“Lemonade”

“Lemonade” by Beyoncé

“Lemonade” was released on April 23, 2016 by twenty-time Grammy award winner, Beyoncé. It was her sixth studio album and it received both public and critical success. The album fuses elements of pop, hip-hop, rap, reggae, blues, rock, and other genres. The album’s diversity of sound and samplings of all different types of music are part of the reason it was so successful. The album won “Best Urban Contemporary Album” at the 2017 Grammy Awards.

“Lemonade” was also successful because of it’s storytelling element. Though every album released tries to tell a story of some sort, “Lemonade” goes that extra mile. Along with the music and videos released, the album was paired with a short sixty-five minute film of the same title. It tells the story of Beyoncé trying to keep her marriage to rapper, Jay-Z, together. She explores her own revelation about his extramarital and how she subsequently felt about it and decided to move on. She delves into the realities of learning to move past such a thing as infidelity in a relationship and how music and her heritage as a black woman helped her do that. To read more about the reason “Lemonade” was written, read here.

Perhaps the most popular song from the album, “Formation” tells the story of a woman finding herself and learning to keep it moving despite everything life throws her way. She does all this while also exploring the socioeconomic and racial disparities in the South. Her performance at the 2016 SuperBowl was both lauded and criticized widely for its political nature. The music video for “Formation” can be viewed on the “Song Bites” page of my blog.

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