Beyoncé kicks off a pair of Citi Field concerts Tuesday, as part of her “Formation” world tour.
As one of the world’s biggest music stars, the 32-year-old’s life is an open songbook. But some things are better known than others — and if you want bragging rights at her upcoming shows, take a look at this list of 50 Things You Might Not Know About Beyoncé.
Growing up
1. Her father, Mathew Knowles, is African- American, and her mother, Tina, is Creole.
2. Before founding a music company, Mathew, worked for the Xerox Corp. and other companies selling medical-imaging equipment.
3. Her name is derived from her mother’s maiden name, Beyince.
4. As a child in Houston, Beyoncé won more than 30 local singing and dancing competitions.
5. Her first press mention came at age 7, when the Houston Chronicle noted her as a nominee for a local performing-arts prize, The Sammy.
‘Destiny’ calls
6. With future Destiny’s Child partner Kelly Rowland and two other girls, Beyoncé entered (and didn’t win) TV’s “Star Search” in 1992 as the quartet Girl’s Tyme.
7. The original version of Destiny’s Child was the renamed Girl’s Tyme, consisting of Beyoncé, Rowland, LeToya Luckett and LaTavia Roberson.
8. In between, the group called itself Something Fresh, Cliche, the Dolls and Destiny before settling on Destiny’s Child in 1996.
9. The group’s name is loosely inspired by the Book of Isaiah.
10. After the group hit it big with its second album, B blindsided Luckett and Roberson in February 2000 by dismissing them via announcement on MTV’s “Total Request Live” — premiering a video, “Say My Name,” with new members Michelle Williams and Farrah Franklin. The latter was gone by July, leaving a trio of Beyoncé, Rowland and Williams.
Going solo
11. Her Destiny’s Child bandmates Rowland and Williams each released a solo album before Beyoncé.
12. She told Newsweek in 2001: “Destiny’s Child was always very talented, but I think the thing we were lacking was controversy. I think in order for your group to be successful, your story has to be interesting.”
13. Beyoncé performed the national anthem at Super Bowl XXXVIII on Feb. 1, 2004, in her hometown of Houston.
14. When she released her third album, “I Am … Sasha Fierce,” in 2008, she explained that the title character is “someone else takes over when it’s time for me to work and when I’m onstage, alter ego that I’ve created that kind of protects me and who I really am.”
15. On Jay Z’s 2013 album, “Magna Carta Holy Grail,” she provides “additional vocals” on the songs “Tom Ford” and “BBC,” credited as Third Ward Trill.
Record-setting
16. In 2002, Beyoncé became the first African-American woman to win ASCAP’s Pop Songwriter of the Year Award.
17. With the 2003 album “Dangerously in Love” and its single “Crazy in Love,” she became the first woman to have an album and a single simultaneously topping both the U.S. and U.K. charts.
18. Her five Grammy Awards in 2004 tied the record (with Lauryn Hill, 1999; Alicia Keys, 2002; and Norah Jones, 2003) for most wins by a female performer in a single night.
19. Her six Grammy Awards in 2010 set a record (tied by Adele two years later) for most wins by a female performer in a single night.
20. She is tied with Dolly Parton for 10th place on the list of most Grammy nominations by a man or woman, with 45.
On-screen
21. Beyoncé’s first confirmed screen role was in the 2001 MTV TV movie “Carmen: A Hip Hopera.”
22. She may have made her screen debut earlier, in a cameo in the direct-to-video family comedy “Beverly Hood,” produced circa 1999: The credits bill Destiny’s Child, and a scene on a porch includes what appears to be a young Beyoncé wearing a light-blue jumper.
23. Her character in 2002’s “Austin Powers in Goldmember,” Foxxy Cleopatra, is a pastiche of the 1970s blaxploitation characters Foxy Brown and Cleopatra Jones.
24. In 2009, she voiced the animated character Shine, lead singer of The Wubb Girls, in four episodes of the Nick Jr. children’s series “Wow! Wow! Wubbzy!”
25. In the 2010 video for the song “Telephone” by Lady Gaga featuring Beyoncé, B drives the custom-painted yellow pickup truck from Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” movies.
Relationships
26. She had the same boyfriend, Lyndell Locke, from ages 12 to 19.
27. Rumors of her dating future husband Jay Z first arose in 2002, when they played a couple in the video for his song “’03 Bonnie & Clyde.”
28. She told Glamour magazine of Jay Z, “I was 18 when we first met, 19 when we started dating.”
29. The couple filed a marriage license in Scarsdale on April 18, 2008 — two weeks after their private, unannounced April 4 wedding.
30. Her first wide acknowledgment of her marriage came six months later, when she said, “I’m married now,” at a Manhattan listening party for the upcoming album “I Am … Sasha Fierce.”
Long Island
31. Beyoncé’s as-yet-untitled and unscheduled fifth studio album was recorded mostly in the Hamptons in summer 2012.
32. Jay Z and Beyoncé reportedly rented Bridgehampton’s Sandcastle estate as a summer getaway in August of that year.
33. Beyoncé has driven her family into the city from the Hamptons in her Rolls-Royce convertible.
34. Destiny’s Child’s final New York-area show was at Nassau Coliseum on July 31, 2005.
Feeling ‘Blue’
35. Daughter Blue Ivy was born Jan. 7, 2012, in Lenox Hill Hospital on the Upper East Side.
36. New fathers Neil Nash-Coulon and Edgar Ramirez told the press they were prevented from seeing their newborns at the neonatal ICU there because Beyoncé and Jay Z were in the vicinity. The hospital responded only that “no security plan” would have prevented their access.
37. In October 2012, a Boston court ruled against Beyoncé and Jay Z’s attempt to trademark the name Blue Ivy.
Other endeavors
38. In 2007, she became the first nonmodel and nonathlete on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
39. She won a writing award from the New York Association of Black Journalists for a June 2011 Essence cover story, “Eat, Play, Love,” about her global experiences during a nine-month career break in 2010.
40. Her three fragrance lines are Heat, Heat Rush and Pulse.
41. She and her mother founded the Beyoncé Cosmetology Center at Brooklyn’s Phoenix House drug and alcohol rehab center to help train recovering addicts in a profession.
42. For Houston, she helped create the Survivor Foundation for transitional housing after Hurricane Katrina, and the Knowles-Rowland Center for Youth.
Controversies
43. A decade before Miley Cyrus twerked, some criticized Beyoncé’s “lascivious choreography” at Grant’s Tomb during a Macy’s Fourth of July show in 2003.
44. In 2006, PETA confronted her at Manhattan’s Nobu 57 restaurant about wearing fur coats and using fur in her House of Dereon fashion line.
45. The following year, an Australian anti-smoking group protested newspaper and billboard images showing her with a cigarette holder, saying it violated the country’s tobacco-ad prohibitions.
Miscellaneous
46. One music reference book gives Beyoncé’s vocal range as 3.6 octaves.
47. Her nicknames include JuJu and Moth.
48. When on tour, she watches a DVD of each concert after the show to critique herself, her dancers and her crew, giving everyone notes the next morning.
49. She is 5-foot-6.
50. According to the Biography Channel, her measurements are 33-26-42.
