Beyonce Needed Year Off From Music Before She Snapped

So, has anybody else seen the recent Target ad campaign promoting Beyonce’s latest album "4"? The ones where she talks in voice-over about getting outside her performance comfort zone by taking a seat among the audience and taking in others’ performances, learning what she can about herself and her own stage presence along the way?

File those ads under Truth-in-Advertising.

Beyonce recently told The (U.K.) Sun that the year off the radar was hardly an accident. In fact, it was something that those closest to her strongly suggested to keep her from a nervous breakdown.

"I couldn't even tell which day or which city I was at,” the singer-actress explained. “I would sit there at ceremonies and they would give me an award and I was just thinking about the next performance. My mother was very persistent and she kept saying that I had to take care of my mental health."

One who’s sold more albums and collected more Grammys than most artists in pop history could more than afford spending a year resting on one’s many laurels – if one lacked Beyonce’s apparent drive and creative thirst. She spent that year taking in every cultural experience under the sun, from the museums, ballet and opera she hints at in her Target ads, to a sojourn to the Great Wall of Chinathat she considers maybe the past year’s most significant endeavor.

The famous Wall even inspired her inner Rocky Balboa.

 "I actually started running, I don't know why,” Beyonce said. “The steps are really small. I just felt like I was in my own world."

But one man on Earth can probably now and forever claim that he moved a woman more than one of the Wonders of the World: her husband, Jay-Z.

"I got the chance to see the Jay-Z shows in the audience which I had never been able to do, so I was really inspired. I've always been a Jay-Z groupie."