Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé

Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé is a 2019 documentary concert film about American singer Beyoncé and her performance at the 2018 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. She wrote, executive-produced, and directed the film. It was released on April 17, 2019 by Netflix, alongside an accompanying live album. The film is an "intimate, in-depth look" at the performance, revealing "the emotional road from creative concept to a cultural movement".

The film documents Beyoncé's headlining performances at the 2018 Coachella festival on April 14 and 21. She was the first Black woman to headline the festival and her performance immediately received widespread critical acclaim. Many in the media described the show as "historic," while The New York Times proclaimed it as "meaningful, absorbing, forceful and radical." The performance was internally nicknamed "Beychella", and was name-checked as such for the audience.

Her performances paid tribute to the culture of historically black colleges and universities, featuring a full marching band and majorette dancers, while incorporating various aspects of black Greek life, such as a step show along with strolling by pledges. The productions were also influenced by black feminism, sampling black authors and featuring on-stage appearances by fellow Destiny's Child members Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams, her husband Jay-Z, and her sister Solange Knowles.

Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé was released to widespread critical acclaim, with several publications naming it one of the greatest concert films of all time. The film won Best Music Film at the Grammy Awards and Best Music Documentary at the IDA Documentary Awards. It was also nominated for six awards at the Primetime Emmy Awards.

Background
On January 4, 2017, Beyoncé was announced as a headlining act for the April 2017 Coachella festival. However, on February 23, 2017, she postponed her performance until the following year, due to doctor's concerns regarding her pregnancy with twins (born in June 2017). The secondary (resale) market for tickets to the festival that year fell 12% after the announcement she was postponing.

Playing her rescheduled dates in 2018, Beyoncé became the first black woman ever to headline the festival. In its nearly twenty years of existence, the festival has only had two other women solo headliners, Lady Gaga (who replaced Beyoncé in 2017) and Björk (2002 and 2007). Even prior to Beyoncé's performance, the nickname "Beychella" emerged for the 2018 festival. Tina Knowles, mother of Beyoncé and Solange Knowles, later said that prior to the show, she had expressed reservations about the performance Beyoncé had planned, worried that the largely white audience at Coachella might not understand a show so steeped in black culture, particularly black college culture. Tina recounted that Beyoncé replied saying that given the platform she had achieved in her career, she felt "a responsibility to do what's best for the world and not what is most popular."

Musical styles
Writing in The New Yorker, Doreen St. Félix described the musical style of the performance as an "education in black expression [... and] musical history – a mélange of New Orleans and its horns, Houston and its chopped and screwed beats, Brooklyn and its rap velocity, Kingston and its dancehall, and Nigeria and the legacy of its dissenter, Fela Kuti [...] underscoring not only [Beyoncé's] Southernness but the global  Black vernacular that continues to shape her." Near the beginning of the set, Beyoncé sang "Lift Every Voice and Sing," colloquially known as the "Black national anthem". The Wiz, one of Motown's most notable motion pictures, was also sampled in the horn arrangement that heralded Beyoncé's return to the stage after her first costume change.

Historically black colleges and universities (HBCU)
The performance has been credited as paying a strong tribute to the HBCU experience. A full African-American marching band played during much of the set, accompanied by majorette dancers. Writing for Mic.com, Natelegé Whaley stated that the band consisted of members from various HBCUs and played samples of songs that are often played at an HBCU such as "Swag Surf", "Broccoli", and "Back that Azz Up", along with samples of gospel and go-go music. Journalists also noted that the set incorporated various aspects of black Greek life, such as a step show along with strolling by neophytes (also known as pledges). School Daze, a notable Spike Lee film, is also referenced. Beyoncé's first outfit was a yellow sweatshirt with the Greek letters ΒΔΚ which reads Beta Delta Kappa. Later, she came out in a shirt with a shield designed with Nefertiti, Black Panther, black power fist along with a bee, which outlets such as The Washington Post credited as a reference to the shields each black fraternity and sorority have signifying the important values of the particular fraternity and sorority.

Following the show, Beyoncé announced the expansion of her HBCU scholarship fund, BeyGOOD Initiative's Homecoming Scholars Award program (previously known as the Formation Scholars Award program, announced on the one-year anniversary of Lemonade). In the program's second year, it will support one student at each of eight HBCUs: Texas Southern University, Morehouse College, Fisk University, Grambling State University, Xavier University of Louisiana, Wilberforce University, Tuskegee University and Bethune-Cookman University.

Black feminism
Reviewers noted the influence of black feminism on Beyoncé's performance, including her sampling of Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TED Talk on feminism and the appearances on stage of former collaborators Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams of Destiny's Child well as her sister Solange; writing in Cosmopolitan, Brittney Cooper read Beyoncé's decision to involve these black women in the landmark performance as a gesture of sisterhood.

"Beychella" performances
Performances were held at the Coachella festival on April 14 and 21, 2018. Onstage appearances includes an ensemble of dancers, her sister Solange, her husband Jay-Z, and her former girl group Destiny's Child joined Beyoncé on stage. On April 21, 2018, she was joined by J Balvin for "Mi Gente" in which his verse was sung first, though this was not included in the film. She played a 26-song set to 125,000 concert-goers in attendance. The set sampled Malcolm X and Nina Simone among others. Beyoncé wore five different costumes through the two-hour performance, designed with Olivier Rousteing of French fashion house Balmain.

Reception
Beyoncé's performance garnered 458,000 simultaneous viewers to become the festival's most viewed performance to date and the most viewed live streamed performance of all time, with the entire performance having 41 million total viewers from around the world, 75% more than the previous year.

The performance received universal critical acclaim. In The New York Times, music critic Jon Caramanica wrote: "There's not likely to be a more meaningful, absorbing, forceful and radical performance by an American musician this year, or any year soon, than Beyoncé's headlining set" at the festival. "It was rich with history, potently political and visually grand. By turns uproarious, rowdy, and lush. A gobsmacking marvel of choreography and musical direction." In Variety, Chris Willman wrote, "The show served as testament...to Beyoncé as the premier musical performer of our time." The Washington Post, CNN, NBC, Entertainment Weekly, and Billboard all described the performance as "historic".

Release
On April 3, 2019, it was reported that Beyoncé was working on new music, and also a collaborative project with Netflix which would be tied to her Coachella 2018 performance with additional footage. On April 6, 2019, Netflix officially teased the project by posting on social media a yellow image with the word "Homecoming" across it, and also the release date of the film. The film's trailer was eventually released on April 8, and was viewed over 16.6 million times across all Netflix social media accounts and Beyoncé's Facebook page within the first 24 hours. Upon the film's release, Beyoncé released a live album entitled Homecoming: The Live Album. Homecoming had 757,000 interactions across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter over its first week. Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé is the first of three projects Beyoncé has committed to Netflix, on a reportedly $60 million deal.

Nielsen reported that the film was watched by 1.1 million in the US in its first day, excluding views on mobile devices and computers, which Variety noted may have resulted in a sizeable undercount of views due to the "youth-skewing makeup of the 'Homecoming' viewership." 55% of viewership in the first seven days came from African-Americans, higher than any other original streaming series or film tracked by Nielsen to date, ahead of Bird Box, which had 24% African-American viewership. According to Netflix, Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé was the fourth most popular documentary offered on the platform in 2019, being the only concert film to appear on the list.

Critical reception
Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé received widespread critical acclaim. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of based on  reviews, with an average rating of. The website's critics consensus simply states: "Beychella forever." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 93 out of 100, based on 14 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

Several publications named Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé as one of the greatest concert films of all time, including RogerEbert.com, The Washington Post, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, Refinery29, Chatelaine, The Guardian, and Chicago Sun-Times. Spencer Kornhaber of The Atlantic called Homecoming "one of Beyoncé's masterpieces", adding that the film's "combo of well-edited stage spectacle and behind-the-scenes segments—intimate, hard-fought, occasionally tense, politically explicit, personally specific segments—make it a career-defining document." David Ehrlich of IndieWire wrote that "Beyoncé managed to fit the whole spectacle into a euphoric, triumphant, and exhaustingly fierce documentary that should help see Beychella enshrined as one of the definitive pop culture events of the century."

Tobi Oredein of Metro described how Homecoming "reminds us that Beyoncé isn't just the greatest entertainer of all time, but the most exciting visionary in entertainment today." Andrea Valdez and Angela Watercutter of Wired named Homecoming as a "once-in-a-lifetime performance by one of the world's greatest living artists that our hyperconnected world allows everyone to celebrate together." Danielle Cadet wrote for Refinery29 that the film showcases Beyoncé's "world-class talent and work ethic, proving no one ever has nor ever will do it like she does."

Barrett Holmes of BBC described the film as "much more than a film about the first black woman to headline the Coachella music festival," saying "through including quotes and audio from black leaders and intellectuals, Homecoming displayed the beauty of black culture, and gave people the chance to celebrate the necessity of black education.....It is a celebration of black American culture with education, specifically Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), serving as the foundation of her message." Judy Berman of Time magazine stated that the film "recontextualizes the show in a way that claims the most influential live music event in North America for black culture."

Accolades
Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé was named the greatest documentary of 2019 by The Daily Dot. The film was also included in Paste 's list of the 15 best documentaries of 2019. Decider journalist Claire Spellberg placed Homecoming at number two on her list of the best in television and film in 2019''. Homecoming was also named the third best movie of any genre of 2019 by both Thomas Atkinson for The Skinny and Ken Bakely for Film Pulse, while Decider'' named it seventh best. Homecoming ranked at number 1 on Metacritic's list of the best miniseries, TV movies and specials of 2019, and at number two on Rotten Tomatoes' list of the Best Reviewed TV & Streaming Movies of the same year. The Los Angeles Times ranked Beyoncé's Coachella set and Homecoming was placed at number 1 on its "The Millennium 200" list chronicling the greatest pop culture moments of the first 20 years of the millennium. Homecoming was declared by Letterboxd as the fourth greatest documentary or non-fiction film of the decade (2010s). Homecoming was included in Insider 's list of the "21 Netflix originals everyone should watch in their lifetime, according to critics".

The film won Best Music Film at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards, marking the second winner in this category to be directed or co-directed by the artist, and the first individual African-American female artist to win since Janet Jackson in 1989.

Set list
The following songs were performed during both sets, and included in the film.


 * 1) "Welcome" (musical introduction) (contains elements of "Ffun", "Humble", "Family Feud" and "Emerald City Sequence")
 * 2) "Crazy in Love" (contains elements of "I'm a Hustla", "Dance (Ass)" and "Back That Azz Up")
 * 3) "Freedom"
 * 4) "Lift Every Voice and Sing"
 * 5) "Formation"
 * 6) "Sorry" (contains elements of "Me, Myself and I" and "Kitty Kat")
 * 7) "Bow Down" / "I Been On"
 * 8) "Drunk in Love" (contains elements of "Crank That", "Lilac Wine", and "Swag Surfin")
 * 9) "Diva" (contains elements of "Irreplaceable", "Dirt off Your Shoulder", "Headlines" and "Everybody Mad")
 * 10) "Flawless" / "Feeling Myself"
 * 11) "Top Off"
 * 12) "7/11"
 * 13) "Don't Hurt Yourself"
 * 14) "I Care"
 * 15) "Partition"
 * 16) "Yoncé"
 * 17) "Mi Gente (Remix)" (contains elements of "Mine" and "Standing On The Sun")
 * 18) "Baby Boy" / "You Don't Love Me (No, No, No)" / "Hold Up" / "Countdown"  (contains elements of "Fever", "Freaks", "Broccoli", and "Bam Bam")
 * 19) "Check on It"
 * 20) "Déjà Vu" (with Jay-Z) (contains elements of "Green Light", "Zombie", and "Soul Makossa")
 * 21) "Run the World (Girls)" (contains elements of "Can You Feel It", "We Should All Be Feminists" and "Girl")
 * 22) "Lose My Breath / "Say My Name" / "Soldier" (with Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams) (contains elements of "Girl" and "Say My Name (Remix)")
 * 23) "Get Me Bodied" (with Solange Knowles dancing)
 * 24) "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)"
 * 25) "Love On Top"

Notes
 * During the performance of April 21, J Balvin joined Beyoncé on stage to perform "Mi Gente". This was not included in the film.

The performance
Following the performance, Destiny's Child sales boosted by 767% and Beyoncé's by 228%, with Lemonade returning to number one on the worldwide iTunes chart, where it remained for two days. "Everybody Mad" saw a boost in sales and streams and went viral, inspiring others to do the dance. Beyoncé's custom Balmain outfit during her performances, most notably the yellow and pink Homecoming hoodie, resulted in a 58% increase in searches for Balmain hoodies after her performance. English singer Rita Ora said that she was inspired by Beyoncé's performance when trying to perfect her own performances, calling it the "real deal" and saying "When I watched that, I completely got it." English rapper Stormzy said he "scrapped" his Wireless Festival performance after seeing Beyoncé's performance, saying "if that's what Beyoncé's doing, yo, we've got to buckle up our ideas over here." Footage from the performance featured in Google's 2020 'Most Searched: A Celebration of Black History Makers' ad as the most searched performance.

Beyoncé was the first black woman to headline Coachella, and was set to be the second woman to headline ever, the first in a decade, until she dropped out due to her pregnancy. Vogue credited Beyoncé as "(setting) the stage for a new era of female domination" at the festival. Homecoming also inspired the comeback of Irish group Westlife, who stated that in the film "you could see how much of a captain [Beyoncé] was on her own ship." Cuban-American singer Camila Cabello said that Homecoming had a profound impact on her, and praised the significance of the performance to humanity. South Korean musician Wooseok cited Homecoming as his inspiration, praising its "quotes and lessons" and revelations of Beyoncé's "morals and work ethic". The cast of Queer Eye paid tribute to Homecoming during their performance on Lip Sync Battle. A 9-feet-tall statue of Beyoncé as seen on the Homecoming poster was unveiled at Mercedes-Benz Arena in Berlin. UCLA gymnast Nia Dennis performed a routine inspired by Homecoming, receiving a score of 9.975 as well as praise from celebrities after going viral on social media.

The film
Through the tribute to HBCU culture in Homecoming, Beyoncé increased people's interest in HBCUs. High school seniors cited Homecoming as the reason that they were considering attending HBCUs, while younger students were also said to be interested in HBCUs due to the film. American actress Regina Hall opened the BET Awards 2019 with an homage to Homecoming entitled "Homegrown", parodying the opening to Beyoncé's performance as well as the documentary sections of the film. American sitcom Grown-ish also paid homage to Homecoming.

Homecoming has been said to have set a trend of musicians releasing a film project on Netflix together with an album; Lonely Island's The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience, Thom Yorke's Anima, Sturgill Simpson's Sound & Fury, and Kid Cudi's Entergalactic are all cited as examples of projects that have followed the precedent that Homecoming set. Travis Scott's documentary Look Mom I Can Fly has also been cited as a film that follows in the footsteps of Homecoming. Lizzo's music video for "Good as Hell" was said to be inspired by Homecoming. Sheldon Pearce for Pitchfork wrote that Homecoming kickstarted the "ongoing uprising" where "black women have been demanding ownership of their outsized impact on culture"; Jamila Woods' LEGACY! LEGACY! and Rapsody's Eve, as well as exhibitions such as "Black Women: Power and Grace" and "Posing Modernity", are mentioned as later works that constitute the "formative syllabus" that started with Homecoming.

Canadian actress Sandra Oh dedicated her toast at the Time 100 Gala to the film, calling it "viscerally inspiring". Chelsea Clinton, in an interview with The Cut, complimented Beyoncé on working "herself body, mind, heart, soul, and spirit to get to that place" where she can perform after her difficult childbirth. American actress Sophia Bush said that with Homecoming, Beyoncé is "setting a really killer example for the creative process"." Former First Lady Michelle Obama praised Beyoncé's Homecoming, calling the film a tool to "inspire the next generation of history makers and record breakers who'll run the world in the next years ahead." The Hollywood Reporter published an essay on Homecoming by American screenwriter, producer, and actress Lena Waithe, where she praised Homecoming "a tribute to blackness" and "a love letter to historically black colleges and universities".

Many celebrations for Black History Month 2020 commemorated Homecoming. Georgia Southern University hosted a panel discussion for Black History Month on the cultural and social importance of Homecoming to African-Americans. Advertising agency Momentum Worldwide (part of McCann Worldgroup) curated a "Black History Museum", which exhibited merchandise from Homecoming, whilst Spark Noir hosted a screening of Homecoming followed by a discussion about Beyoncé's contribution to culture. Netflix featured Homecoming under "Black Superheroes" in their Black History Month collection amongst comic-book heroes such as Black Panther and Luke Cage.

Music director Derek Dixie spoke on Homecoming being nominated for an Emmy Award: "(Beyoncé) has tons and tons of classic records that when putting the show together, you have to maintain the classic feel of the record but make it feel like you're in a stadium at homecoming." Ric Lipson of Stufish, who designed the pyramidal stage for Homecoming, said "we've never really won — or been nominated for even — a prestigious thing like the Emmys. We all knew this was going to be something special, but I don't think anyone realized how special." Lipson described the work on Homecoming as "a great challenge", since he needed to fulfil Beyoncé's vision "which was to evoke the aesthetic and energy of American historic black colleges, yet still look like a work of art." Stufish designed dozens of pyramid structures for the stage, with the final design "literally pushing the boundaries of what the festival would allow." This stage was also displayed at the 2019 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which Los Angeles Times calls "a living piece of Beychella history".

The REACH Opening Festival at the Kennedy Center closed with a screening of Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé. The Museum of the Moving Image screened Homecoming as part of Curators' Choice 2019. Red Hot Arts in Australia hosted an outdoor screening of Homecoming singers and musicians playing tribute to the film. Balmain creative director Olivier Rousteing described Beyoncé as a visionary, saying "She really is an inspiration — she wants to share a vision with you, and there are never any limits.", and spoke on Beyoncé's opening costume, saying the team "wanted to create something truly iconic, something that instantly felt forever and timeless and historic." He also said "The strength of Beyoncé is whatever she does, a lot of people are inspired by her. [But] when you do one thing for Beyoncé, no one can have the same thing".

Tyler Perry paid homage to the performance and the documentary in his 2022 Netflix film A Madea Homecoming. In 2023, Homecoming was included in the series “Summer of Music: Concert Films 1959–2020”, a retrospective of concert movies to be exhibited by the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures between July and August of said year.

Live album
Homecoming: The Live Album was released at the same time as the documentary, with no prior announcement. The album featured 36 live tracks, 2 spoken word interludes and 2 new tracks, an official release of "I Been On" and a cover of Maze's "Before I Let Go".