YouTubeBeyoncé sure knows how to keep a secret.
The 34-year-old singer surprised fans Saturday by releasing a new song, "Formation." The track went viral instantly, just one day before she was set to perform with Coldplay and Bruno Mars during the Super Bowl Pepsi Halftime Show at Levi's Stadium in San Francisco, Calif. Though Chris Martin's band was the headlining act, Beyoncé made the biggest impact. As Sarah Silverman asked her Twitter followers, "Can anyone else in the history of the world release a song and the same day sing it on the mother--king Super Bowl & we all know the words?"
It's a testament to Beyoncé's power in the industry. After singing her latest hit and joining the others for a medley of "Fix You" and "Up&Up," Beyoncé announced her 2016 Formation World Tour in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it commercial. Soon after, her website crashed as fans tried to find out which cities were on her itinerary. There had been reports that Beyoncé was working on new music, but the famously private singer never announced anything officially. If there's a new album in the works—and it seems highly likely there is—Beyoncé hasn't said so. Her first concert is scheduled for Apr. 27 in Miami, and her final show is slated for July 31 in Brussels. In total, Beyoncé will perform 37 shows throughout Europe and North America.
Taking fans by surprise is nothing new for Beyoncé, who dropped her self-titled fifth album and 18 music videos simultaneously in late 2013. In an era where movies, music and pictures leak online all the time and spoiler alerts are a thing of the past, how does she keep things secret? After all, it takes a village to bring Beyoncé's vision to fruition. The more people she involves in each project, the higher the likelihood is that someone will accidentally say too much and spoil the fun for everyone—and yet, that hasn't happened to her. "People knew about the new music; enough industry people and enough people who worked on it knew. But it's Beyoncé: no one is about to cross her or leak information that she doesn't want out there," a source tells E! News exclusively. "If they do, they know they don't stand a chance of working with her again."
Because she's such a respected artist, Beyoncé has been able to do what other musicians have not—use the element of surprise to her advantage. "Behind the scenes, she has a lot of help," the source says. "She's the star, but she's got huge teams of people working to pull it all off."
In addition to ensuring "she has a tightlipped crew" from the get-go, Beyoncé has been known to keep people in the dark until the last minute. In fact, an insider tells E! News, "There have been times when the crew doesn't know what the project is and they don't find out till on set."