@BEE Hive since all of you love pointing the finger and talking
all of the Other artist down read this very interesting article...
I don’t think anybody would argue with the fact that Beyonce is not only one of the most successful stars of today, but also one of, if not THE hardest worker in the entire entertainment industry. My question is why exactly does the diva work as hard as she does, and could she still maintain her astronomical level of success if her workload was considerably lighter?

The best people to compare her to in this situation are two of the other top dogs in pop — Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, and to a lesser extent Christina Aguilera, Alicia Keys and Pink. I’ve taken a close look at the success of their music and how they promote themselves and compared it to Beyonce to find out if she’s selling as many records as she should be, and if she isn’t then why.

Promotion, sales and success.

Just like Beyonce, Justin Timberlake was the breakout star of a popular group, who upon flying solo has gone on to having an extremely successful solo career. Justin’s first solo endeavour was 2002′s Justified, which went on to sell over 8 million copies off the back of four successful singles.

JT then took four years off before returning in 2006 with the mega-hit FutureSex/LoveSounds, which spawned three consecutive #1 singles and went on to sell over 9 million copies worldwide. The album was later re-released as a deluxe edition with a few remixes and music videos, funnily enough including Beyonce on a remix to the album cut “Until The End of Time”. The song was released as a single and managed to crack the top twenty without the aid of a proper video or any promotion.

It’s now approaching 2010 and Justin still hasn’t released another album, or even announced plans to start recording again. Instead he’s spent his time working behind-the-scenes writing and producing for other artists, and developing a mildly-successful acting career.

Next is pop princess Britney Spears, who saturated the beginning of the decade with yearly back-to-back albums, products, endorsements, and even a movie before taking time off in 2004 to raise a family. She then subsequently went crazy, and in 2007 released her lowest-selling album Blackout which despite zero promotion managed to sell almost two million copies and spawned two super successful singles “Gimme More” and “Piece of Me”.

After cleaning up her act Britney returned towards the end of 2008 with Circus, which to date has sold over 3.5 million copies and produced two multi-platinum singles. The album initially received heavy promotion with several televised performances, a tell-all special on MTV, and a few magazine covers, but after the first few weeks of release the interviews and performances came to a stop and Spears generally kept to herself whilst embarking on a successful worldwide tour.

Spears has since released a new single “3″ from her new greatest hits compilation, which shot straight to #1 on the Billboard charts with no promotion and no music video, and has now sold over 1 million copies and counting.

Now this brings me back to Beyonce, who’s been working literally non-stop since the beginning of the decade. The diva’s first move into solo stardom was in 2002 with her singles “Work It Out” and “Bonnie & Clyde 03″ with Jay-Z. She then quickly followed up in 2003 with her ten-million plus selling debut Dangerously In Love, which spawned four hit singles including the #1 record “Crazy In Love”.

Never one to slow down, Bey then jumped straight into a new Destiny’s Child album Destiny Fulfilled. She promoted the album into 2005, followed by a Destiny’s Child greatest hits compilation and new single “Stand Up for Love”. Towards the end of the year she released another chart topping single “Check On It” from the soundtrack to her upcoming film The Pink Panther.

After a brief break Bey was back in 2006 with two new films, a hit soundtrack for Dreamgirls, and her second studio album B’Day. After three singles from B’Day and one from Dreamgirls, Bey re-released the album with new tracks, a new single featuring Shakira, and a DVD with a music video for every song on the album. By the end of it’s run B’Day had spawned seven singles, twelve music videos, a video anthology DVD and a world tour with another accompanying DVD.

With the tour taking up most of 2007, Bey barely took a minute to breath before returning in 2008 with two new films and a third album I Am… Sasha Fierce, which was built around a gimmick of splitting itself into a 2-disc set of two different albums to reflect the singers alter-ego “Sasha Fierce”.

IASF has since spawned FOUR different editions or re-releases,a whopping eight singles including a last minute collaboration with Lady GaGa and a remix with Kanye West, a world tour, and a live CD/DVD album with another DVD currently in the works.

Final thoughts

Now my question is, why does Beyonce have to work literally four or five times harder than her contemporaries just in order to match or slightly better their musical success? It’s natural for an artist to saturate the market when they first come out in order to establish themselves, but Beyonce was the lead singer of the highest-selling girl group of all time, and then she proved herself as a solo star with the success of Dangerously In Love. If that’s not establishing yourself then I don’t know what is.

Justin Timberlake takes giant breaks in-between his albums and still manages to outsell Beyonce by millions, and that’s with far less singles released.

Christina Aguilera also takes huge breaks in between her albums, and even she managed to sell almost five million copies of Back to Basics with only three singles. Alicia Keys took an almost five year break before she released her third album As I Am, and it managed to become the biggest selling album of 2008 in the States, selling over 6 million worldwide with “No One” being the albums ONLY international hit.

As for Britney, she doesn’t even need to leave the house in order to sell millions of records and singles.

The only other artist in the industry who works half as hard as Beyonce is Pink, who for her past two albums has either matched or bettered Beyonce’s sales.

Even when you look at touring Justin, Britney, and Pink have all out-grossed Beyonce.

Where her contemporaries usually only release a few singles with no album re-releases or major features, Beyonce will re-release her albums multiple times, release double the amount of singles as everyone else does and film video’s for them all, perform at every award show possible, appear on every television show and magazine, and collaborate with only the biggest names in the biz like Jay-Z, Kanye West, Lady GaGa, and Shakira.

She also has the advantage of being played on both urban radio and pop radio, which is a luxury her contemporaries aren’t generally given.

Look at all this information. Why is Beyonce not only working harder than all the people mentioned yet not surpassing them in leaps and bounds like she should be? This is without even mentioning allegations and rumours of fake song-writing and payola which seem to surround nobody but Beyonce.

Sure she’s getting paid from movies, product endorsements, and clothing lines, but why is it so hard for her to sell herself as an artist? You would think that someone with the looks, voice and performance skills that she has would be able to do it easily.

Is Bey simply lacking some kind of “X-factor” that the others possess, or has she become her own worst enemy by overexposing herself? I’m not taking away from her success or work ethic, I just find it strange that Beyonce requires 10 times the amount of effort to sell herself as an artist than anybody else does.

Oh and by the way she has a new album due next year!