Beyonce’s expected appearance at a Kamala Harris rally on Friday in Houston has fans and politicos buzzing, as the Democratic nominee is set to finally unite onstage with the singer whose music and Black causes have permeated her campaign for president.
This is far from the first political foray for Beyonce, who has reliably backed Democratic candidates since the Obama years, and frequently touches on liberal-aligned issues in her music. She reportedly even let Harris use her hit song “Freedom” as a rally anthem.
Still, Beyonce was running out of time to explicitly support Harris in this year’s neck-and-neck race. A baseless rumor that she was going to perform at the Democratic National Convention in August left many Harris supporters disappointed when the night ended with no sight of Queen Bey.
The Washington Post was first to confirm Beyonce’s Friday appearance from people familiar with the event, which should come as a relief to more than a few of her fans, not to mention Harris’s.
With Black voter turnout expected to be crucial in the Nov. 5 election, both parties have been trying to court them in the race’s final weeks. In Beyonce, Harris will have in her corner one of the most successful Black artists in the world – one who has consistently promoted Black culture and causes.
A police union leader called for officers to boycott Beyoncé’s “Formation” world tour in 2016, after the music video for that song featured her singing atop a sinking patrol car set in post-Katrina New Orleans. Another scene showed a row of police in riot gear facing off against a dancing Black boy, before the camera panned to a wall graffitied with the message “Stop Shooting Us.”
The imagery was a nod to the “hands up, don’t shoot” chant, which became a rallying cry in Ferguson, Missouri, after a White police officer fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown. Union officials called the video “anti-police.”
Beyonce wore an outfit seemingly inspired by the Black Panthers to the Super Bowl that same year, and invited the mothers of Brown, Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant and Eric Garner to the red carpet at MTV’s Video Music Awards. The next year, she presented the Muhammad Ali Legacy Award to Colin Kaepernick, a former NFL quarterback who often spoke out on racial injustice.
More recently, Beyonce has released empowerment tracks such as “Black Parade” and “Brown Skin Girl.”
Nor has she been shy about backing political candidates, which she first did a full decade before fellow megastar Taylor Swift came out as a Democratic voter in 2018.
Beyonce sang “America the Beautiful” and covered “At Last” by Etta James as inauguration events for President Barack Obama in 2009. Four years later, she lip-synced “The Star-Spangled Banner” for his second inauguration ceremony, months after handwriting Obama an open letter, calling him “the reason my daughter and nephew will grow up knowing that they can truly be ANYTHING they want to be.”
Beyonce and her husband, Jay-Z, appear to have had a real relationship with Obama and the first lady. In 2011, she reworked the lyrics to an earlier single to create the song “Move Your Body” in partnership with Michelle Obama’s public health campaign fighting childhood obesity.
Since then, Beyonce has supported a handful of prominent Democrats. She and Jay-Z appeared at a concert for Hillary Clinton in 2016, with a set list that included “Formation,” “Run the World (Girls)” and the future Harris favorite, “Freedom.”
She also endorsed Beto O’Rourke, who was running for Senate as a Democrat in Texas, in 2018. (Yes, she wore one of those famed “Beto” hats that celebrities wore at the time.) O’Rourke ended up losing the race to Ted Cruz.
On the day before the 2020 presidential election, Beyoncé called for Texas residents to vote with a clip of her wearing a Biden-Harris-themed mask. Once the race was called five days later, she congratulated President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris on their victory.
Mixing celebrity with politics always entails some blowback. Beyoncé has naturally angered some conservatives over the years, but she also has been criticized by some liberal-leaning fans for not being political enough. Some vocal corners of the Beyhive have expressed concern that she hasn’t spoken about the Israel-Gaza conflict, for example. And her fans were notably split over her 2023 performance in Dubai, a private show to honor the opening of a luxury hotel in a country where homosexuality is illegal.
On the other hand, 2024 may be Beyonce’s most politically expressive year yet – at least in terms of airplay. “Freedom” is not only an anthem for the Harris campaign, but Republican candidate Donald Trump was reportedly hit with a cease-and-desist letter after using the same song in a social media video.
The single from her 2016 “Lemonade” album – widely used as a Black Lives Matter rallying song after the death of George Floyd in 2020 – has also appeared in ads for Harris this past summer.
Even as news broke Thursday about Beyonce appearing at an event for Harris, it was met with some skepticism given that she didn’t show up on the final night of the Democratic convention this summer, despite viral rumours and erroneous tabloid reports.
Still, you might say Beyonce was there in spirit. After her closing speech, Harris celebrated the event with 100,000 balloons dropping from the rafters and a recording of “Freedom” ringing loud.