Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for The Recording Academy.
Last night, Beyoncé’s incredibly long list of accomplishments got a little longer. By virtue of picking up four statuettes at the 2023 Grammys—including the prize for Best Dance/Electronic Album, for RENAISSANCE—the singer, songwriter, producer, actress, and all-around generational talent broke the record for most all-time Grammy wins. She’s got 34, and you know there are another dozen or two still to come.
In honor of this latest achievement, we decided it was high time to dig into the data and celebrate Beyoncé’s Top 5 songs on Genius according to pageviews. Our tally excludes Bey’s Destiny’s Child material but includes features, since she always brings her A game when she’s guesting on someone else’s song. Count ’em down, listen along, and pray for a miracle when trying to buy tickets for her upcoming tour.
A sequel to 2002’s “’03 Bonnie & Clyde,” the song that announced Beyoncé and JAY-Z as a couple, “Part II” goes heavy on outlaw imagery, with Jay proclaiming in the opening verse, “Girl get to bustin’ before the cops come running.” Beyoncé isn’t just a ride-or-die; she plays something of a bad-boy redeemer on this juicy, funky ’80s-R&B throwback. On the first verse, she acknowledges that some people are skeptical of this relationship. But she sees the good in her supposed bad boy.
And if loving you is a crime
Tell me why do I bring out the best in you?
While “Part II (On the Run)” wasn’t a massive chart hit—as the third single off Hov’s 2013 album Magna Carta Holy Grail, it peaked at No. 77 on the Billboard Hot 100—it’s got enough couple-goals energy and A-list star power to remain very popular on this site.
After enlisting Nicki Minaj for her “Flawless Remix” in August 2014, Beyoncé agreed to return the favor and guest on the rapper’s Pinkprint album, released in December of that same year. The result was “Feeling Myself,” a West Coast-flavored self-empowerment anthem that would read like a whole lot of bragging if the assertions weren’t, well, true.
“Changed the game with that digital drop/Know where you was when that digital popped,” Bey sing-raps at one point, referencing the self-titled visual LP she surprise-released in December 2013—a move that transformed the music business forever. Beyoncé doesn’t get a proper verse on “Feeling Myself,” which peaked at No. 39 on the Billboard Hot 100, but she’s all over the post-choruses and the bridge, and she came up with the hypnotic mantra of a hook. Fun fact: SZA helped with some of the lyrics. She was feeling herself, too.
With “Partition,” Beyoncé birthed her alter ego, Yoncé, and reminded the world that she is a grown woman who can enjoy and talk about sex just as much as any man. The song is a combination of two distinct parts—”Yoncé” and “Partition”—both of which make up track No. 6 on Beyoncé’s self-titled 2013 album. On the rapped “Yoncé” half, Bey equates her success with men to her success in the studio.
And why you think you keep my name rollin’ off the tongue?
’Cause when he wanna smash, I’ll just write another one
I sneezed on the beat and the beat got sicker
Yoncé all on his mouth like liquor
She ditches the club to have some raunchy fun in the back of a limo on the “Partition” half.
Driver, roll up the partition, please
I don’t need you seein’ ’Yoncé on her knees
Took forty-five minutes to get all dressed up
We ain’t even gonna make it to this club
“Partition” only reached No. 23 on the Billboard Hot 100, but with its equally raunchy music video directed by Jake Nava, the song became one of the most talked-about tracks on the album—something Beyoncé, who had recently given birth to her daughter Blue Ivy, was especially proud of.
“I was 195 pounds when I gave birth,” Bey explained in a mini-documentary about the making of Beyoncé. “I worked crazily to get my body back. I wanted to show my body. I wanted to show that you can have a child and you can work hard and you can get your body back.”
The No. 2 spot goes to “Formation,” the lead single off Beyoncé’s 2016 masterpiece Lemonade. As had become customary for Bey, the singer surprise-dropped the Black power anthem and its accompanying music video during Black History Month—pointedly the day after what would have been Trayvon Martin’s 21st birthday and the day before what would have been Sandra Bland’s 29th. Directed by Dream Hampton, the music video depicts images of Hurricane Katrina, Mardi Gras, and the Black South. It’s both a call for change and a celebration of blackness.
As has also become customary for Bey, the singer brought together a large team of Black creators to craft “Formation,” including producer Mike-WiLL-Made-It, Rae Sremmurd’s Slim Jxmmi and Swae Lee, and New Orleans legends Big Freedia and Messy Mya, who provide the intro and interlude on the track. Each artist contributed their own something special, further solidifying its ode to Black excellence. For example, the titular phrase was a line Swae Lee recalls freestyling—though he was using it with a much different intention. “I’m saying, for me, like, ‘OK ladies, let’s get in formation,’” he told actress Yara Yashidi on Facebook Watch. “Like, all the ladies. You know what I’m sayin’?” On the chorus, Beyoncé flips the term, instead using it to call on her fellow women to unite in the name of social justice.
Okay, okay, ladies, now let’s get in formation, ’cause I slay
Okay, ladies, now let’s get in formation, ’cause I slay
Prove to me you got some coordination, ’cause I slay
Slay trick, or you get eliminated
“Formation” set the internet on fire the day of its release, and the next day, Beyoncé’s performance of the track at the Super Bowl 50 Halftime show only amplified its impact. The video later took home the Grammy award for Best Music Video, a silver lining to the fact that Lemonade lost out on Album of the Year.
Coming in at No. 1 is “Drunk In Love,” Beyoncé’s collaboration with husband JAY-Z, also off her 2013 self-titled album. The song, which rose to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, was far from the first time the pair had teamed up—they linked earlier that year for “(Part II) On The Run”—but it certainly showed off a new side of the couple, who had made music about being successful and in love countless times but had never made a song so explicitly about sex.
Produced in part by Timbaland, “Drunk In Love” could be read as a continuation of Bey and Jay’s first-ever collaboration, 2003’s “Crazy In Love.” And if that song is about being worried your feelings are one-sided, “Drunk In Love” is about letting those inhibitions go completely and giving in to your basest wants and needs. On the hook, Beyoncé and Jay get so caught up in those desires, they lose track of time.
We woke up in the kitchen sayin’, “How the hell did this shit happen?”
Oh, baby
Drunk in love
On the second verse, Beyoncé gets creative about detailing all the different ways they enjoyed each other’s company the night before.
Boy, I’m drinkin’, I’m singin’
On the mic to my boy toys
Then I fill the tub up halfway
Then ride it with my surfboard
Surfboard, surfboard
It’s not shocking “Drunk In Love” isn’t the only Beyoncé track to make this list—the LP set a new precedent for major acts to surprise-drop projects without any promotion—a strategy that broke the internet in 2013 but has now become commonplace among the biggest stars in music. It also arrived alongside a full, curated visual album, featuring over an hour of video footage for fans to pour over while listening to each track. For the “Drunk In Love” music video, Bey and Jay recruited Hype Williams to film a stark black-and-white clip of the pair enjoying an impromptu night on the beach in Miami.
