Beyonce is a megastar but her phenomenal success is not due to chance. In the biography “Becoming Beyonce: The Untold Story,” J. Randy Taraborrelli reveals that the singer was groomed to become a star from her childhood under the watchful eye of both parents.
“Everybody knew that Beyonce’s talent had always been the family’s founding principle, its hope and grace, the fulcrum around which they all came together,” the author writes.
Her singular name is known worldwide yet Beyonce hated the sound of it when she was a child. She was also very ashamed of her ears, which she called “big Dumbo ears.” Even now, Beyonce never shows them and she admits that she wears big earrings because they camouflage her ears.
Beyonce was not only unhappy with the way she looked but she also felt that she did not fit in with other children in school. She became very shy and withdrawn; however her mother, Tina, noticed that when her daughter sang, she was less introverted.
Beyonce was seven at the time and her mother signed her up for dance classes, hoping that she would make new friends. It was in those classes that the child began to gain some self-esteem. Soon after, one of the dance instructors arranged for Beyonce to take part in a community show.
It was her first performance and it changed the course of her life.
“From that moment on, I decided that all the world would be a stage… I made my own stages. That’s how I expressed myself through music. I only felt comfortable when I was singing or dancing. My personality would totally change. It’s still true today. Normally, I keep to myself, and you wouldn’t even know if I was in the same room but when I’m in performance mode, I become a totally different person,” says Beyonce in Taraborrelli’s book.
After Beyonce won that first talent contest, her mother enrolled her in beauty pageants. Her father also began sharing his wife’s interest in his daughter’s budding talent. He eventually became her manager and remained so until March 2011 when Beyonce finally announced that she was parting ways with him.
‘Two different lives’
From a very early age, Beyonce realized that if she wanted to keep her privacy, she had to compartmentalize her life. She never wanted to attract extra attention so she never mentioned to anyone that she was taking part in beauty pageants. One of her school friends, Chester Maddox, remembers Beyonce as lacking self-confidence and he couldn’t imagine she would be bold enough to enter and win talent contests.
During a TV interview with Liam Bartlett in Australia, Beyonce admitted that her classmates knew nothing about her life outside school: “It was like I had two different lives. I’ve been that way all my life.”
Her breakthrough came at the age of eight when she was chosen by Denize Seals and Deborah Laday to be part of “Girl’s Tyme,” a show which premiered at Hobart Taylor Hall with an audience of two thousand people.
What is remarkable is that Beyonce was so precocious. Denize Seals, her first coach, was amazed by her talent and her eagerness to learn all she needed to know about singing. Seals even remembers one day when she walked into rehearsal and saw Beyonce giving the other girls their parts as if she were their vocal coach.
By the time she was 16, she was working on her second album with her group Destiny’s Child. Dan Workman, their producer, realized after only five minutes that Beyonce was not like any teenager dreaming of being a singer: “This is a real vocalist. You could tell she knew her way around a studio. The way she intuitively used the microphone and asked for feedback showed a level of professionalism far beyond her years… While it felt a little weird having this teenager drive the session, she was so good I was blown away by the whole thing,” he told Taraborrelli.
Besides her high level of ethics, Beyonce showed a rare maturity for a 16-year-old. Yvette Noel-Schure, who became Destiny’s Child’s publicist and has remained with Beyonce ever since, remembers their first meeting: “She takes you in. She looks you straight in your eyes when she’s talking to you… I saw that boldness in her. To this day, when you talk to her, it’s the same thing. I always say, ‘Wow! You still do that.’”
Similarly Reggie Wells, the Emmy-winning makeup artist, known for his work with Oprah Winfrey and Whitney Houston, never forgot when Beyonce told him: “I’m so impressed. I’m honored to be touched by you.” Wells was not only moved but he also felt that it was a powerful statement from someone who was barely 16.
A powerful lesson
However strong she might have been, her mother was there to remind her that she could not just act the way she felt. One day, Beyonce and her parents were looking around in a record store when they heard her song “No, No, No” playing on the sound system. Beyonce started singing and dancing along with her own voice in front of a group of people who had recognized her. Enjoying that moment of fame, she kept ignoring her mother’s repeated remarks. In the end, she went straight up to her daughter and smacked her in the face. She had witnessed signs that Beyonce was getting too proud and vain and she sensed this was the moment to put an end to it.
Many years later, Beyonce admitted that was the best thing that her mother did. “I was losing sight of what was important. Well, I needed it,” she told Steve Jones in a television interview. Halfway through the book, it is obvious that Beyonce is a discreet and vigilant person by nature. She rarely talks about herself and she has her reasons.
“Beyonce had long before decided that rather than make the wrong statement about herself, she’d make none at all except those concerning her professional aspirations and a few platitudes now and again about how blessed she was to have her career… Today she still has critics who feel that she is disingenuous or just a plain fake. If she comes across that way and she sometimes does, it’s really just a function of her being evasive by design. She’d rather be roundly criticized than completely exposed,” writes Taraborrelli.
Oprah Winfrey told Beyonce that she regretted discussing her relationship with Stedman Graham in the media. Once she opened that door on her private life, there was never any closing it so she advised Beyonce to keep it closed — and even locked.
Beyonce married Jay Z on April 4, 2008, in a very private ceremony. It took about six months before the couple would even confirm their marriage, and evidence suggests the power-couple still value privacy in their personal lives.
Last summer “Lemonade” became the singer’s sixth album to clock up more than a million sales. And, today, it is difficult to believe that Beyonce was so protective of her private life. Nowadays, she readily posts photos of her family on social media. Some see this as a marketing strategy, to cast her as a happy wife and mother. But as Taraborrelli writes, “somewhere along the line, Beyonce reconciled herself to her stardom and decided to relax into it. Whether altered or not, the photographs she posts do seem to suggest that she is at peace, as if she has finally merged the icon with the woman.”
“Becoming Beyonce: The Untold Story” chronicles the diva’s trip to stardom. It is largely based on interviews with people who have played a pivotal role in her life, because Beyonce has never liked to reveal details of her personal life.
As we reach the end of the book we are left with the strange feeling that we know so little about Beyonce. But isn’t it precisely this absence of information that makes her so interesting?

Source:Arab News