At the end of the day, the most pressing question surrounding the 2024 Democratic National Convention was: Where the hell is Beyoncé?

The answer: Not at the DNC.

To be clear, the idea of the greatest performer and arguably biggest pop star on the planet showing up to Chicago’s United Center and playing one song to a sea of political dorks and lawmakers is, without a doubt, far-fetched. But it didn’t come out of nowhere. All the clues were there. Or, at least, so many people — including the media reporting on the event — thought so.

The rumor started Thursday afternoon, with an insidery post that promised something huge. “If you thought the Oprah surprise was big, just wait,” the since-deleted post from an anonymous X user said. Given Oprah’s gravitational pull on culture at large, the list of people who could outshine her is, at most, 10 or so names long.

Beyoncé Knowles is one of the very few people on Earth who is bigger than Oprah. While there was some necessary speculation about Taylor Swift as well, the fact that Harris is using Bey’s song “Freedom” on the campaign trail meant that election-watchers and fans alike began speculating that the singer was the secret VIP. There were also reports from people inside the arena that the convention’s house band was using Beyoncé songs to soundcheck. Later in the evening, reporters noted that the podium was set up for someone special!

As whispers of the extremely famous and exciting guest who was definitely Beyoncé grew, White House political director Emmy Ruiz posted an emoji of a bee at around 4:30 pm. Bey calls her fans the Beyhive, and Ruiz’s bee post threw gasoline on the fire. It’s the equivalent of Gotham City lighting up the sky with the Bat Signal.

Surely Bey was coming! (Ruiz later claimed that her 6-year-old had posted the bee.)

Then the seemingly ultimate confirmation came: TMZ reported that Beyoncé was going to show. While your mileage may vary on how TMZ reports deaths and arrests (usually by talking to hospital workers and cops who shouldn’t be leaking that kind of private information), they’re hardly ever wrong.

Sleuths then started piecing together more of the alleged puzzle. The Chicks, fellow Texans who Beyoncé has collaborated with, were on the schedule. As was Pink, the singer obsessed with aerial tricks and adult gymnastics who also once starred with Beyoncé in a Pepsi commercial. Also on the docket was Colin Allred, a Democrat from Bey’s home state running for senate, speaking just a few slots before Harris, the main event. People from Texas, former collaborators, ah yes, it all makes sense if you squint hard enough and play Six Degrees of Separation: Beyoncé Edition.

Perhaps the most believable connection is that supporting Kamala Harris feels like something Beyoncé would do. If Harris wins, she would be the first woman to become president and the second person of color in history to ever hold the nation’s highest office. That’s a political and historical milestone that aligns itself with Beyoncé’s art and her songs about the strength and vulnerability of being a Black woman. She has also endorsed multiple Democratic candidates in the recent past — starting with Barack Obama right through Hilary Clinton and Joe Biden — and played at President Obama’s Inaugural Ball in 2009 and inauguration in 2013.

Beyoncé’s cultural and political evolution over the past decade of her career has made her a legendary figure. Even more specifically, beginning with the release of Renaissance in 2022, the singer has been carefully crafting her work around a core idea: What is America? And further, what does it sound like? Who does it belong to?

By tapping into house music in 2022 and then country in this year’s Cowboy Carter, Bey highlighted two distinctly American innovations and underscored how Black men and women are integral parts of those two genres. She’s challenging the ideas of America and reinventing it with each question and with each song. What could be more symbolic of Beyoncé’s Americana than the country’s first Black, biracial, woman president? What could be more on-brand than Beyoncé singing “Freedom,” the Harris-Walz campaign song, and introducing Kamala Harris?

Throughout the evening, NBC and other outlets breathlessly speculated on the possibility that Beyoncé was just around the corner, with the Peacock talking to delegates in the audience who seemed to confirm. Just as the country was fully Bey-pilled, and as the clock approached 10:30 CT — right before Kamala Harris was scheduled to accept the nomination — the rumor was squashed.

Harris got a video introduction, and Beyoncé’s publicist posted on Instagram, “Do not report rumors.” The Hollywood Reporter also got a denial at around 10:15 pm ET. For Beyoncé fans and perhaps some independent voters, it would’ve been nice if the DNC or said publicist squashed the rumors hours earlier instead of dangling a Bey performance so close that we could taste it.

It might be helpful, at this juncture, to remember that the point of the DNC is not, technically, to have a Beyoncé concert, but rather to introduce the country to the woman who wants to be president. And for a brief few hours, it looked like both would happen! Still, the X account that reportedly stated this whole mess says it regrets the error, as does TMZ.