Becoming Beyoncé
The Untold Story
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4.1 • 34 Ratings
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
The first comprehensive biography ever published about America's favorite living pop icon, Beyonce, from New York Times bestselling biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli.
Beyonce Knowles is a woman who began her career at the age of eight performing in pageant shows and talent contests, honing her craft through her teenage years until, at the age of 16, she had her first number one record with Destiny's Child. That hit-making trio launched Beyonce's successful solo career, catapulting her, as of 2014, to #1 on Forbes annual list of most wealthy celebrities--the same year she made the cover of Time. Becoming Beyonce is not only the story of struggle, sacrifice, and what it takes to make it in the cut-throat record industry, it's the story of the great rewards of such success and the devastating toll it often takes on the human spirit.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Superstardom is a homespun family enterprise with only minimal dysfunction in this tepid biography of pop singer and actress Beyonc Knowles. Taraborrelli (Michael Jackson) ascribes Beyonc 's success to her preternatural voice, musicality, and stage charisma, all obvious from age 11, as well as the single-minded efforts of her management team: first the amateur impresarios who recruited her for a tweens girl group, then her father, Mathew, who applied his salesman's chops and an inherent business cunning equal to any major-label exec's in order to build her career. Knowles herself seems rather square controlled, tight-lipped, relentlessly focused on success and image so the drama comes from shedding people who don't enhance her success, from a gauche boyfriend, Lyndall Locke, to the Destiny's Child group-mates who want more limelight. The book's magnetic center is Mathew, an ego-maniacal control freak and womanizer who's also a promotional genius, but sister Solange provides a jolt with her famous elevator assault on Beyonce's husband, Jay-Z. Taraborrelli did not interview Knowles and too-often substitutes generic gushing for insight: "She'd quietly gone about separating the parts of her life that felt true and organic from those that felt false and pretentious, and then moved forward committed to personal honesty and integrity." But he paints a revealing picture of the entertainment industry's debt to middle-class strivers. Photos.
Customer Reviews
Can't wait!
Can't wait to read about my fave! The sources are very close to her so I'm ready to press purchase now that I'm aware!
Fluff Material
I got a hardcover copy on clearance for $2. Hundreds of pages of alleged information that makes you question the legitimacy of the book. Also if you are a hardcore Beyoncé fan, you would already know majority of the stuff in the book already. She is an intensely private person, so anybody who thinks they can write a book about her life, most likely doesn’t know her, or anybody around her, at all. It’s a fast, pointless read that was reaching the entire time. I’ll wait until she releases her own story on her own accord, because it’s still being written! Nice try though.
Becoming Beyoncé...Boring!
Regurgitated information from news articles, TMZ and people who feel they were slighted by the Knowles! I want to read Beyoncé's story as told by Beyoncé, The Knowles and The Carters. Hey J. Randy you got my money for this piece of fluff...in the end all that matters is you got paid!