“A lot of people don’t know that Beyoncé is my last name. It’s my maiden name,” Beyoncé’s mom, Tina Knowles explained during an interview on In My Head with Heather Thomson in 2020.
“My name was Celestine Beyoncé,” Knowles explains, but the spelling of her last name was actually different than her six other siblings and parents, whose last names were spelled Beyincé.
“I asked my mother when I was grown. I was like, ‘Why is my brother’s name spelled B-E-Y-I-N-C-E?’ You know, it’s all these different spellings,” she said. “And my mom’s reply to me was like, ‘That’s what they put on your birth certificate.’”
Knowles continued: “So I said, ‘Well, why didn’t you argue and make them correct it?’ And she said, ‘I did one time. The first time, and I was told ‘Be happy that you’re getting a birth certificate’ because, at one time, Black people didn’t get birth certificates.”
4. “Blackbird” is a Civil Rights song
The Beatles on stage at the London Palladium during a performance in front of 2, 000 screaming fans.Michael Webb/Getty Images
The second track on Cowboy Carter is surprisingly a cover of The Beatles’ 1968 song, “Blackbird,” featuring Tanner Adell, Brittney Spencer, Tiera Kennedy, and Reyna Roberts. While on the surface, it might seem out of place to feature a song from a British rock band on an American-rooted, country-inspired album, there is actually a deeper meaning behind it that connects to Beyoncé’s projects honoring Black history and art.
“Blackbird” was written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon and featured on the band’s White Album. In his 2021 book, McCartney said that the song was based on the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. in the 60s.
“At the time in 1968 when I was writing Blackbird, I was very conscious of the terrible racial tensions in the US,” McCartney wrote. “That imagery of the broken wings and the sunken eyes and the general longing for freedom is definitely of its moment.”
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