Beyoncé has starred in her first music video since 2021, cosplaying as Pamela Anderson and calling on Americans to vote.
The video, entitled Beywatch, is soundtracked by Bodyguard, a track from her country-leaning album Cowboy Carter which was released in March. It carries – rather belatedly – the caption Happy Beylloween, but is also timed for release as Americans go to the polls.
Wearing a platinum blond wig and dressing up as Anderson’s characters from Baywatch and Barb Wire, in one scene Beyoncé holds up a toy gun firing out a flag with the word “Vote!” on it.
Beyoncé has already made her feelings known about whom the electorate should be voting for. She allowed Kamala Harris to use her song Freedom as a soundtrack to her campaign, then officially endorsed her at a rally in Houston in October, describing Harris to the 30,000-strong crowd as “a woman who has been pushing for what this country really needs right now … I’m here as a mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in, a world where we have freedom to control our bodies, a world where we are not divided – our past, our present, our future meet us here.”
The Pamela Anderson get-up is actually Beyoncé’s fourth fancy dress costume of the Halloween season, having previously been photographed as Bette Davis, and then characters from the film Purple Rain as originally played by Prince and Apollonia Kotero.
Beyoncé has directed or co-directed a number of her music videos herself, while ones for songs such as Formation and Single Ladies are seen as some of the most iconic in recent pop culture.
But some fans have been frustrated by a lack of videos for her last two album projects, Cowboy Carter and Renaissance, particularly as lavish visuals were created for the latter’s world tour but never used in music videos. Beyoncé instead wrote and directed a documentary/concert film hybrid that followed the preparations and performances on the tour.
• This article was amended on 7 November 2024 to correct the spelling of Bette Davis’s first name.
