The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour was the fourth concert tour by American singer-songwriter Beyoncé. Announced in February 2013 with initial dates in Europe and North America, the tour contained seven legs and 132 shows. It began in Belgrade, Serbia, on April 15, 2013, and concluded in Lisbon, Portugal, on March 27, 2014.
The tour featured royal themes with Beyoncé emulating different queens through her fashion for which she collaborated with numerous designers and fashion houses. The set list of the shows in 2013 included songs from all four studio albums of Beyoncé's solo career. After the release of her eponymous fifth studio album, the 2014 shows were changed to incorporate tracks from the album. The tour was lauded by music critics who praised Beyoncé for her energetic performances, dancing and vocal abilities. The show was directed and choreographed by Frank Gatson Jr.
Following the announcement of the tour, all the tickets made available for the shows sold out, which prompted more dates to be added to the itinerary. The tour grossed $188.6 million in 2013 and the 2014 shows grossed $41.1 million, bringing the tour's total gross revenue to $229.7 million. This made The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour the highest-grossing female and solo tour of 2013. Performances of a number of songs from the tour were broadcast and behind-the-scenes footage was released.
Background
During a press conference for Super Bowl XLVII on January 31, 2013, Beyoncé revealed that she would make an announcement after her performance at the halftime show and added that "fans should just stay tuned to see". Beyoncé announced the tour and its name after her performance the Super Bowl XLVII halftime show on February 3. The tour's title refers to her marriage with Shawn 'Jay-Z' Carter. However, the official poster of the tour with the name written on it was leaked on the ticket's website Live Nation prior to the official announcement. It shows Beyoncé wearing a Victorian golden royal top and a crown, referencing Queen Elizabeth I. Rosie Swash of The Guardian described it as a "visual stamp of authority". Along with the tour's name, initial dates in Europe and North America were announced, and later more were added in Latin America, Australia, and New Zealand.
Following the announcement of the tour's title, Beyoncé was criticized by several critics and feminists alike for entitling it after her husband's name as she has been regarded as a feminist. Questions were raised about how Beyoncé agreed to be known as a bride of another celebrity person. During an interview with Vogue, Beyoncé described herself as a "modern-day feminist" and further spoke about her decision to reference her husband's name: "I feel like Mrs. Carter is who I am, but more bold and more fearless than I've ever been..... It comes from knowing my purpose and really meeting myself once I saw my child. I was like, 'OK, this is what you were born to do'. The purpose of my body became completely different." After the second European leg was announced on December 11, 2013, a new poster was revealed and used for the promotion of all the newly added shows.
Development
The concert at The O2 Arena in London was announced on February 3, along with a short advertisement for the tour; an extended version of the clip appeared in late February. Beyoncé was dressed in a golden corset and a royal gown to whoo the crowd. She is seen walking into a dance hall in slow-motion with several servants and a DJ, dressed as a jester tries to distract her. The end of the advertisement shows black-and-white snippets of behind-the-scenes footage of the video. Alexis L. Loinaz of E! compared her aristocratic look in the video to Marie Antoinette, Queen Elizabeth I, and Lady Gaga. In March 2013, Beyoncé posted a new poster for the tour on her official Facebook page showing her striking four different poses, wearing a blond wig, a white top and blue shorts. In May 2013, Beyoncé launched an online store for the tour in which different clothes were available for purchase. The following month, she added a limited edition to her Heat line of perfumes, titled Heat: The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour. Inspired by the tour, Beyoncé stated that the fragrance was meant to "give them [fans] a special remembrance of this tour and... reflect the power, passion and playfulness I put into my performances".
On April 24, 2013, it was announced by Beyoncé's publicist that all photographers except Beyoncé's personal photographer Frank Micelotta, were banned from the tour stating that "no photo credentials" will be present. The ban was interpreted as a reaction to the "unflattering" pictures from Beyoncé's Super Bowl XLVII halftime performance showing her "jubilant exertions", that appeared on websites such as Gawker and BuzzFeed. The pictures were not removed even after her publicist Yvette Noel-Schure asked the websites through an e-mail to change their articles, using "some better photos". On May 13, 2013, the general counsel of the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) Mickey H. Osterreicher, wrote a letter to Noel-Schure on behalf of 19 other organizations requesting from him to "immediately revise your guidelines to restore photo credentialing" for the rest of the tour in Europe and the US. For the tour, the singer took part in "Miss A Meal", a food-donation campaign and supported the charity Goodwill during her tour, where fans were asked to bring food, clothes and household goods at the stops. Throughout the tour, an auction for the campaign was held by Beyoncé and her mother, Tina Knowles, on the website Charitybuzz in which the auction value was $25,000. The winner got a chance to work behind the scenes of Beyoncé's concert in Los Angeles and assist Knowles in the wardrobe department, got a VIP ticket for the concert and had a personal meeting with the singer.
Eight hundred dancers auditioned to be included in Beyoncé's performance at the Super Bowl XLVII halftime show and a selected group of them, consisting only of females, were chosen for the performance as well as for the tour. French dancing duo Les Twins also accompanied Beyoncé on stage performing street dances. Three backing singers The Mamas, and an eleven-piece female band who had also supported the singer during her previous tours performed during the concerts. Two stages were used during the performances: a main stage where the singer performed throughout most of the concert and a B-stage closer to the audience where she was transferred with a rope, flying over the crowd midway through the set, performing three songs there. The set list of the 2013 portion of the tour included approximately twenty five songs from Beyoncé's four solo studio albums: Dangerously in Love (2003), B'Day (2006), I Am... Sasha Fierce (2008), and 4 (2011). The majority of the songs originated from 4 – seven songs were performed from that album. Many elements from the 2012 Revel Presents: Beyoncé Live residency, such as the stage design, visual interludes and musical arrangements, were adapted for use on this tour. For the 2014 shows, many previously performed songs were removed from the set list, and were replaced with eight new songs from Beyoncé's self-titled fifth studio album.
Fashion
For the 2013 shows, Beyoncé worked with multiple designers for the tour's costumes including Emilio Pucci, Riccardo Tisci from Givenchy, The Blonds, Julien MacDonald, Dean and Dan Caten (DSQUARED2), creative director Tamara Ralph of Ralph & Russo who was personally requested by the singer to design an outfit, David Koma, Alon Livne, Vrettos Vrettakos designers from Kenzo, Gucci, Roberto Cavalli and Dennis Kolpodinos. For the performance at the 2013 Made in America, Beyoncé wore a new costume designed by Timothy White, accompanied with shoes made by Reed Krakoff. The outfit designed by DSQUARED2 was from their spring/summer 2013 collection at the Glamazon catwalk show and was inspired by models of the '90s. Several costumes were also designed by Emilio Pucci's Peter Dundas who described them as a "modern take on glamour", taking them from his fall/winter 2013 collection. He focused on the singer being able to perform the choreography during her performances. Stuart Weitzman designed the shoes for Beyoncé, her back-up dancers and band collaborating with stylists Ty Hunter, Raquel Smith, and Beyoncé's mother Tina Knowles. Weitzman created them in different colors with military elements. Beyoncé wanted Weitzman to focus on her being able to dance wearing the shoes without noticing they were on her feet.
One of Beyoncé's costumes which was worn during the first concerts was a gold bodysuit, designed by The Blonds, embellished with golden breast-cups with a complete nipple detail. The costume was a collaboration between the designers, Beyoncé herself, her mother, and Hunter. It was hand embroidered in 600 hours with approximately 30,000 Swarovski crystals. According to The Blonds, it was meant to give the illusion of being covered in crystallized honey and reflect Beyoncé's personality for the tour. They were inspired by Beyoncé's songs of female empowerment and female nudes painted by Tamara de Lempicka. The costume received wide media and fan attention and divided critics' opinions. InStyles Meghan Blalock described the costume as the "most scandalous" that the singer has worn in her career. For the 2014 shows, the singer wore numerous new designs collaborating again with DSQUARED2, Givenchy, Pucci and Weitzman as well as with new designers such as Tom Ford, Versace and Karen Langley.
Beyoncé's makeup for the tour focused on trying to emulate cosmic stars with the underlying themes based on the stratosphere. Other references used as inspiration for the makeup included: film noir, 60's London, cyber beauty, cosmic constellations, and felines. The tourbook for The Mrs. Carter Show was meant to artistically illustrate all the different visual aspects of the tour through multi-media collage and image manipulation. By using collage, Beyoncé's team created images inspired by the singer and her songs and image manipulation was explored, with photos being solarized, layered and stacked. With the tourbook, fans had an opportunity to "bring a part of the tour home with them", as Beyoncé's team stated. A dress created by Amato Haute Couture's Furne One which was worn by Beyoncé for the tour book was originally designed and worn by Estonian singer-songwriter Kerli during her Utopia EP photoshoot, who praised the look after seeing it.
The concert included many costume changes during which video interludes were projected on the screen during the singer's absence. An 18th Century France influence was found in the white-powder makeup and the opening costume as well as a Louis XVI theme throughout the show with oversized wigs and bustiers. The dresses and looks were also noted to channel queens Marie Antionette, Cleopatra, and Elizabeth I by several critics. The Observers Kitty Empire described the concert as a fashion show with a regal, Dangerous Liaisons theme. Jocelyn Vena of MTV News described the costumes as "Eye-catching... dazzling... [and] provocative". Rosa Silverman of The Daily Telegraph commented that Beyoncé was "mesmerizing the crowds with her showstopping outfits... she took to the stage in a series of racy costumes that made no attempt to hide her famous curves." Erika Ramirez of Billboard commented that most of Beyoncé's "stunning" costumes were dazzled with sequins.
Concert synopsis
2013 shows