Beyoncé - Lemonade

    In December of 2013, Beyoncé released her self-titled album on iTunes without any promotion. The album was an instant classic featuring huge singles like “Drunk in Love,” “Partition” and “Flawless.”

    Well, She did it again.

    On April 16 of this year, Beyoncé announced “Lemonade,” an HBO special which aired the next week on April 23.

    The internet was set ablaze. People were posting everywhere, theorizing on what this whole “Lemonade” thing was about. What is a concert film? A cinematic short? A new album?

    Turns out it’s what Bey is calling a “visual album.” And it’s a masterpiece.

    The hour-long program was directed in part by Beyoncé. It was made up of spoken word poems intercut between every song from the new album. Each track is portrayed in its own visual style - from Beyoncé singing in a bedroom completely filled with water to her strutting down a city block with a baseball bat smashing in car windows.

Each shot is absolutely gorgeous and does an amazing job giving meaning to the songs and poems layered over them. It’s more than just a long music video.  

While the short film was fantastic, the question still stands: Does “Lemonade” hold up as a standalone Beyoncé record?

Yes. And it’s even better than 2013’s self-titled

The record starts out with “Pray You Catch Me” and right off the bat, it’s clear that “Lemonade” is going differ vastly to Beyoncé’s last full-length album. While that record was more or less a love letter to herself as well as her husband, rapper Jay Z, “Lemonade” seems as if it’s calling him out for cheating. Although there are theories that these songs are written from the point of view of Beyoncé’s mother, Tina Knowles.

Either point of view is valid and Beyoncé leaves it ambiguous enough to be up to the listener’s interpretation.

These themes of infidelity are all over this record and the album as a whole tells a fairly linear story of anger to acceptance and forgiveness.

The anger is most clearly heard on the track “Don't Hurt Yourself” featuring Jack White. As well as lending his voice to this song, White also produced it. Instrumentally, this song is a throwback to the days of The White Stripes with its prominent loud and distorted guitars. The organs on this track are very reminiscent to the Battles record, “Gloss Drop.”

Another standout track is “Daddy Lessons.” I can tell already that this one’s going to be divisive. People will either love it, or hate it. The song harkens back to Beyoncé’s roots in Houston, Texas. It’s a country tune accompanied by simply strummed chord progressions and a nice horn intro. This is one of the weakest tracks on the record.

“Sandcastles” is one of the most powerful tracks on this project. It’s simply Beyoncé’s vocals over her own piano playing, and both are beautiful. This is a thematic turning point of the record, it’s at this point that the speaker - whether it be Beyoncé or her mother - comes to terms with the fact that her husband was unfaithful.

The next track, “Forward” prominently features the vocals of English singer-songwriter, James Blake. This track is more or less a continuation of “Sandcastles” and is once again piano-driven.

“Freedom” - this track is fantastic. Here, Kendrick Lamar joins Bey to make a statement about the political disadvantages of African-American women in the US. Lamar gives a powerful verse very reminiscent to “To Pimp a Butterfly” - arguably the best album of 2015 and possibly one of the best hip-hop records of all time. At the end of this track we get a clip of Hattie White, Jay Z’s grandmother saying “I was served lemons, but I made lemonade,” giving the album its title.

The last track is “Formation,” the first single off of the album that was performed at this year’s Super Bowl halftime show. Sonically, this song is the most reminiscent of Beyoncé’s self-titled record. The dark production from Mike Will backs Bey’s delivery of lyrics meant to empower black women. Beyoncé made a great move releasing this single during Black History Month.

“Lemonade” is an incredible album. Once again, Beyoncé came out of nowhere and released one of her best. The accompanying film does a perfect job of giving meaning to the album as a whole.

Both the album and film are available for download from Tidal and the iTunes store.

Tracklist

1. Pray You Catch Me

2. Hold Up

3.Dont Hurt Yourself

4. Sorry

5. 6 Inch (Ft. The Weeknd)

6. Daddy Lessons

7. Love Drought

8. Sandcastles

9. Forward (Ft. James Blake)

10. Freedom (Ft. Kendrick Lamar)

11. All Night

12. Formation