Democrats Were Expecting Beyoncé but Went Wild for Harris Instead

CHICAGO—To the immeasurable disappointment of thousands of people inside Chicago’s United Center Stadium—and hundreds of thousands more breathlessly watching from afar—Beyoncé did not appear onstage on the final night of the Democratic National Convention.

The will-she-won’t-she-appear question had hung in the air all day, with excitement growing to a fever pitch as both tabloids like TMZ and Beltway news outlets like The Hill confirmed that she would be performing ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech.

But all that came crashing down around 9 p.m. Chicago time, as The Hollywood Reporter put out a story contradicting those earlier reports in no uncertain terms.

“Beyoncé was never scheduled to be there,” a rep for the superstar told the trade. “The report of a performance is untrue.”

Delegates had been buzzing all week about the possibility of a Beyoncé sighting in the Windy City. The singer granted Harris permission to use her single “Freedom” as a walk-on song earlier this summer—and, this week, swiftly threatened legal action against Donald Trump’s campaign for using it in a video of their own without permission.

And despite the fact that it was announced on Wednesday that the singer Pink would be headlining ahead of Harris on Thursday, those rumors persisted. On social media, users twittered about a supposed “mystery guest” slated to appear during a blank block on the schedule. (The convention’s official schedule for the evening, which was not broken down minute by minute, made no mention of a surprise guest.)

Expectations climbed so high by late Thursday, the gossip at such a fever pitch, that even Trump’s campaign seemingly bought into the hype.

About an hour before Harris’ appearance, campaign spokesperson Chris LaCivita tweeted out a link to a 2010 Guardian article reporting that Beyoncé had once performed a New Year’s Eve concert for Muammar Gaddafi’s son. “Team Trump opening the oppo file on Beyonce,” MSNBC journalist Sam Stein remarked.

LaCivita did not respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment on the tweet.

The Trump campaign also sent out an email blast announcing that the former president would be presenting his own extra-special mystery guest at a Friday rally in Glendale, Arizona. Safe to say that it will probably not be Beyoncé.

The whispers didn’t seem to bother Harris, though. She strutted onstage to “Freedom” once again, to cheers that went on for so long that she had to tell the audience, grinning, that they needed to “get to business.”

If the energy in the room had dipped upon the dawning realization that Beyoncé was not in the building, the vice president had reclaimed it by the time she accepted the presidential nomination—and began laying out what she characterized as nothing less than a fight for the soul of the country.

“With this election, our nation has a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism, and divisive battles of the past,” she said. “A chance to chart a new way forward. Not as members of any one party or faction, but as Americans.”