Destiny's Child - The force of destiny

One! Two! Three! Four!

One! Two! Three! Four!

Houston, Texas, mid-Nineties: the kids on the basketball court stop to watch the scene as four nimble gazelles go running past, out every evening for a jog in the neighborhood park. Beyoncé Knowles, Kelly Rowland, LaTavia Roberson and LeToya Luckett, all born in 1981, are deep into their training regime. The Olympics? Worse: the girls are part of a girl group currently on the hunt for a record deal, which means daily singing and choreography lessons, costume fittings, and a strict diet and exercise routine to stay permanently on point. Early to bed every night, whether it's a school week or the weekend. Boyfriends are out of the question. The girls are right in the thick of adolescence, but getting up to the level the industry demands is a full-time job requiring order and discipline. Everything else can wait.

Pacing the edge of the park, urging the girls to really dig into their heel work, is a gruff middle-aged man with a permanently worried look on his face. His name is Mathew Knowles, father and legal guardian to a couple of the girls, as well as boss and general manager of the whole "girl group seeking record deal" operation.

Granted, tonight the irritation showing on his face is more obvious than usual: Mathew has just quit his job as a pharmaceutical sales rep to focus full-time on the girls' future, even enrolling in a music management course at the University of Houston. The financial burden of running the household should fall to his wife Tina, via her hair salon business — except she's just thrown her husband out of the house, worn down by the stress of it all. Spoiler alert: Mathew will manage to find his way back both into the house and into his marriage, the four girls will become a chart-topping phenomenon, his daughter Beyoncé a towering icon, and in time even the youngest of the family, Solange, will prove perfectly capable of making her own mark.

But for Mathew, right now, all of this is still a distant dream, born out of a conversation with an old school friend who loved both music and business. He does, however, already have a couple of possible blueprints in mind: Berry Gordy, the famous boss of the hit-making Motown Records machine, and Joseph Jackson, father of that famous clan whose various members dominated charts across half the world. It might seem odd to think of the Jackson method in particular as a viable career plan, given the controversial methods he employed; but in the America of those years, physical sales still ruled and there was a rampant consumerism built on teenage idol-worship, shrewdly channeled into merchandise and massive tours. The record industry, in short, looked like Scrooge McDuck's money bin: all you needed was motivation, ambition, and a touch of recklessness to give it a shot.

As it turns out, the idea didn't even originate with the Knowles family. From elementary school age, their little Beyoncé was shyer and more reserved than usual, so she was enrolled in a dance class to see if a group activity might help her come out of her shell and make some friends. On the day of the end-of-year recital, the parents sitting in the audience were left utterly stunned by an unrecognizable little girl who, given even the smallest audience, was ready to turn into a whirlwind of energy. The damage was done. It would be Beyoncé herself, at just eight years old, who struck up a friendship with LaTavia Roberson during an audition, and the two girls became inseparable practically overnight. Within a few years, an adorable yet fiercely determined gang of youngsters had formed: Girl's Tyme.

The lineup shifted a great deal during those years, but the core members, besides Beyoncé and LaTavia, included LeToya Luckett, a classmate of Beyoncé's who grew up singing in her church choir, plus Támar Davis (a future collaborator of Prince), and sisters Nikki and Nina Taylor. And then there was Kelly Rowland, a classmate of LaTavia's, recruited after LaTavia heard her singing during recess. A Georgia native, Kelly had landed in Houston with her little brother in tow, after her mother fled with the kids; her father, Christopher Lovett, was a Vietnam veteran who came back to America bearing deep psychological scars, soon left to fend for himself by the government along with thousands of other veterans of the conflict — one of the most fiercely criticized domestic policy scandals of that era in America. By most accounts, the man drank and was violent with his family, forcing the mother to move to another state and scrape by however she could, with all the hardship that entailed. By the time Kelly joined the band, the Knowles family had offered to look after her should the need arise, and the little girl ended up growing up sharing a bedroom with Beyoncé and Solange, forming a deep bond with the whole family that endures to this day.

Under the initial guidance of one of the schoolmates' parents, a certain Andretta Tillman, the six-member Girl's Tyme lineup come agonizingly close to success; Arne Frager, a renowned record executive of the time, flies to Houston to meet them in person after receiving a videotaped audition, and manages to get them onto the stage of "Star Search", the popular talent show of the era. Sadly, the girls finish as runners-up, losing the sponsorship they needed to land a contract. This is where Mathew Knowles decides to take the reins of the project, driven by the possibilities the entertainment world can offer. The line-up is soon trimmed down to just four members, and the group's name goes through several incarnations before settling on the one that will bring them success: Destiny's Child. With their father at the legal and organizational helm, mother Tina in charge of costumes and hairstyles, and the clients of her beauty salon acting as a critical jury, the girls shoot in no time from childhood to adolescence, turning into the four nimble gazelles mentioned above.

The first signs of the famous "Beyoncé supremacy" begin to emerge. It hardly takes a genius to imagine the natural favoritism of a father/manager toward his eldest daughter, creating a toxic web of dynamics among the members that will escalate all the way to the courtroom. But Beyoncé herself, years later, will be forced to fire her father to free herself from his ever-too-overbearing ways. The remaining surviving members of the band will soon follow suit in their respective solo careers. His wife Tina will file for divorce in 2011.

It must be said, however, that the young Beyoncé doesn't rest on her laurels — quite the opposite, she adopts a tough work discipline precisely so as not to disappoint her father's heavy expectations. If rehearsals run from one to four, by noon she's already warmed up and keeps practicing well past five. She has a natural passion for dance and won't settle until the choreography is perfect. Her energy is backed by a three-octave voice with a strong, bright timbre that naturally takes over from the others, both in the studio and live. Within a few years, the little girl who squeaked on the "Star Search" stage has turned into a young lead singer and energetic dancer, who also flaunts a killer silhouette and a model's face. Public and press alike will make much of how her presence constantly overshadows her bandmates, but objectively the girl has everything it takes: talent, image, ambition, discipline, and a father ready to back her up. Her solo career will stand as testament to these unshakeable qualities.

Not that the other girls are any less talented: LaTavia and LeToya are appealing vocalists with trained ears and smiles as big as the enthusiasm of blissful youth, while the photogenic Kelly, besides a charismatic mezzo-soprano voice and sultry dancing skills, shows off a pair of legs among the most jaw-dropping in all of r&b. One could get the impression of a crude meat market built on the bodies of four still-underage girls — and that's exactly what it is. The template of the perfect African-American girl group follows a strict rulebook, one inaugurated when the Supremes, thirty years earlier, revolutionized fashion and hairstyling for the entire community with astonishing speed, proof of the immense double-edged power of image in Western pop culture. Out there competition is fiercer than ever, and the more than capable Destiny's Child will need a couple of albums to really hit their stride. The price to pay will be steep for everyone.

From a shy debut to massive success in a couple of quick moves

The debut single "No, No, No" arrives in November 1997 already available in two versions: "Pt. 1" is a smooth, if fairly standard, midtempo ballad built around the singers' sensual moves, but it's the far punchier remix version, "Pt. 2", featuring an assist from Wyclef Jean, that climbs to No. 3 on Billboard, giving Destiny's Child their first encouraging taste of fame. The second single, "With Me", is also released in two versions to widen its reach, but success doesn't repeat itself this time, and only the original "Part I" gets a bit of fleeting attention: built around an Arabic-tinged melodic loop (a fairly fashionable touch at the time, via the wild sampling common in hip-hop following the Western success of Ofra Haza's "Shaday"), the song is another sultry club jam on which the members of Destiny's Child take turns leading, creating a series of little vignettes later fleshed out in the fitting accompanying video.

Destiny's Child surfaces in February 1998; on the cover, four vaguely dazed-looking seventeen-year-olds shyly wink at the camera, dressed in matching tight black outfits, posed simply in a row against a white backdrop. But despite the enormous roster of writers, musicians, producers and collaborators assembled by a Mathew Knowles determined to leave nothing to chance, the album fails to achieve the hoped-for success, trudging without much excitement through the major charts and only really racking up the bulk of its sales later on, once future hits arrive.

All things considered, Destiny's Child is not a particularly memorable listen; it's typical '90s r&b, closely following the production style of BabyFace, R. Kelly and Walter Afanasieff, at once too monotonous in its melodicism and overly glossy and plastic in its sound — a listen polished to such excess that the girls' already solid vocal harmonies fail to really land. Just take the overlong "Killing Time" as an example of a genre where sensuality and mood are placed above form and songwriting.

Beyoncé is immediately identifiable as the group's lead voice and carries most of the record: after the intro of "Second Nature", here she is drawing on Anita Baker for "Tell Me", and then on Whitney Houston for "Birthday", already showing good command of her instrument, though still uncertain about how to develop a style of her own.

Granted, both the funk of "Bridges" — one of the best-crafted melodic constructions of the whole record — and the sly 80s synth-funk groove of "Show Me The Way", in the vein of Prince, Cymone and Rick James, are pleasant enough listens. But it only takes the modest remakes of "Sail On", the famous Commodores track from the Lionel Richie era, and of "Illusion", originally titled "Just An Illusion" by Britain's Imagination, to immediately show the gap in songwriting between these classics and the rest of this costly but flat work bankrolled by Columbia.

The girl group business in the '90s is serious, lucrative stuff; the current Destiny's Child formula had already been pioneered at the start of the decade by SWV, while both Britain's Eternal and America's own En Vogue found success through sleek pop/r&b productions and vocal arrangements modeled on the style of the era's American chart-topper, Mariah Carey. On the more urban side, meanwhile, Xscape are big, but above all the legendary TLC, who with "CrazySexyCool" have already set an inimitable benchmark for the genre and achieved Diamond certification in America — the first and still only African-American girl group on that list. Against such a backdrop, Destiny's Child sounds too tame to properly win over a mass audience. But the girls work hard, and between promotional tours, TV appearances and a lead single in radio rotation, they manage to build up a solid fanbase.

The second half of the '90s is also marked by the arrival of the brand-new hi-tech productions of a certain Timbaland, and Destiny's Child are sent straight into the studio with him to record a track for the soundtrack of the film "Why Do Fools Fall In Love", namely the breathless and distinctly more futuristic "Get On The Bus". The song sadly doesn't achieve much success, but in terms of quality it's a solid step forward: the girls sound looser and more uninhibited as they ride atop that layered backdrop of electronic blips, jagged rhythms and an atmospheric background sample — all stuff that would go on to become Timbaland's signature sound for years to come. The video's dance routine is choreographed by Aaliyah, r&b's new darling, who at that very time, under the production of Timbaland & Missy Elliott, releases the widely acclaimed "One In A Million".

The Writing's On The Wall (1999), on the other hand, kicks off in short order with the now-classic "Bills, Bills, Bills", Destiny's Child's first US No. 1 and the song with which the group aggressively burst into the public eye. Gone are the shy smiles and cautious sexy poses: the four protagonists of "Bills, Bills, Bills" play the part of a woman fed up with being messed around by an irresponsible man, a little scene perfectly recreated in the video, shot in a beauty salon as a tribute to mother Tina Knowles. The track slinks slyly between verse and chorus, but its most striking and immediately memorable moment is the refrain, where the backing track suddenly cuts out and the girls harmonize almost a cappella on the famous, staccato-sung hook:

I don't think you do

So you and me are through

only to be dragged back with an almost neoclassical attitude into the full swing of the rhythm thanks to that insistent synthetic harpsichord flourish typical of productions of the era. With a more careful melodic construction, and a few small, pricey extra touches, the Destiny's Child team finally shows it has what it takes to really get noticed:

Among the singles are also “Bug-A-Boo” and “Jumpin Jumpin”: the former is another frenzied anthem to independence, with the girls strutting with all the brash erotic charge of youth, while the latter is a track essentially built around Beyoncé alone, riding on tight rhythmic patterns and a minimal melodic line delivered with a far more confident attitude than at their debut.

But otherwise, The Writing's On The Wall still isn't free of yet another string of midtempo tracks and syrupy, cotton-candy ballads: “Confessions”, “Temptation”, “Now That She's Gone”, “She Can't Love You” and “Stay” trot out the usual love themes typical of every teenage song: jealousy, intimacy, my fault and your fault. With that demographic, success is guaranteed: for millions of young girls, Beyoncé, Kelly, LaTavia & Letoya immediately became the friends and role models to emulate in attitude, wardrobe and trendy hairstyles.

The Writing's On The Wall would soon become Destiny's Child's bestseller in America, eventually shifting nearly ten million copies worldwide. Listened to today, the album shows all the signs of its age, its bubblegum sound too static to keep pace with how R&B would evolve in the years that followed. The girls are undoubtedly more involved in writing the songs and especially in crafting the vocal harmonies, but once again the huge team brought into the studio ends up depersonalizing whatever good ideas might be stirring beneath the surface. Still, the album retains an undeniable aura of nostalgia, a vivid snapshot of a very specific era during the turn of the new millennium.

Two collaborations in particular highlight the duality of Mathew Knowles's vision in those years: Destiny's Child provide backing vocals on the teen-pop of “Woman In Me”, a track by a debuting Jessica Simpson, all good manners and wholesome Christian values at the time, and then immediately after take part in the exact thematic opposite with “Thug Love” by the famous gangsta rapper 50 Cent.

Still, a mention is deserved for “Intro (The Writing's On The Wall)”, a bizarre spoken interlude of nearly two minutes in which the four girls play mafia bosses during a meeting between clans, complete with deliberately gravelly voices and Italian-American accents of varying degrees of believability. LeToya Barzini, Beyoncé Corleone, Kelly Sterachi and LaTavia Mensa are getting ready to dominate the entire record industry:

[LaTavia:]

The purpose of today's meeting is to discuss the code of honor of Destiny's Child

[Kelly:]

You see, it's so unhealthy, so pointless

Finire col cuore spezzato tra di noi

[LaTavia:]

Sì, Padre

I tempi sono cambiati

Relationships aren't what they used to be

[LeToya:]

See, what we need is a man of honor

All this... uh betraying each other, uh backstabbing, uh hating

Enough, enough

[LaTavia:]

But Father, how do we avoid these little scuffles?

[Beyonce:]

Well, obviously, The Writing's On the Wall: 'You don't have to hate'

And at first, this "Intro" is little more than a youthful idea dreamed up by four girls who just want to have fun and give meaning to the title of their own album. But the meaning behind the reunion will soon prove so prophetic that, had it not actually happened, someone would eventually have made a movie out of it: Barzini and Mensa don't know it yet, but the Corleone and Sterachi families are about to openly wipe the floor with their rivals, exponentially boosting their media presence across all the tabloids of the time and contributing to the massive success of The Writing's On The Wall.

Shortly before the start of the European leg of the album's supporting tour, in the winter of 1999, LaTavia falls ill and is hospitalized - nothing too serious, fortunately, but the rest period ordered by the doctor clashes with the tour dates. Without so much as batting an eye, Mathew Knowles replaces her with one of the backup dancers and the whole circus carries on as if nothing had happened, to the point that the switch isn't even officially announced. Backstage, chaos breaks out, since none of the four girls had been consulted on the decision, but for Mathew the record business is entirely detached from sentimentality, especially at a moment when the wheel of success is finally turning the right way: no matter who's on that damn stage, the show must go on.

Within just a few days of returning from the tour, a still-furious LeToya contacts the convalescing LaTavia, and the two set about reworking that management contract drawn up by Knowles and imposed on them with no room for negotiation back when they signed with Columbia. As is unfortunately typical of the record industry, buried among pages and pages of legal jargon, the terms of the contract hand Mr. Knowles full decision-making and financial control over the entire Destiny's Child operation. But while Beyonce and Kelly, who are family, inevitably enjoy special treatment (even though they too have zero say in the matter), for LaTavia and LeToya the personal earnings are minimal, especially considering the millions of copies The Writing's On The Wall is selling worldwide.

But their initial request to revise the terms is met with a blatant slap in the face, the kind rarely seen in the history of entertainment: on the evening of February 15, 2000, both MTV and BET have exclusive rights to the premiere of the video for Destiny's Child's hotly anticipated new single, "Say My Name" - too bad that neither LaTavia nor LeToya, sitting in their respective living rooms in front of the TV, remember ever taking part in the shoot. The footage rolls on screen, the voices are undoubtedly those of the four original members as recorded in the studio, but alongside Beyonce and Kelly in the video are two completely new faces, Farrah Franklin and Michelle Williams:

Without even bothering to inform them or offer so much as a meeting, Mathew Knowles shuffles the girls around like puppets and carries on with his band as if the other two had never existed.

For LaTavia and LeToya, the pill to swallow is immeasurably bitter; on top of the injury of losing almost ten years of hard work to become Destiny's Child in one fell swoop, there's also the insult, because it's precisely through a song titled "say my name" that the two girls get replaced, without even the courtesy of a re-recording with the new voices. As if that weren't enough, the single turns into a massive hit, topping the charts in America and bringing home a couple of Grammys - to this day, "Say My Name" remains one of the most recognizable and hummable hits of its era.

LaTavia and LeToya's lawsuit against Mathew Knowles immediately becomes the talk of the industry, with tabloids racing to collect statements from anyone they can get their hands on, such is the thirst for malice surrounding the members of a girl group currently topping the charts.

While Mathew remains unmoved, the emotional impact is certainly a heavy toll on the morale of the four girls involved, friends since elementary school who grew up together like sisters, helping one another through the exciting climb to success. But whatever moral doubts cross the minds of Beyoncé and Kelly are kept private; in front of the cameras, the two take their father's side. Soon the whole situation degenerates into a free-for-all of insults and recriminations aired for everyone to hear, to the point that LaTavia and LeToya's lawsuit, initially aimed solely at the manager, is extended to include Beyoncé and Kelly themselves. The case is settled out of court for an undisclosed sum, but the judge bars all parties involved from publicly discussing the opposing side. The damage, however, is already done: the famous line sung by Beyoncé in the chorus of "Say My Name" has already taken on the look of a slap in the face:

You acting kinda shady…

For LeToya Luckett and LaTavia Robinson, the era of The Writing's On The Wall ends with a passive-aggressive dismissal, one last big hit single stolen by two strangers, and the end of their run in the most talked-about girl group of the moment — an emotional blow that frankly few others could handle at the mere age of nineteen.

LeToya will manage to get back on her feet and launch a solo career with modest success, as we'll see further on. For LaTavia, her recording career essentially ends here; in the future we'll mainly see her as a presence in theatre, TV series and reality shows, but her emotional wellbeing will struggle to recover for quite some time — years later, it will make headlines when she reveals a decade-long battle with alcoholism. Only thanks to the long, steady work of Tina Knowles, a kind of maternal figure hovering indistinctly over everyone involved, will relations between the girls slowly climb back over the years to what they once were.

From four to three

The peculiar thing about the whole affair is that Destiny's Child's image suffers no damage at all — if anything it grows month by month, as though the legal squabbles themselves were writing the songs. Proof of this isn't long in coming: without even telling the girls, Mathew sends one of their unreleased tracks to Hollywood as a possible theme for the remake of "Charlie's Angels" then in production, and et voilà: "Independent Women Part 1" catches fire everywhere, thanks both to the film's box-office success and to the hype surrounding the new Destiny's Child, who deliver one of the most memorable anthems of the franchise's entire career. If on the big screen Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore & Lucy Liu capture the imagination of millions of teenagers through their rollicking and frankly ridiculous adventures, Beyoncé, Kelly, Farrah & Michelle are their perfect musical counterpart:

Once again, drama within the group fuels publicity: just six months after joining, eighteen-year-old Farrah Franklin leaves Destiny's Child — her voice is still present, but by the time the video above is shot, the group has already shrunk to a trio. The girl is quickly worn down by the relentless pace of popstar life, but above all by the negativity she's had to put up with from the very moment she joined the group — neither she nor the other new recruit, Michelle Williams, had been told the reasons behind LaTavia and LeToya's departure, but while the latter wisely keeps to herself, Farrah spirals into crisis, soon overwhelmed by guilt and the fear that the same treatment could easily happen to her too.

Despite the new scandal, "Independent Women Part 1" camps out at the top of the Billboard chart for a staggering eleven consecutive weeks, spanning the entire holiday season straddling 2000 and 2001. Of the four performers, only three are now on stage, but once again the public couldn't care less — not to mention that no one seems to notice the irony of a song called "Independent Women" sung by a group that has proven to have anything but independence over its own decisions.

During an interview given around that time, Beyoncé closes the matter of the line-up and the departure of no fewer than three members within a few months once and for all, stating, rather inelegantly but in no uncertain terms:

All the dead weight has left Destiny's Child

A statement that sends gossip columnists into raptures and, for the first time, reveals the image of a young lead singer who has made peace with her own guilt and figured out how the industry game works. Much of the hostility directed at her over the course of her future solo career starts roughly here, at the moment, that is, when a woman chooses to move her career forward at the expense of legal troubles and personal bonds. Between accusations of an apparently stone-cold heart and later reassessments that flip the meaning entirely in light of a new way of thinking in the age of neo-feminism, Beyoncé stands firm in her choice, and fate soon proves her right: the trio line-up — Beyoncé/Kelly/Michelle — will be the final and definitive one, and Survivor (2001) is the album that will cement Destiny's Child as one of the most celebrated girl groups in American R&B.

In addition to the massive hit "Independent Women Part 1" (also included on the tracklist in a "Part II" version, as has by now become tradition for the band), the album features another couple of singles with less radio exposure but still very much beloved by fans: "Nasty Girl" is by now a signature moment of the girls' style, arriving with a video clip that could easily have starred P!nk, while "Emotion," a cover of a famous 1977 song written by Robin & Barry Gibb for Australian singer Samantha Sang, is the acoustic ballad needed to provide a proper breather — during concerts, the girls sit in a semicircle to harmonize it together.

It's impossible, however, to escape the pervasive success of "Survivor," another single that cleans up especially in Europe thanks to an obsessively repeated melodic line and that synth-string riff buzzing like a fly, while the girls strut about like statuesque Amazons in a rainforest. The title clearly refers to the legal and emotional disputes the band has survived over the past couple of years, but the phrase

You thought I wouldn’t sell without you

I sold nine millions

immediately triggers another lawsuit from LaTavia and LeToya, who feel directly targeted by such gratuitously released malice – and frankly it's impossible to blame them.

But controversy, as we know, fuels publicity: Survivor ends up shifting over ten million copies worldwide. More importantly, the album stands as the first genuinely noteworthy work in the Destiny's Child catalogue, proof of the quick-wittedness of a team that, rather than hesitating, pushes harder than ever. Beyoncé herself appears as writer and co-producer on most of the record – a device not always entirely accurate, at least according to several industry insiders who complain of missing credits – but with her father at the helm, every decision gets reshaped to his liking. Without being a masterpiece, Survivor flows smoothly from start to finish: just listen to the sticky psych-pop march of "Happy Face", reminiscent of William Orbit's work with Madonna, or the grown-up triptych of "Fancy", "Apple Pie à la Mode" and "Sexy Daddy", and you immediately notice leaner production and more articulate melodies, while the girls harmonize like a small choir – the entirely a cappella "Gospel Medley" shows off their electrifying synergy in full.

Newcomer Michelle Williams will go down in history as the quintessential third wheel, which is absolutely unfair because her voice – a huskier, smokier timbre capable of delightfully charismatic openings – is actually the essential ingredient that completes the trio. The tracks where Michelle takes center stage take on a three-dimensional quality, like a proper girl group, tempering the omnipresent Beyoncé with a series of vocal touches that are far more distinctive than anything previously achieved by either Kelly or former members Farrah, LaTavia and LeToya.

There's certainly no shortage of less inspired moments; "The Story Of Beauty" is a sort of breakbeat with electro-rock flourishes that veer a bit too kitsch, while "Brown Eyes", co-written by Walter Afanasieff (the man behind the fearsome 90s power ballads of the Houston/Carey/Dion triptych), already sounds thoroughly out of place on a 2001 album – it's left to the girls' harmonies to provide the only point of interest.

The ballad "Dangerously In Love" will later be reprised by Beyoncé alone for her celebrated 2003 solo debut; with its Spanish-tinged guitar and lyrical melodrama, the song is hardly among the most original, but it's crafted in meticulous detail to showcase the full interpretive range of a young woman now fully in command of her vocal gifts and more than ready to take the big leap.

The international version of Survivor features a slightly altered track list with two unreleased songs; the curious "Perfect Man" moves over a sample of African percussion, creating a minimalist urban effect, but "My Heart Still Beats" is yet another unbearably saccharine number composed with the usual Afanasieff.

The defining moment of the entire record – or rather, of the entire Destiny's Child career in whichever line-up you prefer – is however the irresistible "Bootylicious", a sort of explosive atomic bomb that helped rewrite the very idea of the club hit for much of the 2000s – released as the third official single, the track reclaims the top spot in America and turns into an evergreen that endures to this day. Built around a sample borrowed from Stevie Nicks's "Edge Of Seventeen" and looped like a chainsaw, the track has a stripped-down structure running through with an obsessive nervous tension, but the harmonic crescendos sung by the girls, and that series of perfectly interlocking beats, deliver a tribal, panting, frantic and damn near perfect propulsive drive:

Alongside Britney Spears's "I'm A Slave 4 U", released a couple of months later, "Bootylicious" acts as something of a litmus test for the r&b production of the moment, a sort of crash course on how to build a smash hit using a simple backing track and a multitude of choral effects – we'll soon find excellent examples of this courtesy of Gwen Stefani, Fergie, Kelis and many others. And while the coining of the term "bootylicious" can't be credited to Destiny's Child, the success of their track will be so pervasive that in 2004 the word gets added to the Oxford Dictionary, defined as "a sexually attractive woman".

The Survivor era thus comes to a close as one of the most fruitful in the franchise's history, with the "Destiny's Child World Tour" that kicks off in 2002 taking them around the globe, and the Rotterdam stop gets released on DVD.

On a deconstructivist Christmas, trashy dance music, and a fitting conclusion

If you've made it this far, you're probably already aware of the existence of 8 Days Of Christmas (2001), but in case you've just stumbled upon this obscure seasonal project by Destiny's Child, well, what can we say: brace yourself. Let's start with the (semi-)original tracks; modeled on the traditional melody of "Twelve Days Of Christmas", the new version of the title track, trimmed down to just eight days, has Beyoncé rattling off a series of sinful little gifts while the other two weave the genre's typical backing vocals around her, and the result is anything but Christmassy. Besides the title and lyrics, "Winter Paradise" also shows zero holiday atmosphere, both melodically and in its arrangement, and instead sees the girls harmonizing as if they were guests on an All Saints track produced by William Orbit. And then there's "Spread A Little Love On Christmas Day", another typical example of Y2K-era r&b melodicism, again in a minor key and lashed by constant electronic interference.

The traditional covers range from curious to bizarre to violently kitsch with no apparent continuity; just take the famous melody of "White Christmas", inserted here as a brief interlude, to showcase the lysergic and vaguely deconstructivist spirit of 8 Days Of Christmas: slick, modern production, out-of-place sexy posturing, but also a strange technical mastery from three young women now able to navigate oblique harmonies and complex rhythms with their eyes closed – "Opera Of The Bells", entirely a cappella, sits somewhere between Christian tradition and... Meredith Monk?

The novelty medley “A ‘CD’ Christmas Medley” stuffs about six traditional carols into four minutes of perky, cheerful electro-funk-pop like a turkey at Thanksgiving, creating a mix of curiosity, fun, bad taste and headache. On “Silent Night”, Beyoncé alone goes off on a tangent, forcing constant harmonic shifts through a barrage of melismas and poetic license, while on the muddled, messy rendition of “Little Drummer Boy”, somewhere between hip-hop and certain pop-jazz fusions of Steely Dan, Solange also shows up as a guest – she was, in the meantime, put to work by her father as a backup singer and dancer during the girls’ shows.

Kelly's lovely voice manages to lend a vaguely more traditional moment to the cover of the pastoral carol “Do You Hear What I Hear”, while Michelle takes on “O Holy Night” over a jazzy piano-bar backing straight out of a dance hall on the Mississippi. Soon enough, with “Platinum Bell”, we're facing a technical deconstruction, and “This Christmas” unleashes a Balearic breakbeat fit for skimpy bikinis, tropical cocktails and “Hotel Costes” compilations blasting from a beachside stereo – always a fitting mood for December 25th, right?

Probably not since the Rotary Connection's “Peace” in 1968 had a Christmas album been made that felt so sonically removed from the idea of Christmas, and it's downright bizarre to think that it's the hyper-managed Destiny's Child's 8 Days Of Christmas that delivers such an idiosyncratic moment. Although the band is currently topping the charts worldwide, the record fails to achieve much success, partly due to the rather scant promotion from Knowles' management, and partly because the seasonal album is still regarded as a separate chapter in a pop artist's discography.

In a way, though, Destiny's Child miss the boat: in 2003, the success of the romantic comedy “Love Actually” revives, for the first time in a decade since its release, Mariah Carey's “All I Want For Christmas Is You”, setting off a slow but unstoppable chain reaction that will turn the song into a classic and its author into a sort of unofficial godmother of the holiday season. But to this day, the legacy of 8 Days Of Christmas remains limited to a handful of nostalgic fans – its sheer oddness, frankly, makes it an unsuitable listen for any time of year.

Compared to what we just heard, This Is The Remix (2002) sounds almost like a regular studio album. As was customary in the record industry of the time, diversifying output across various sub-genre charts helped reinforce the main hits (both the queen of ’90s remixes, Mariah Carey, and her copycat Jennifer Lopez, knew this well), so Destiny's Child also rolled up their sleeves to overhaul and rework some of their best-known moments. “Say My Name” is completely unrecognizable under Timbaland's hand, while the ballad “Emotion” is transformed by the light touch of the Neptunes into a clean, elegant midtempo number. Wyclef Jean makes another appearance, weaning “Bug-A-Boo” into a far more mature moment straddling hip-hop and neo-soul, and there's even a remix of “Dot”, a song recorded for that same “Charlie's Angels” soundtrack that had already given us “Independent Women Part 1”.

DJ Maurice Joshua gets his hands on four tracks from This Is The Remix with the clear intent of pushing Destiny's Child's reach into the Dance Chart; while “Nasty Girl” keeps its r&b imprint, the other single “Jumpin’ Jumpin'” is presented as a medley running over seven minutes, complete with a nu-disco beat kicking in halfway through and rap cameos from Da Brat, Jermaine Dupri and Lil’ Bow Wow, but above all blending the original version recorded with LaToya and LaTavia with the later one reworked with new members Farrah and Michelle, for a total of six voices in one. But with “Bills, Bills, Bills” and “So Good”, Maurice veers off into a techno-eurodance territory that constantly teeters between the trashy (the former) and the moderately radio-friendly (the latter).

It's a shame, then, that the new version of “Bootylicious”, crafted by Rockwilder with an assist from Missy Elliott, doesn't come anywhere close to the perfection of the original, but the hit was a big success and the names attached are big, so Columbia gives the green light to shoot a new promotional video in which the girls adopt a more hip-hop look to complement the beats used. The totally out-of-place “Heard A Word” is a previously unreleased slow gospel number that we'll later find in Michelle Williams' solo career, as she is in fact the sole performer here too.

Overall, This Is The Remix too is more of a curiosity for die-hard fans than an album meant for the general public, but it's still another piece adding to the already substantial sales of a group at the peak of its worldwide success.

The official comeback with Destiny Fulfilled (2004) brings the group's recording career to a more than worthy close.

“Lose My Breath” is their last big Top Ten single, a frenetic rhythmic surge built around a marching band all drums and snares, then locked into that Middle Eastern sample that forces the singers to dart about like gazelles just to keep up – but, contrary to the title, the three girls never lose their breath for even a second, showing off all the fierce energy that, with TLC now disbanded following the tragic death of Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes, made them the last great girl group of r&b:

Much more minimal, on the other hand, is the other single “Soldier”, built around a single, extremely sticky synthetic beat: the track is kept alive both by the presence of T.I. and Lil’ Wayne and by a three-way structure in which Kelly and Michelle take turns at the helm alongside the ever-present Beyoncé, for a more evenly distributed effect. Thanks to heavy rotation in urban/hip-hop clubs of the time, the track cracks the Top Ten in several countries, confirming itself as that brash, street-smart anthem that stands at an angle to the usual themes of empowerment the group presented. Several years later, during a stand-up routine, a young Donald Glover, working as a comedian, would use exactly two Destiny's Child songs to illustrate the puzzle of female contradictions: the old “Bills, Bills, Bills”, where the girls demand a responsible man who's financially able to support them, and its counterpart “Soldier”, where instead the three fawn over a promiscuous street dealer who certainly has no intention of paying the rent.

The other two singles pulled from the album showcase the stylistic range the girls, and r&b as a genre, had reached by the new millennium; “Cater 2 U” is a typical midtempo ballad with a finale in which Michelle takes over thanks to her charismatic vocal tone, at times almost reminiscent of Macy Gray, while “Girl” is a classic moment of pure radio pop, complete with a famous music video edited like an episode of the hugely popular TV series “Sex & The City”.

Destiny Fulfilled also achieves solid success, though not on the scale of the previous two albums – some of the public's attention was diverted by the fact that all three members of the trio had by then already launched their respective solo careers. But with just eleven tracks on the tracklist and a lean, modern sound, the record is a more than worthy closing chapter to the ultimately brief but hugely eventful career of the Destiny's Child franchise.

Michelle's presence, placed right at the center of the cover photo, can almost be read as a tribute from Knowles' management to her having managed to hold her own position alongside Beyoncé's ever-present spotlight without causing friction. The fact remains that Destiny Fulfilled is the record on which a Beyoncé, by then already fully launched as a solo artist, seems to want to return with nostalgia to her roots as part of a vocal group one last time, and Michelle in particular is more audible than ever – on “If” there are moments where she almost seems to channel the spirit of Tweet, the refined electro-folk/gospel/r&b singer-songwriter who, with the splendid “Southern Hummingbird” a couple of years earlier, provided an inimitable benchmark for genre fusion. Worth noting in this regard are both “Free”, a sunny gospel moment, and the dramatic “Through With Love”, on which the three girls' voices rise in turn into an ecstatic wall of harmonies.

The atmosphere on "T-Shirt" is diaphanous and almost tropical-tinged, while "Is She The Reason", "Bad Habit" and "Love" may follow the same melodic formula as ever, but the surrounding architecture, awash in violins and synthetic harps, gives the tracks a production depth that's genuinely new compared to the far flatter, more plasticky sound of the first couple of albums.

Despite their by-now advanced solo careers, Destiny Fulfilled is honored with a farewell tour, and the 2005 Atlanta stop is released on DVD as a final gift to fans. Beyoncé, Kelly and Michelle close the Destiny's Child chapter at exactly the right moment, preserving its memory for posterity and, above all, maintaining a strong sisterly bond among themselves that endures to this day. There'll be room for one small unreleased track years later, but more importantly Beyoncé will call on her former bandmates to back her up during her Super Bowl performance and on the Coachella stage for a historic show. Kelly and Beyoncé will later appear alongside Michelle for her gospel single "Say Yes", while Beyoncé and Michelle will guest on a track from Kelly's solo career.

On the discography side, among the various more or less official compilations that will pop up like mushrooms around the globe, #1's (2005) is definitely worth a listen: despite the different versions released in various markets, it strings together all the girls' biggest hits since their earliest days and offers a historically significant overview of the development of American rhythm'n'blues at the turn of the millennium. Sure, somewhere in the tracklist there's "Check On It", the massively successful collaboration by Beyoncé solo with Bun B and Slim Thug, taken from the film remake of "The Pink Panther". But the overall tally remains impressive: in just seven years of activity, Destiny's Child managed to rack up a sizeable run of hits, to the point that, riding the wave of audience nostalgia and the hype around the members' new solo careers, #1's debuts straight at No. 1 on the Billboard chart and ends up shifting a couple of million copies worldwide. Much of the foundation on which Beyoncé builds her image as an icon of the new millennium traces back precisely to the work laid out on a compilation like #1's.

It's Love Songs (2013), however, that provides the group's final official release, a collection of their mellowest, most romantic moments that honestly aren't worth the price of admission. The collection does stand out, though, for featuring one unreleased track recorded specifically for the occasion, the nu-electro-r&b of "Nuclear", a sparing, elegant close to a story that, let's be honest, has often given us quite the opposite.

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