It’s been a little under three months since Beyonce released her seventh studio album Renaissance and in that time, the dance-centric album has only become more popular and influential. Maybe that’s why fans are so disappointed that the singer has yet to release a single music video for it — not even its standout lead single “Break My Soul,” which shot to No. 1 on the Hot 100 and revitalized interest in the house music styles that inspired it.
The Hive has certainly gotten restless, sharing its collective impatience with Queen Bey on Twitter.
DROP THE DAMN #RENAISSANCE VISUALS @beyonce pic.twitter.com/AhVKEgF9Dl
— kowboy kary (@itsKARY_) September 12, 2022
https://twitter.com/xoMinnieJo/status/1571550320546942981
https://twitter.com/iamlexstylz/status/1574048116998905858
BEYONCÉ Just DROP the VISUALS #beyonce #beyhive pic.twitter.com/7ON3ycIGyS
— MoTHeR (@YONCE_LIIQUOR) October 12, 2022
Not to be that person but @Beyonce please drop these damn videos. It’s been nothing but female rap beef, Kanye’s antics and low vibrational discourse every week since ‘Renaissance’ dropped in JULY!
— Coolness941 (@Coolness941) October 11, 2022
For anyone who is baffled by this phenomenon, the only explanation I can give is that Beyonce sort of brought this on herself. When her fifth, self-titled album dropped in the middle of the night in 2013, it was accompanied by a full slate of high-quality music videos filmed in secret over the course of the months leading up to the album’s release. Then, in 2020, Beyoncé released Black Is King, described as a “visual album” set to songs from her 2019 album, The Lion King: The Gift. Released on Disney+, the musical film paired the songs with vivid imagery that won the singer Grammy Awards for Best Music Video for “Brown Skin Girl” and Best R&B Performance for “Black Parade.”
Basically, she’s set a standard for herself — one that fans very much want to hold her to. Who knows? Maybe she’s got something planned for the future — or maybe she wants fans to experience the music in isolation, in the same context as the house classics that inspired Renaissance.
