking performance
at Coachella, she dropped a behind-the-scenes Netflix documentary.
We never saw it coming.
Bey keeps taking a baseball bat to our psyche with all these twists and turns, and we love
it.
Making Coachella history
Music festivals are a notorious boys club, but leave it to Bey to break down gender barriers
for her landmark Coachella performance.
"Coachella, thank you for allowing me to be the first black woman to headline Coachella."
The festival, of course, came to be known as Beychella, an event in which Beyoncé owned
the stage and reminded us all that girls do, in fact, run the world.
Childhood inspiration
Beyoncé wanted to create a show that would celebrate black culture.
To do so, the "Lemonade" singer drew from her childhood.
As Vox reports, she conjured a reference that would likely be almost entirely lost on Coachella's
predominately white audience.
The star's Homecoming set played off the idea of homecomings at historically black colleges
and universities, otherwise known as HBCUs.
Though Bey never enrolled, her father attended Fisk University, an HBCU in Nashville, Tennessee.
This served as a major inspiration for the star, who always dreamed of college life and
occasionally rehearsed at Texas Southern University.
Basically, she brought it back to band camp… and the show is something of a tribute to
the HBCU marching band showcase Battle of the Bands.
"I always dreamed of going to an HBCU.
My college was Destiny's Child.
My college was traveling around the world."
She was intensely hands-on
One more time: Who runs the world?
The answer can only be Beyoncé.
Of course Mrs. Carter would have all hands on deck while carefully creating her history-making
Coachella set.
Bey wasn't just the star performer.
She was a total boss, navigating each detail down to the hand-sewn patches on her musicians'
costumes.
"So I wanted us to feel each other's energy, and dance and scream and holler and hoot.
Do whatever we feel naturally.
And we're gonna build this thing together."
It took months to script the almost two-hour performance, and absolutely everything that
happened on stage had a decisive purpose.
Nothing was left to chance.
"I personally selected each dancer, every light, the material on the steps, the height
of the pyramid, the shape of the pyramid..."
Getting her body back
Beychella almost happened back in 2017, but the star was forced to cancel after she discovered
she was pregnant.
As it turns out, her pregnancy was more difficult than anyone could have ever imagined.
She suffered from high blood pressure and toxemia, which put her and her babies' health
in danger.
According to Women's Health, the condition is marked by a,
"... sudden, potentially life-threatening increase in blood pressure in pregnant women."
Bey first opened up about her difficulties in Vogue's 2018 September issue.
Both the pregnancy, and the fact that she was having twins, came as a total surprise
to the star.
She was stuck on bed rest for more than a month before ultimately giving birth via emergency
c-section.
At the time, she weighed 218 pounds, which is no small number considering her 5' 7" frame.
And then she had to endure the grueling process of getting back in shape for Coachella.
In total, it took eight months of rehearsals to retrain her body.
"I had to rebuild my body from cut muscles.
It took me awhile to feel confident enough to freak it and give it my own personality."
Her diet was insane
Beyoncé is the type of woman who carries hot sauce in her purse.
Yes, this is a real thing that she does… because she's a highly relatable queen who
happens to know what's up.
Left to her own devices, she's happy to slurp down a Slurpee or two, and she reportedly
even used to have an affinity for Honey Buns; those sticky sweet calorie bombs.
For a woman who literally boosted Red Lobster sales because she happened to reference the
restaurant in "Formation," we imagine her pre-Coachella diet was absolutely torturous.
In fact, it's torturous enough just to hear about it.
"I'm limiting myself to no bread, no carbs, no sugar, no dairy, no meat, no fish, no alcohol."
And yes, she was hungry.
Although it's unclear what the star actually could eat beyond vegetables and the hot sauce
that was presumably stashed in her purse, there's no denying she was unbelievably fit
during her performance.
After giving birth to Blue Ivy in 2012, the star previously managed to lose around 60
lbs.
She's nothing if not impressive.
She breastfed in her trailer
Any mom knows it's not easy being away from your newborns.
Beyoncé didn't even take a full year off to bond with her twins before she jumped back
into the throes of being the richest woman in music.
She gave herself just six months before planning the show and starting rehearsals.
Homecoming gives viewers a tiny glimpse into the sacrifices Beyoncé endured in order to
make history.
Not only was she healing from a c-section, a procedure in which your abdomen is literally
cut open, she was struggling with some major mom guilt.
"My mind was not there.
My mind wanted to be with my children.
What people don't see is the sacrifice."
Thankfully, Bey kept the twins and then-six-year-old Blue Ivy on set as much as possible.
In between rehearsals, she'd retreat to her trailer to breastfeed Rumi and Sir.
"It was a lot to juggle.
It's not like before when I could rehearse 15 hours straight."
We may have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: Girls run the world.
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
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