Beyoncé Knowles Has Finally Given the World a New Interview

VanityFair.com:

Beyoncé has not given a print interview since 2013, a curiosity magnified two months ago when the superstar appeared on the cover of Vogue’s coveted September issue without granting the magazine the customary Q&A. In response, the Internet authored countless thought pieces on Queen Bey’s unprecedented nonverbal P.R. strategy and somewhat eery image-control campaign. And now, the entertainer has seemingly responded by granting her first print interview in two years. 

On Monday, Beat touted its huge celebrity score, publishing a series of photos of Bey in bathing suits and a “preview” of its chat with the Grammy winner. While there are scores of important subjects that the free world would be curious to hear Bey discuss—#BlackLivesMatter, the music industry, motherhood, marriage, Tidal—Beat appears to have opted for a lighter interview approach. 

The softballs they lobbed included: Which “Beyoncé era she’d go dressed as for Halloween”:

Her answer: “Destiny’s Child ‘Survivor’ era with the army fatigues. Or maybe ‘Bootylicious’ with the gold tooth and pink tips in my hair.” Other hard-hitting queries: What does she sing in the shower? (“Holy Ghost” by Kim Burrell). Does she Netflix or chill? (“Netflix and chill”). What was the last song that got stuck in her head? (“Jugg” by Fetty Wap”). What are her go-to pizza toppings? (“Extra tomato sauce and jalapeños”).

So if you were to have a low-key Halloween-themed pizza party and invite Bey, you’d be set?

In a piece The New York Times published this August called “Beyoncé Is Seen but Not Heard”, Matthew Schneier theorized why the global superstar might be opting for this stay-mum media strategy.

She may have concluded that face-to-face interviews are not in her interest. (She keeps an archive of all of her media mentions and all photos of herself.) She occasionally comes off daffy, as when she told GQ in 2013, “I’m more powerful than my mind can even digest and understand.”

Ms. Jefferson [the Pulitzer Prize–winning critic who wrote an essay on Bey’s star quality for Vogue] said: “She has to be studying how effective her interviews have been so far. She may have decided that they do not contribute as dazzlingly to the portrait of Beyoncé as the other stuff. It’s a perfectly reasonable decision.”

Alas, it looks as though Beyoncé Nation may have to wait a little longer if they want a more probing conversation with the world’s pre-eminent performer.