The 70 Greatest Beyoncé Songs

Everything about “Get Me Bodied” — the sparkle and pop of the production, Beyoncé’s sheer belting power — worked as a siren call to dance floors everywhere. The singer seemed to realize she had a complete classic on her hands: In the music video, as striking as the song itself, she paid homage to Bob Fosse and the Frug dance craze, a sly wink at the fact that she was adding her own moves to the dance canon and giving the world another iconic moment. —J.L.

Beyoncé’s “Dangerously In Love 2” is a probing R&B ballad that serves as a pivotal moment on her self-titled debut album. A version of the song had already appeared on Destiny’s Child’s third album, Survivor. Beyoncé and co-writer-producer Errol McCalla Jr. modified it slightly and retitled it “Dangerously in Love 2,” creating a showcase for the depth, range, and power of Beyoncé as a newly minted solo belter. “Dangerously in Love 2” ended up winning her a Grammy for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. —R.M.

With her marriage to Jay-Z still secret at the time, Beyoncé delivered one of the all-time great relationship-empowerment anthems — written by the powerhouse team of Beyoncé, Terius “The-Dream” Nash, Thaddis “Kuk” Harrell, and Christopher “Tricky” Stewart. Stewart said he wanted the song to feel like “a coffee-table conversation.” Beyoncé’s dance moves in the equally historic black-and-white video (inspired by Bob Fosse’s 1969 performance of “Mexican Breakfast” on The Ed Sullivan Show), sparked a cultural phenomenon (one of many for her), and the song’s jump-up beat and barrage of intersecting hooks made sure it was a musical coup, too. Rolling Stone ranked it the best song of 2008. —J.D.

The fire of Lemonade’s infidelity-fueled angst quells at “Love Drought,” the album’s midpoint. It coalesces into something as serene as it is uncertain. Twinkling synths and stretchy bass swirl throughout, taking us somewhere lush and visceral, like a mystic forest grown from Beyoncé scorched earth. Stripped of the bounce, drama, and darkness of the songs that precede it, “Love Drought” leaves Beyoncé calmly doing the mental math of a troubled romance, comparing ratios of transgressions to those of effort. Her darting stream of consciousness over strikingly ethereal production makes the song a standout. Also impressive is the origin of “Love Drought” — it’s the brainchild of co-writer and signee of Beyoncé’s Parkwood Entertainment, Ingrid, who penned it about the push and pull of former label employees, not of a sullied love. —M.C.

Inspired by this song’s tugging bass line and spare, finger-snap beat, Beyoncé got on the mic and came up with the gloriously steamy “Partition” — depicting what is easily the greatest limo ride in pop-music history. With its Monica Lewinsky reference, a French sample that appeared to be a quote from Julianne Moore’s character in The Big Lebowski, and a fever-dream electro-thump track, “Partition” was hardly your everyday sex jam. It was the sound of desire unlocking musical freedom, even if Bey later said the song’s specifically suggestive content meant she could probably never play it for her mom. “I was so embarrassed after I recorded the song, ’cause I’m just talkin’ shit.” —J.D.  

The opening of “Me, Myself, and I” — “All the ladies if you feel me, help me sing it out” — could be mistaken for Destiny’s Child singing in perfect unison, but Beyoncé is harmonizing with herself, asserting her independence in more ways than one. The track, released as the third single from her solo debut, Dangerously in Love, shows her discovering new maturity in her sound and lyrical content, all while giving fans a self-empowered anthem and encouraging them to find strength in themselves. —J.L.

On this loping, joyous Eighties-R&B throwback, Beyoncé manages to channel both Stevie Wonder and Whitney Houston, sometimes simultaneously. A daunting series of ever-ascending key changes, meanwhile, helps turn the song into one of her most jaw-dropping vocal showcases, pushing to the top of her range and beyond. When The-Dream wrote the song with Shea Taylor, it originally had only a single half-step key change at the end — Beyoncé spontaneously added all the others herself while recording vocals with engineer Jordan “DJ Swivel” Young. —B.H.

More than 200 artists, including musicians, dancers, and technical staff, elevated this Lemonade single from a buzzy and revealing pop song to a full-on cultural production. Sure, the brassy arrangement of not only “Sorry,” but also an interlude of “Me, Myself, and I” was huge, daring, and gorgeous. As important, though, this live recording from her knockout Coachella sets in 2018 includes a girl-powered reimagining of Black collegiate tradition, complete with intricate stepping and a homage to Greek life. With “Beychella,” as it’s known, the Queen made a giant leap in her artistry, not only as a performer, but also as a creative director, with another world-stopping, purposeful, pristine feat of secrecy and surprise. —M.C.

The first time Beyoncé heard the funky horn fanfare that announced “Crazy in Love” as her solo breakthrough, she didn’t know what to make of it. “It has this go-go feel to it, this old-school feel,” she said in 2004. “I wasn’t sure if people were going to get it.” But she figured she’d give it a chance and challenged producer Rich Harrison to make the Chi-Lites sample work. Harrison got the idea for the “looking so crazy right now” chorus after Beyoncé told him she felt she looked disheveled that day. “That’s the hook,” he told her, before writing verses about her obsession with her then-boyfriend, Jay-Z, who recorded his verse in about 10 minutes. The track skyrocketed to Number One, and years later, Beyoncé gave her obsession new life when she recut “Crazy” as a slower, sultrier remix for the 2015 soundtrack to Fifty Shades of Grey. —K.G.

“Formation” was a rallying cry for Beyoncé’s most ambitious artistic era, and a call to arms that deepened the political edge that’s always existed in her music. In 2016, when Bey surprise-released this single ahead of her iconic Super Bowl performance, she shocked the world, and looked like she effortlessly knew exactly what she was doing. What ensued was a glorious display of femininity and Blackness that echoed globally. The biting lyrics on “Formation” align with the self-expression and self-exploration that were pivotal components of her 2016 masterpiece, Lemonade. Beyoncé leaned aggressively into her Southern roots, proudly claiming, “My daddy Alabama, Momma Louisiana/You mix that negro with that Creole make a Texas bama.” And producer Mike WiLL Made-It injected harsh 808s into a swaying, swaggering track, adding extra bite into one of the 21st century’s most thrilling and bracing pop music statements. —R.M.

If “Crazy in Love” made Beyoncé a star, then the first single from her sophomore album, B’Day, introduced her as a fully-formed artist. Coming off the backs of her solo debut and her final album with Destiny’s Child, Beyoncé partnered with Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins, Makeba, Keli Nicole Price, and Delisha Thomas to create a sonically challenging jam that served as a foremother to every Bey era that followed. From the song’s iconic BET Awards performance (an early glimpse of her alter ego Sasha Fierce) to its masterful perfection of her chemistry with Jay-Z to the way the funky track forecasts 4, and its Southern Gothic homage to her creole roots predicts Lemonade, “Deja Vu” isn’t just the best song in her discography — it defines it. —K.T.