
Often, Beyoncé is joined by African-American women in white clothes enacting shared work, gatherings of women or eerie communal rituals. The video is filled with images of female solidarity and of family, Southern and African roots, women of all ages and roles and eras. Shire’s words radically reframe the songs, so they are no longer one woman’s struggles but tribulations shared through generations of mothers and daughters. It’s a quick-cutting music video that intersperses the songs, and broadens them, with compelling poetry from the Somali-British writer Warsan Shire, poems that often extend women’s physicality toward the archetypal. on April 23, immediately after the HBO showing of the hourlong “visual album” version. It’s not a divorce announcement the singer, songwriter and director is credited as Beyoncé Knowles Carter.īeyoncé released “Lemonade” online at 10 p.m. But with the video, they testify to situations and emotions countless women endure. On their own, the songs can be taken as one star’s personal, domestic dramas, waiting to be mined by the tabloids. As she did with her 2013 album, “Beyoncé,” she has also paired the music with full-length video that expands and deepens its impact. The album is not beholden to radio formats or presold by a single fans are likely to explore the whole album, streaming every track and hearing how far afield - a brass band, stomping blues-rock, ultraslow avant-R&B - Beyoncé is willing to go. “Lemonade” is the kind of album that a star like Beyoncé (as well as, lately, Rihanna) can release in the streaming era because she’s already guaranteed attention for her every utterance.
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It’s a combative, unglossy track on an album full of them. “Tonight I regret the night I put that ring on,” she talk-sings in “Sorry,” a twitchy, flippant song that’s by no means an apology. Many of the accusations are aimed specifically and recognizably at her husband, Shawn Carter, the rapper Jay Z. “You can taste the dishonesty/It’s all over your breath” are the first words she sings in “Pray You Catch Me,” and that’s just the beginning of an album that probes betrayal, jealousy, revenge and rage before dutifully willing itself toward reconciliation at the end. Now there's more at play than anger and revenge.Marital strife smolders, explodes and uneasily subsides on “Lemonade” (Parkwood Entertainment), the album Beyoncé flash-released on Saturday night. On Freedom, with Kendrick Lamar, she salutes black women across artistic fields. The question of respect and the value of lives broadens on Forward, when Beyonce is joined by mothers of murdered sons, famous and unknown, including the mother of Trayvon Martin. With a limber but unfussy sound in the mould of The Weeknd (who appears on the brooding 6 Inch), blended with an almost-trilling throwback to Destiny's Child, Beyonce and Serena Williams, dancing and twerking beside her, declare they "ain't sorry" in Sorry. Those images draw widely on African, Caribbean and American roots, from variations of southern iconography – antebellum houses and southern-belle dresses – to New Orleans mardi gras figures and magic Like its lyrics, Lemonade is rich in imagery of strength and control, confidence and defiance. It's clear that's not a static state for Beyonce. None is a curse in itself, or cursed all the time, but at one point a Malcolm X sound bite asserts "the most disrespected person in America is the black woman". The longer you listen to it, the more it makes you wonder: what does Beyonce mean when she bemoans the "f-ing curse"? Marriage? Womanhood? Being black? From the south? Or all of the above. Lemonade is a lot more than trying to figure out true or false.
