How Gradual Success Helped Beyonce

(CBS)  Her full name is Beyonce Knowles, but she is known far and wide simply as Beyonce. The important thing is that you don't confuse her with what seems to be a gaggle of one-name pop stars. She is one of the most famous women in the world now and the foundation of that celebrity is not based on tabloid hype but raw talent. She is the real deal.

At age 28, she has already spent half of her life in show business, and is well on her way to becoming the Judy Garland or Barbra Streisand of her generation. She's a singer, dancer, actress who has sold 118 million records, appeared in seven movies, won ten Grammy Awards and is up for another ten Sunday night.

And as 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft found out when he met up with her in Dublin on the final stop of a grueling nine month tour, Beyonce is just beginning to hit her stride.

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All you need to do is watch. She's a polished product that has been years in the making, a fiercely talented performer with a million kilowatts of energy, and a role model who has been strong enough to strut around all the usual pitfalls of fame.

"I am definitely someone that analyzes everything. And I made the decision at a very young age to not do certain things," she told Kroft.

"No drugs, no eating disorders, no bad relationships," Kroft remarked. "No breakdowns due to overwhelming pressure. It takes a certain amount of…discipline, I guess."

"It takes discipline, and it takes focus and I think I'm very fortunate that I've had gradual success. It's not something that happened in one day. It's something that I've worked at and worked at," she explained.

It's a career that began literally in grade school. Beyonce Knowles was raised in an upscale Houston neighborhood by her father Matthew, a sales executive who would become her manager, and by her mother Tina, Beyonce's creative muse, who owned one of the most popular hair salons in Houston.

It became one of her daughter's first venues.

She told Kroft she began performing when she was nine years old. "That's when I started performing at Walmarts and, you know, wherever we could perform. We didn't become professional until we got a record deal around 12 years old."

"So, who wanted to do this? You? Or your parents?" Kroft asked.

"Absolutely me. Once I saw Jackson Five and Michael Jackson, I'm like, 'Oh, my God.' The second I got on the stage, I just opened up and I became this whole other person on the stage. And I wanted to do it every day all day," Beyonce remembered.

With her best friend Kelly Rowland and two other pals from Houston they began winning talent contests. By the time they were 16, the quartet had morphed into Destiny's Child, one of the most successful pop groups of the 1990s.

Home schooled, underaged, and traveling with her parents on the road, Beyonce skipped the boys and the after parties, and passed the time on the tour bus with the other girls reading the Bible.

"We were nice ladies," Beyonce said. "I mean, I'm not sayin' that we were perfect teenagers. But, we were raised well and, honestly, we were too busy tryin' to be superstars. We didn't even have time to think about it, honestly."

There's still a prayer before every show. But since Beyonce began her own solo career eight years ago, a lot of things have changed. She has a successful clothing line with her mother, lucrative cosmetics deals with L'Oreal and Coty, and an estimated income last year of more than $80 million.

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[beyfansrzombies]

sorry for all the typos above...

[beyfansrzombies]

Cwarner23 is right. No need to be angry with the truth, it makes one come of as bitter. Beyonce' has not suffered, yet. Her let downs have been not getting an oscar nom. That may have hurt her ego, but that is not the same as what many artists have had to go through in their lives. Afterall, she and her daddy cause more pain to up and comers and even to people she claimed to have loved and been friends with, those are the ones whom have had to overcome the feelings of betrayal and failure, failure to have seen their so called childhood friend would stomp all over them, to get on top. Those girls were just as popular, attractive and talented, and actually danced better, than she, so they had to go. Kelly was only allowed to stay because she was family, but then they left her in the dust, as well, once they got Bey where they needed her to be. She wasn't able to pull of the oversexed role she wanted to portray, in a group setting, because Kelly was attractive, just enough, to steal some glances from her cousin.
Kelly's voice is actually stronger and prettier than Beyonce's, but because she didn't get sold as a sex object, she wasn't able to garner the fan base, once she went solo. If she had done better than bey, daddy would have done everything he could to either ruin her career, or would have focused on hers rather than bey's career, like he did with Kelly's and Solange's careers. Mommy and Daddy are pimps, and Beyonce's their chic for hire. Nothing more.
Out of them all, Bey's voice was not the best.
Mary J Blige said it best when she mentioned that Beyonce' can sing but there's no soul in it, because she's hasn't had to really experience anything, you don't feel it when yoou listen to her. Bey can't sing like jhud, MJB, Keyshia Cole, Amerie, Letoya Luckett, Sade, Monica, Brandy, Patty LaBelle, Aretha Franklin, Heather Headley, and sooo many more that when they sing, you feel their pain, their joy, their tears, their sunshine, their love, their heartbreak, all the things a singer should be able to portray through song. (aaliyah had the ability, too, rip)
Shoot even the white girl (BJEAN) whom wrote If I Was A Boy sang the song with 10 times more feeling than beyonce' did. It's the only time I liked the song.
The only 2 songs, sans dc, that I've like from bey was Me, Myself & I and Ring the Alarm. Of course, she wrote neither. Although, she doesn't write nor does she come up with the ideas for her videos. Too sad.
She's not creative. She's ambitious, not creative. She's like the Nurse vs the Nurse Aide in a long term facility. The nurses get all the credit for everything, but it's really the aides doing all the hard labor. There's nothing wrong with being ambitious, but she really needs to be brought down a notch, and start giving credit to the writers of her songs and stop putting her name on it for adding an ooh here or changing a he to a she.
When she lives life and starts giving credit to others and apologizes to letoya and latavia, publicly, then she may win the respect that you stans feel she deserves. It would show her true maturity by stepping up and taking the time to make the overdue apology. Even if she was only a child, she should feel the guilt over it, and apologize just to show that she truly is as humble as she pretends.

[Brokennews]

Best female singer cleavage ever!!


Adam Lambert doesn't count!

[NowBeWithThat]

by cwarner23 January 31, 2010 2:50 PM EST
"Beyonce ... lives her life in a bubble"
________________________________

Yeah... $80 mil, beauty, amazing talent, glamorous contracts, business savvy, a rich hubby, and a room full of awards before you're 30 tends to do that.

Stop hating, and add some fiber to your diet.

[lissa4]

Beyonce is a beautiful, talented, spiritual, loving, giving, hard-working woman, you cwarner are jealous and bitter, get over it! This is a beautiful touching interview, love her and I'm 48! So there!

[graceuntold]

in reply to cwarner23:

If Beyonce is FAKE why did you post your degrading message? Just because you are corrupt and bitter doesn't mean you have to spread that disease to others who believe she is respectable and a woman of integrity. She has maintained stability because of her family and no one should never be given the option to cut the strings from their parents IF their parents have proven to be a positive example and force in one's life. Thank you CBS for this Beyonce special. I will for sure tune in.