These Beyoncé superfans will be cheering their queen at Gillette Stadium
Beyoncé's BeyHive is alive and well in the Boston area. Members of one of the most devoted fan bases in the world will be filling the seats at Gillette Stadium Tuesday when Beyoncé’s “Renaissance World Tour” touches down there.
Maverick Flood, who’s attended 36 Beyoncé concerts in over 20 cities across three continents, hopes to add another to the list. “I normally don’t miss the Boston shows,” the New York native says. Should he make it to Foxborough, he’ll be joining these four local superfans.
KIAMESHA QUARLES, 39, Mattapan
Quarles, an EMT, has spent thousands on Queen Bey merch, tickets, magazines, and DVDs. At a flea market, an airbrush artist sprayed “Beyoncé” on the back of her jean jacket. She once went to store after store in search of the 2013 Super Bowl cardboard cut-out of Beyoncé promoting Pepsi. Eventually she found one on eBay.
During Destiny’s Child’s reign, Beyoncé wasn’t even her favorite member of the trio, but after seeing the singer solo on her “I Am . . . World Tour,” she was a goner. The “Renaissance” show at Gillette will be her sixth Beyoncé concert. (She’ll have seats on the stadium floor — after getting floor seats for the first time for the 2014 “On the Run” tour, “I was like I can’t sit anywhere else.”) When she told her three brothers she was being interviewed about her fandom for this story, one said cheekily, “Oh, so you’re gonna expose your illness to the rest of the world? You have a problem.” He clearly doesn’t understand.
BRENDEN MCHENRY, 34, South End
“I think my husband’s gonna be offended, but this is gonna be the greatest night of my life,” says McHenry, a school programs manager at the Boch Center. Seeing Beyoncé in concert has been tops on his bucket list, and now he’ll finally get his chance. “I will be able to die peacefully after the concert. I will be happy.”
He bought her first solo album, “Dangerously in Love,” with his birthday money when he turned 14. He’s been “totally obsessed” ever since. In high school he learned her choreography and quoted her songs. On Halloween in 2016, he dressed as “Becky with the good hair,” the mistress Beyoncé famously referenced on her “Lemonade” album.
McHenry works with elementary school children and teens at the Boch Center. During dance classes, he says, the teacher tells the kids to put their Beyoncé faces on, to demand attention and own the stage. “She can be a huge motivating factor for self-empowerment,” McHenry says. “She really promotes positive self-talk.”
ALEXIS MAXWELL, 22, Brighton
“Beyoncé to me is like the sun to a flower. There is no higher. She’s everything,” says Maxwell, a teaching artist assistant at the Boch Center.
Maxwell says she came out of the womb listening to Beyoncé, since her mother was a huge fan. As a queer woman, she applauds Beyoncé for celebrating the queer community on her “Renaissance” album and tour. They have been “pushed up to the front because Beyoncé said so. Beyoncé just has so much power and influence. It’s truly scary. I mean, I appreciate it because I love her,” she says, smiling. “So many Black queer kids are seeing how they can be loved and embraced. They see a community out there for them.”
TYLER ROWE, 29, Dorchester
Rowe, an academic assessment adviser at Emerson College, marks important times in his life according to Beyoncé album releases.
Rowe, who is gay, says 2008’s “I Am . . . Sasha Fierce” helped him “come into his identity” when he was in middle school. “Diva,” from that album, “is just all about accepting you’re a diva and you’re fabulous, and you have this confidence and you don’t need to hide it. Just flaunt it. I remember I memorized the choreography. I’ve like burned that music video into my mind,” he says.
To Rowe, being a diva means “having confidence in yourself no matter what, and not caring what other people say.”
He describes listening to Beyoncé’s music as an “out-of-body experience.” It “embodies freedom,” it’s cathartic, and “there’s a song for every experience.”
Rowe will be attending Tuesday’s concert with his husband and a friend. “I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”