Happy 35th birthday Beyonce! Queen Bey celebrates amazing year from Lemonade to MTV VMAs triumph

No doubt Beyonce will be treated like a queen today (4 September) as she celebrates her 35th birthday. The Single Ladies singer certainly deserves the special treatment after an 'above-average' successful year. From the release of her Lemonade visual album to her record-breaking triumph at the MTV VMAs, IBTimes UK takes a look at Queen Bey's most notable accolades over the last 12 months.

After a short spell away from music, Beyonce made a dramatic return in February with her politically-charged single Formation. The Mike Will Made It-produced track pushed the music industry to sit up and really pay attention to the ongoing issue of racial discrimination and police brutality in America.

The accompanying music video made the song's message crystal clear as Beyonce lies atop a sinking police car while embracing her African-American heritage in New Orleans. Formation was the topic on everyone's lips and became even more of a talking point following her Super Bowl performance.

The diva joined Coldplay and Bruno Mars at the Halftime Show where she performed Formation live for the first time. Beyonce and her dance crew paid homage to the Black Panther movement by wearing their trademark berets and big hair but was accused of inciting police hatred in doing so.

In true Beyonce fashion, she rose above the negativity by announcing the Formation World Tour hours after the Super Bowl. Just days after tickets went on sale, it was revealed that Beyonce's stadium jaunt had already grossed a staggering $100m (£73m) in sales alone. With the healthy revenue and 49 dates around Europe and North America, Beyonce's latest tour is one of the highest-grossing of the year and she still has nine dates to go.

Of course, the tour was not only in support of the Formation single. In April, Beyonce released her sixth solo album Lemonade to much fanfare. The 12-track record initially debuted as a visual album on HBO with the singer combining each video with spoken word segments about relationships both romantic and familial.

The response to the album was explosive with journalists and fans musing on the 'hidden message' in the album – that Beyonce was suggesting her rapper husband Jay Z cheated on her. The Sorry lyric: "He better call Becky with the good hair," sparked worldwide scrutiny into who Jay Z's alleged mystery woman could be.

While the mystery was never truly resolved, Beyonce's visual album was hailed a masterpiece for pushing the arcs of creativity in the often generic world of pop. The singer's efforts also earned her record-breaking accolades at the MTV Video Music Awards in August. Beyonce is now the most awarded artist in VMAs history – with a total of 24 – surpassing Madonna's collection of 20 moonmen. Among her newest batch of awards is the prestigious video of the year, which she won with Formation.

Beyonce's achievement was celebrated at the New York awards with the singer performing a 16-minute medley of Lemonade tracks including Don't Hurt Yourself, Hold Up, Sorry and Pray You Catch Me. The workload doesn't look set to slow down anytime soon as reports claim Beyonce and Jay Z are set to release their first joint album either towards the end of 2016 or early 2017.

Aside from music, Beyonce is triumphing in the style stakes as she was named fashion icon at the CDFA Awards in June. In her acceptance speech, the singer said: "High-end labels didn't really want to dress four black, country, curvy girls, and we couldn't afford designer dresses and couture. My mother was rejected from every showroom in New York. But like my grandmother, she used her talent and her creativity to give her children their dreams. [I now] take risks, work hard, and live life on my own terms."

Happy 35th birthday, Beyonce!