Beyonce - Best Thing I Never Had

Artist - Beyonce Knowles 
Year -  2011 
Genre - R&B/Pop
Producer - Baby-face ( couldn't find director) 
Audience - Teens, mainly female 
Type - Performance/Narrative 


" The Best Thing I Never Had" was written and performed by the American singer ex Destiny's child Beyonce Knowles. On June 1st Columbine Records  released Beyonce's second single for her album 4. 
The powerful lyrics in the song, relate to themes of revenge and karma. The main theme of the song is the female not wanting to end up heartbroken, so she relates how she is happy to have parted from her former partner, who refused to live a happy life with her, and give her everything she wanted like a boyfriend/husband should. Some critics stated that the theme of "The Best Thing I Never Had" is very much like her song Irreplaceable . The single peaked at number 2 in the UK Single Charts, and number 3 in the US R&B/Hip Hop songs chart. 


The video begins with a fade in mid-shot of Beyonce in white sexy lingere, in a white painted room, with what appears to be a white bunch of flowers behind her. She is stroking the material in front of her  whilst singing the line "What goes around comes back around, my baby"  whilst looking up and down, the stroking of the material could link with the baby bit, being patronising stroking things as if it was the man she is talking about. 

The music begins straight away, and then a close up of Beyonce is used on her face looking towards the camera, there is then a close up of her holding a white rose, presumably one from the big bunch in the room, presumably given to her by a man. 
There is then a pan to the mirror, where a long shot is then used to show Beyonce walking towards the mirror. The camera then cuts back to a mid-shot when she is stood in front of the chairs. The hair style worn by Beyonce at the beginning is almost quite similar to princess leia in Star Wars, so here we can see some form of intertextuality. 


We then see the camera cut to Beyonce lying on a bed during the chorus ( 1:00) , still wearing her underwear however this time wearing a veil, signifying a wedding, and that she is the bride. A high angle shot is used to show her rolling round on the bed, focusing more on her, this could represent more of the power in herself now, we then see an extreme close up on her face, showing emotion and expression. 

The camera then cuts to a different setting of a field, with Beyonce wearing a white dress and a veil. The camera then flashes to what appears to be video recording of a flashback, we can clearly see that this is a prom from the misc en scene, and clothing worn. The date in the corner of the video camera can denote the year it was, May 1998, the camera then cuts back to the present Beyonce where we see an establishing shot of the lake and sunset background when Beyonce is running down the hill.


We then get another mid shot of Beyonce sat lip-syncing in the sun, then we see a close up of her trail from the dress. The camera then pans back up to Beyonce's head. Near the end of the video we see cuts between shots of Beyonce in the field and her walking down the aisle. 
There is an element of mystery and narrative enigma as we as an audience are lead to believe that the man from the video earlier, is the man she is marrying. However the very last scene we see this is not the case, and the video ends with a close up on Beyonce's face happily smiling.