Beyonce's Top Ten Songs on and Off the Charts

Beyoncé Knowles has a quintuple package-she can dance, model, market a clothing line (House of Dereon), be a humanitarian (with her partnership with Hamburger Helper to fight hunger) and she's a powerhouse singer. You know her voice when you hear it, and she's had countless number one hits. Even songs that didn't become singles were stellar musical selections. This list is compiled of my top ten Beyoncé songs.

10. "Gift from Virgo" (from the "Dangerously in Love" CD): Beyoncé croons "I love everything about you/from your old school tennis shoes/to the way you move" and asks "Do you remember our first kiss?" on a jazzy track. The instrumental to this track is so stimulating that you almost want to hear it from a live band in a dimly lit lounge with your favorite drink and some eye candy in front of you.

9. "Naughty Girl" (from the "Dangerously In Love" CD): The video made me love this song that much more and of course I had to do the shoulder dance when I heard the song. Seeing ridiculously talented R&B artists Beyoncé and Usher in a video together had fans everywhere screaming "Finally." The "Naughty Girl" video was better than seeing Chris Brown and Ciara dance together for the first time at the 2008 BET Awards, but Beyoncé and Usher performing Usher's "Bad Girl" was even better. "Naughty Girl" is sexy, and the beat makes you want to get up and dance while Beyoncé tells a guy "tonight I'll be your naughty girl."

8. "Get Me Bodied" (from the "Bday" CD): "Conversate" is not a word, but who cares since this song is a definite club banger and should be mandatory for women to listen to before hitting up a nightclub. She sings that she's wearing a dress "and I'm a get me some," is ready to sip a little liquor, scoop her three friends up in the vintage Rolls (Royce), skips to the front of the line, lavishly takes care of the valet, and now she's just about demanding the guy of her choice to grind on her while she enjoys the song.

7. "Upgrade U" (from the "Bday" CD): This was an interesting song because it was true. Her husband Jay-Z starts off the song by saying, "How you gone upgrade me? What's higher than number one?" However, she "talked her s---" and realistically upgraded superstar rapper Jay-Z's wardrobe game. Jay-Z took off the throwbacks, threw on a button down, and proclaimed that "thirty's the new twenty." Young men everywhere took off T-shirts that looked more like women's nightgowns, droopy-diaper looking sagging pants, and made their gear more mature. And as much as I want Beyoncé to stop rapping altogether ("Diva" and "Video Phone"), she rapped surprisingly well on this track. And she was right-"It's very seldom that you're blessed to find your equal"-but she surely did with Shawn Carter.

6. "Ego" (from the "Bday" CD): This song didn't catch my attention until recently because of the remix with Kanye West, but the original version was great too. As soon as the beat hits, hips start gyrating left to right and arms pump in the air to the beat. It's beautiful that the person she's singing about compliments her, and that's always a great touch. And the subliminal sexual messages get a grin too: "It's too big/It's too wide/It's too strong/It won't fit." While most women would roll their eyes at a guy saying this to him, what's cool about this guy is his actions confirm his ego. "He walk like this 'cause he can back it up" and she "loves his big ego."

5. "Hip Hop Star" featuring Big Boi (from the "Dangerously In Love" CD): Both Andre 3000 and Big Boi have a knack for being featured (or the stars of) funky tracks, and this was one of them, especially when he rhymed about Rick James. Beyoncé brings the flirting and Big Boi brings the naughty humor to create a mesmerizing jam.

4. "Dangerously in Love 2" (from the "Dangerously in Love" CD): This is the song that women who are looking for a man want to be able to relate to, and this type of unconditional love will spark immediate memories of your current (or past) significant other. But it's the way she sings "I love you" at 4:11 that makes listeners know this was one of those songs she truly felt.

3. "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)" (from the "I Am...Sasha Fierce" CD): This was the national anthem for women who were fed up waiting for a man to get it together and seal the deal with marriage. Beyoncé sings about a woman who had been in a three-year relationship, he bailed out, she found someone better and now the ex-boyfriend wants to be back in the picture. Too late! "If you like it, then you should've put a ring on it."

2. "Irreplaceable" (from the "Bday" CD): Songwriter and R&B artist Ne-Yo should've been greeted with thank-you notes from women all over the world for writing this song and passing it on to Beyoncé to sing. I don't know one woman who hasn't been in a relationship with a guy who felt like he could do whatever and was shocked when she finally said enough is enough. Beyoncé sings about how she sat this guy's bags "to the left" and told him "I could have another you in a minute." The truth hurts, but sometimes folks have to learn the hard way.

1. "Yes" (from the "Dangerously In Love" CD): We hear the story about how boy meets girl and boy likes girl, but on this song, Beyoncé called the boy out for being too quick with the sexual demands. I respected this track more than all of her other songs because she demanded that the guy take his time with her and since he wouldn't wait until she was ready to be sexually intimate, she "showed him to the door/you said you'd call me later/I said don't call no more." She told him "If you can't wait for me/I'm glad you let me know/'Cause you showed me your true face, baby/The first time I said no." There are too many women who give in to intimacy earlier than they're ready and end up in awkward relationships (ex. the baby momma phenomenon) because they really didn't know the guy well in the first place. I wish this song would've been a single. More young ladies (and fully grown women too) need to pay attention to the lyrics.