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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Hi, I'm Molly Graham, host of Work Life, a podcast from TED. The most important lessons about work usually aren't the ones anyone teaches you. They come from experience, from uncertainty, from figuring things out as you go. On this show, my expert guests and I explore how careers really unfold through change, through doubt, through the decisions that shape who we become over time.
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Hello, I'm Simon. And I'm Zing. Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. Together, we host Good Bad Billionaire, the podcast that looks at how some of the richest people on the planet made their money. You can find us every week wherever you get your BBC podcasts. We've covered some of the biggest names in tech, sport, entertainment and finance, from Elon Musk to Ronnie Scruvala.
Tyler Perry to Michael O'Leary. And even Selena Gomez and Arnold Schwarzenegger. In this episode, we cover one of the newly minted billionaires on the list, Queen Bee herself. We hope you enjoy listening. A young girl just nine years old sweats under the sweltering Texas sun. She is running, her tiny feet are pounding the pavement along the edge of the Bayou River.
Five other girls trail behind her. They're all singing at the top of their lungs, harmonising as they go. But none of the girls are hitting the notes quite like our lead. Because this little girl is Beyonce and she will leave everyone in the dust on her journey to becoming a billionaire. Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service.
Each episode we pick a billionaire and find out how they made their money. We take them from zero to their first million and then from a million on to a billion. I'm Simon Jack, the BBC's business editor. And I'm Zing Zing. I'm a journalist, author and podcaster. And this week, probably one of the top cultural figures of the 21st century. Oh, yeah. And probably the 20th century as well.
I mean, we are starting this season with a bang. Have you seen her life? I've seen her life. I've actually seen her life three times. And I was trying to count how much money I've spent on Beyonce in the last 15 years. I reckon probably almost a grand seeing her live. Because tickets don't come cheap, do they?
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Chapter 2: How did Beyonce's childhood influence her career?
I watched them struggle working 18 hour days. They taught me that nothing worth having comes easily. And in particular, her dad, Matthew Knowles, stressed discipline. He was really tough on her. But Beyonce has said, I wasn't doing this because I didn't have a choice or to support the family. Important for child entertainers. All because I had to get out of a bad situation.
I was just determined this is what I wanted to do so bad. Okay. So she was making a name for herself in the local community, winning competitions. One day in the hair salon, two local mothers, Denise and Deborah, approached the Knowleses and they said, listen, we want to form a young version of En Vogue. 1990, we're out here. Groups were big at the time.
There was a gap in the market for a younger version of that. So Beyonce became the first member of a band called Girls' Time, spelled T-Y-M-E. I like that everything has to be kind of slightly off because it was en vogue, NSYNC, Girls' Time with a Y. They trialled 30 girls. Six were finally selected for the band. They had intense rehearsals. They practised nearly every day.
For months at their family home, Beyonce's family home, the girls did a regular boot camp as per our opening scene. Remember, running down the river by the bayou. And they traveled to the West Coast to record their first record. But tensions were already showing. So those involved have said that Beyonce's dad, Matthew, was trying to position her as the lead.
Although Matthew obviously disputes this portrayal of himself. It's worth noting that there were a lot of people involved at this point, all of whom were developing Girls' Time for months on end. That's not particularly unusual when it comes to girl bands or boy bands. It's estimated that back then this would have cost around $100,000 because it is expensive. You're working with a lot of people.
So the band needed to sign a deal. But their producer was shopping the record around major labels for about a year. They had no success. And their last hope was a popular TV talent show called Star Search, quite similar to, I guess, X Factor or Pop Idol today. Yeah, like an early version of that. At the time, it was the largest national talent show.
Child stars who'd been on Star Search included some big names, actually. Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera. They practiced for over a month. They got tight. They got polished. They were up against an adult male rock band called Skeleton Crew. I can sort of picture that band. And Beyonce said, I hadn't even thought about imagining losing as a possibility. But lose they did.
And this whole process of losing Star Search caused also a deep rift within the band. Ashley left. Soon the producers, songwriters also parted ways. And this left the stage clear for Matho Knowles. He quit his job to manage the band full time. This is a guy who's probably pretty high up. And he just goes, I'm just going to quit to manage my daughter's band.
Well, they must have been absolutely convinced that they had a star on their hands. Because as you say, it's not like this is their only hope. They had a very comfortable life. They both had good jobs. And to pack it in... particularly after losing this. At that point, you'd say, oh, well, nice try. It's not going to be, but they doubled down on this. And so more girls left.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Destiny's Child face in their rise to fame?
People don't know about American football. The halftime Super Bowl show is one of the biggest set pieces in the global entertainment calendar. You know, people like... Michael Jackson famously did it and caused a sensation. Always a subject of great cultural debate and analysis. For example, when Bad Bunny did it recently, it was a political storm. So it's a big deal, right? Exactly.
Well, artists actually, and this is interesting, they're not paychecks. paid a performance fee for the halftime show. But she had actually just re-signed with Pepsi for an estimated $50 million, which included a halftime commercial.
And Forbes described this deal as an unconventional multi-year deal because Beyonce would have an element of creative control with a multi-million dollar fund to support the singer's chosen creative projects, presumably including the Super Bowl. Yeah, so every part of your, Beyonce's life now is a product in a way.
And that year she wrote, produced and directed and starred, of course, in a documentary called Life is But a Dream. And she's always stressed her hands-on approach. She was actually on Final Cut Pro, that software which you use to edit video. She said, I spent a year editing. I went through hundreds of shows worth of footage and that experience taught me to love the filmmaking process. So...
You know, an early adopter then of this kind of self-executing, you know, I'm thinking of Taylor Swift here as well. Exactly. The Beckhams have done it recently as well. I know some documentary filmmakers who actually hate this kind of form of documentary filmmaking because they say if the talent or the subject gets to make the show. it's not really going to be truthful.
If Beyonce is on Final Cut Pro kind of editing together everything, you know, is it going to be an objective portrait of the truth? Who knows? Yeah, in general, everyone needs an editor, right? And that editor shouldn't be you. Unless maybe it's Beyonce. Beyonce can edit me anytime. Okay. And that was the year she ripped up the music industry rulebook.
She dropped her fifth solo album, which was a visual album called Beyonce, totally out of the blue. And it broke the record as the fastest selling album in iTunes history. And again, it was one of those things that must have been like this Manhattan Project. It must have been kept very secret because it would have been a big deal to release it from nowhere.
I mean, David Bowie did this towards the end of his life. That's a different thing. He was not the kind of global superstar with everyone's eyes on them that Beyonce was at the time. You can imagine the number of lawyers that Beyonce must have hired just to write the NDAs to keep everyone silent. Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting sort of study in control, isn't it?
In an interview, the journalist from GQ magazine noted that Beyonce's ground rule was that she filmed everything. The tape would become part of her temperature control archive. It includes private footage compiled by a visual director that Beyonce employs who has shot practically her every waking moment, up to 16 hours a day since 2005.
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