A Brief History of Beyoncé Announcements Totally Disrupting Your Life

It’s been three hours, so I know you already know that Beyoncé casually dropped some glorious news: She’s pregnant! We are about to be blessed with two Bey-Beys.

When the baby announcement hit Instagram, it felt like the world froze for a second. Somewhere a “Hallelujah Chorus” erupted, Slacks across America exploded; meetings were delayed, appointments were missed. This was a Beyoncé announcement, and a Beyoncé announcement eclipses everything, because Beyoncé is the best at announcing things. She could literally announce anything — daily soup specials, flight delays at the airport, all of Trump’s executive orders (so long as she gave them the Lemonade treatment) — and we’d all be captivated, energized, Beyoncé-dazed for days.

Her mastery was first demonstrated in 2011, when she casually killed a performance of “Love on Top” at the MTV Movie Awards. She ended the show by — bam! — nonchalantly unbuttoning her magenta sequin tuxedo jacket to reveal that she was pregnant with Blue Ivy. Pregnant and she still hit four damn octaves without a backing track. Kanye West could have proposed to Taylor Swift, then married here on stage with Kim Kardashian officiating the wedding and nobody would have cared, because Beyoncé.

In December 2013, she used her Instagram feed to stealthily announce that she had just dropped a self-titled visual album on iTunes while the world was sleeping. Everyone woke up and realized that Santa Claus is actually black … and her real name is Beyoncé.

In 2016, she dropped the “Formation” single on a Saturday (the first Saturday of Black History Month, making it possibly the blackest Black History Month in history) and effectively announced a new album in doing so. Naturally, everyone canceled their brunch plans to listen to the song, watch the video, learn the dance, and scour Twitter to find out details about a tour. But why rely on Twitter when you’re Beyoncé and you can use the 2016 Super Bowl halftime show to announce your Formation World Tour and make people forget you’re not even technically the headliner? (Sorry, she ain’t sorry, Coldplay.)

Then just over two months later came Lemonade, which was basically an Oscar-worthy film that was widely interpreted as a PR statement about her marriage. But any rumors that emerged post-Lemonade were more or less ethered by the song “All Night.”

Which brings us to her most lo-fi announcement to date.

She chose to Instagram the announcement on the first day of Black History Month (We see you Yoncé, ‘bout to birth two more hall of famers). It’s a visually captivating tableau — there are probably layers upon layers of artistic, religious, and literary symbolism that someone will close-read at length in the next couple of days. And already the news cycle belongs to her. I got the news via a CNN push notification on my phone; the Instagram post itself already has over 3 million faves. There’s the joyous squealing of “TWINS!” from everyone both online and IRL and name suggestions galore. And, of course, a whole host of questions and conspiracy theories: there’s already IVF speculation and Coachella performance drama — as if Beyoncé couldn’t just perform during childbirth.

There are so many questions that will be answered in the days and weeks to come. Most importantly: Who makes that lipstick she’s wearing? Trick question; it doesn’t matter, because it’s already sold out.