NEW YORK • After releasing her much-anticipated album “Renaissance”, Beyonce has scored the No 1 spot on the top US songs chart for the first time in well over a decade.
Her lead single “Break My Soul” is the 40-year-old’s first solo song to hit the top of Billboard’s Hot 100 since 2008’s “Single Ladies”, the industry tracker said on Monday.
Her seventh solo studio album also opened at No 1 on Billboard’s top albums chart, the entertainment outlet said. It’s the second-highest debut of the year, following Harry Styles’s “Harry’s House”.
“Renaissance” also unseated Latin trap global sensation Bad Bunny from the top of the Billboard 200 albums chart, where his “Un Verano Sin Ti” had held the top spot for five straight weeks, along with two peaks when it first came out in May for a total of seven weeks at No 1.
Eminently danceable and rife with nods to disco and EDM history, Beyonce’s latest album burst onto the summer scene primed for its needle drop at the club.
Beyonce’s soaring vocals have their place on “Renaissance”, but it’s the rhythmic, urgent call to the dance floor that stands out, with a tapestry of influences paying homage to pioneers of funk, soul, rap, house and disco.
For all her cultural clout and an indisputable throne in music’s pantheon, Beyonce’s songs historically have not seen the same commercial dominance as other contemporary global stars.
That was poised to change with “Renaissance” — and Queen Bey made good on her chances.
On Monday, the megastar released a series of portraits on Instagram including a clip of her in a disco ball of an outfit, smiling for the camera as she waved her finger to signal her No 1 status.
The duo will collaborate on ‘Hold Me Closer’, according to Interscope Records, but no further details were announced including when the track would be released
Meanwhile, Princess of pop Britney Spears will join forces with music maestro Elton John on a new single, the record company releasing the track said on Monday.
The pair — who between them have 90 years’ experience in the music business — will collaborate on “Hold Me Closer”, Interscope Records said.
There were no further details, including when the track would be released, but it will be the first new music from Spears since the middle of the last decade.
The title of the song comes from the lyrics of the early 1970s hit “Tiny Dancer”, which John co-wrote with long-time creative partner Bernie Taupin.
The news comes after days of online speculation from fans that the pair would be teaming up. It also comes just weeks after Spears announced a long-wished-for pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage.
The pregnancy, with Sam Asghari, came five months after a Los Angeles judge dissolved a conservatorship overseen by Spears’s father — an arrangement the singer said had prevented her from having a contraceptive IUD removed despite her desire for more kids. — AFP