You Kill Me Boy, XO - Beyoncé on Monogamy

By Tommy Boyce

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In a post-COWBOY CARTER world, it seems that there’s nothing Beyoncé Giselle Knowles Carter cannot do. We’re twenty-one years, eight studio albums, and one Beychella into the great Beyoncé experiment; a career minted through once-in-a-lifetime live performances, mastery of the media machine, and a continual (at times dizzying) artistic growth. The last decade in particular has seen her break new ground in her songwriting, offering an increasingly intimate glimpse into her personal life and twenty-three year long relationship with Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter. I’ve spent the last few weeks unable to listen to anything at the gym but HOMECOMING: THE LIVE ALBUM, the recording of Bey’s landmark 2018 Coachella headline performance, and it was through repeated listens of this seamless mingling of her career up to that point that I realized how remarkable it is that the entirety of her artistic output has centered around one person, one muse. Beyoncé is perhaps the only major popstar to trace the course of a single relationship, so what does she have to say about monogamy?