Beyoncé has accomplished so much in her life and career that it’s hard to keep up with everything she’s done since her rise to fame. While we only have old YouTube videos and articles to look back on, Beyoncé has an entire digital archive that houses practically every performance, photoshoot, and interview she’s ever done.
Talk about convenience!
Beyoncé’s ‘crazy’ digital archive consists of ‘thousands of hours worth’ of footage
For most of us, it’s become second nature to back up digital files, first from our phones and then from our laptops onto external hard drives or Dropbox. Beyoncé, on the other hand, doesn’t have this problem.
Though she has a digital record of everything pertaining to her life and career, the “Crazy In Love” singer doesn’t store her digital files on a phone or laptop. Instead, she keeps the footage from every interview, photoshoot, video diary, and concert she’s ever done in a database located inside her New York office.
According to GQ correspondent Amy Wallace, who interviewed the world-renowned pop star in 2013, the digital archive is kept in a “temperature-controlled digital-storage facility.” It contains “virtually every existing photograph” of the singer from her early days with Destiny’s Child until now.
“Anytime [Beyoncé] wants to remind herself of all that work – or almost anything else that’s ever happened in her life – all she has to do is walk down the hall. There… is another long, narrow room that contains the official Beyoncé archive, a temperature-controlled digital-storage facility that contains virtually every existing photograph of her, starting with the very first frames taken of Destiny’s Child, the ’90s girl group she once fronted; every interview she’s ever done; every video of every show she’s ever performed; every diary entry she’s ever recorded while looking into the unblinking eye of her laptop.”
The library also contains “thousands of hours of private footage,” which was shot by a “visual director” whose job is to record everything about her life behind closed doors.
According to the outlet, the singer modeled her digital record after NBC’s own archive and has hired a librarian to keep the collection in check.
Seeing as there’s so much footage in this database, Beyoncé refers to the room as her “crazy archive,” telling the outlet, “You know, I can always say, ‘I want that interview I did for GQ,’ and we can find it.”
Beyoncé likes to remind herself of how far she’s come over the years
While it might sound weird to some that Beyoncé keeps a digital record of her entire career, there’s a reason she stores all of the footage from her life’s work in a secure database.
According to ELLE, the multi-Grammy winner once wanted to use footage that MTV had shot on the set of one of her music videos. However, she didn’t want to pay the network for the rights to use her own image. To avoid running into this probably again, Beyoncé started creating her own content and can now use any footage she wants, seeing as they are all at her disposal.
But having the footage to look back on for fun isn’t the only purpose the digital archive serves.
It also allows the Queen Bey to revisit past performances and remind herself of how far she has come — bother personally and professionally.
“I worked so hard during my childhood to meet this goal: By the time I was 30 years old, I could do what I want,” she told GQ. “I’ve reached that. I feel very fortunate to be in that position. But I’ve sacrificed a lot of things, and I’ve worked harder than probably anyone I know, at least in the music industry. So I just have to remind myself that I deserve it.”
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