Last December ended in a bang when Beyoncé surprised the world by releasing her fifth studio album Beyoncé. The album was revealed at midnight on December 13th. The record has 14 tracks and 17 videos making it Beyoncé’s first visual album. Beyoncé and her team started the project in the summer of 2012 and shot the videos for the record around the world while she was on her Mrs. Carter World Tour.

The night the album was released on itunes it sold over 450,000 copies in just one day without any promotion. Her album has beat numerous records including sales of 1.3 million in the first 17 days of release in the United States.The style of the album is different from Beyoncé’s past albums, the record includes pop and electro songs and collaborations with Jay-Z, Frank Ocean, Drake, feminist author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichieeyoncé, and even Blue Ivy! In the album Beyoncé showed a new side of herself in songs like “Drunk in Love”, “Partition”,”Blow”, and “Rocket” which expose a new provocative side to the artist.

“I don’t have any shame of being sexual, and I don’t feel like I have to protect that side of me because I do believe that sexuality is a power that we all have.”

Beyoncé admits that keeping her album a secret was a challenge. Since there was no promotion for the album releasing it at midnight was a huge risk for the label, but the hard work obviously paid off. She said,

“What’s great about it (the album) is that it wasn’t about any ego, we weren’t trying to make a hit record, we were just having fun, and I think you can hear that in the record.”

Everyone’s excited to see what Beyoncé had planned for the next two years, but for now Beyoncé has done enough to take the crown of the music industry.