Beyoncé’s quality control

Beyoncé is absurdly controlling, said Amy Wallace in GQ. After every show, the singer goes back to her hotel room to watch her performance on DVD, and critiques everything from her singing to her dancers and cameramen. The next morning, her staff will receive pages of notes. “I watch my performances, and I wish I could just enjoy them, but I see the light that was late,” she says. “I see, ‘Oh God, that hair did not work.’ Or, ‘I should never do that again.’ I try to perfect myself. I want to grow, and I’m always eager for new information.” Later, those recordings will be catalogued and stored in a temperature-controlled digital-storage facility—she calls it her “crazy archive”—along with almost every photo ever taken of her, every interview she has given, and reams of footage shot by her “visual director,” who has been filming her daily life, up to 16 hours a day, since 2005. It’s all part of the pop superstar’s determination to have absolute control of her “brand,” and it’s working. “I know that, yes, I am powerful,” she says. “I’m more powerful than my mind can digest and understand.”

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