Ryan Beatty Talks Post-Beyoncé Breakout and Sharing Love Songs With His Boyfriend: ‘It’s Awkward at First’
Categoria: Musica
New album Sweet Fortune finds the singer-songwriter coming into his own.
Por Billboard | 11/08/2026
It’s the kind of day in Manhattan where subway stations turn into saunas, the air thick with humidity and every other oddity that defines summer in the city. Despite the sticky weather, an undaunted crowd is forming outside of the Lower East Side’s cramped Nightclub 101, a year-and-change-old venue where a fledgling artist might play one of their first gigs. Tonight, however, singer-songwriter Ryan Beatty is taking the stage — an outlier for 101 as Beatty is anything but fledgling. For one, does the name Beyoncé ring a bell? Beatty was part of the creative team that helped the superstar win album of the year at the Grammys in 2025, co-writing a handful of tracks on Cowboy Carter , including fan-favorite “Bodyguard.” But enough about that. Beatty is here as part of a series of underplays across the world for his own music, which caught Beyoncé’s ear to begin with. The tiny gigs are in support of his fourth album Sweet Fortune , which came out in June. Walking down 101’s narrow staircase, Beatty is in a small basement. His set is delayed (technical issues), but he’s relaxed. With a baby face defying the fact he’s turning 31 next month, Beatty dons a worn jean jacket and blue jeans, perhaps an allusion to the country twang that can be heard on Sweet Fortune . (“Virtuoso,” co-written with pop hitmaker Amy Allen, with its guitar pickin’ and steady beat, would be perfect for a line dance.) But while the album may convey a subtle Southern energy (its series of music videos were filmed in the heartland, including “White Lightning” which improbably featured an actual lightning storm), Sweet Fortune actually took root not far from where we’re sitting. “I just felt like I needed something to really take me out of my comfort zone,” he says, closing his eyes while he answers each question to hyperfocus on the words coming out of his mouth. “A change of location is an easy way to do that. I have friends in New York and my favorite spots, but I never created here. I wanted to see what it was like.” While the recording was done back in L.A., Beatty wrote the bulk of Sweet Fortune in the dead of a Northeast winter; at the time he says he was listening to a lot of Chet Baker. “It’s that cliché thing of, ‘I’m listening to jazz in New York!’ I think it opened me up sonically.” He looks at the album as “California dressed up in New York clothes. I’m a California boy through-and-through, and I just feel that it bleeds into my songwriting. The album is really about distance, so making it in a place far away from my comfort, my home, allowed me to speak on that more directly.” Then again, there’s another theme on Sweet Fortune that perhaps is much more important. “I always know that no matter what, I have to sing about what’s really happening in my life. And even though I’m really protective of the things that I keep precious, singing about a relationship I’m in — and not from a place of heartbreak — was a new thing for me.” From the