5 Years of ‘Lemonade’

5 Years of ‘Lemonade’

April 23, 2021, marked the fifth anniversary of Beyoncé’s sixth studio album, Lemonade. After the juggernaut that was her self-titled fifth album, it was hard to imagine that Bey could top that effort. With this album, she did just that.

Much like Beyonce, Lemonade is a visual album, but for the sake of this retrospective, we will only be focusing on the music.

Lemonade is a part-breakup, part-makeup album with a dash of pro-blackness to boot. The album’s lead single, “Formation,” is basically Beyoncé’s version of “I’m Black, Y’all,” and led some to believe that this may be a political album. However, other than “Formation” and “Freedom” (featuring Kendrick Lamar), the album is largely apolitical.

The centerpiece of Lemonade is a troubled marriage — namely, Beyoncé’s marriage to Jay-Z. To understand why this notoriously private woman would make her marriage the subject of an album, I’d like to take you back to May 5, 2014, when Beyoncé’s sister, Solange, stole on Jay-Z in an elevator as all three left the Met Gala. Till today, no one knows why that happened, but most of the rumors suggest that it had to do with Jay-Z’s involvement with another woman. There had been rumors about his infidelity for years, and with this incident, many felt like they finally had confirmation. The picture perfect Knowles-Carter image finally had an indelible blemish.

Almost seven years later, Beyoncé is yet to address that incident explicitly, but with Lemonade, we get a bit of a window into her marriage and perhaps some clues as to why her sister went upside her husband’s head. On the opening track, “Pray You Catch Me,” a suspicious Bey sings about her man’s dishonesty. And on the following track, “Hold Up,” she lets him know that no one loves him like she does.

On the first two tracks, we already get a sense of the sonic range of Lemonade. “Pray You Catch Me” is a piano-driven ballad while “Hold Up” offers a reggae-ish tune that samples Andy Williams and interpolates a Soulja Boy hook.

If there was any doubt that Beyoncé was a woman scorned, she clears that up on tracks 3 and 4.

“Don’t Hurt Yourself” (featuring Jack White) — a whole rock song with a Led Zeppelin sample — is opened with Bey asking who the fuck he thinks she is, and closes with her saying that he gets one last time to fuck up. The track is the furthest Bey has ever strayed from her artistic turf, and would go on to earn her a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Performance.

On “Sorry,” Bey instructs people dealing with unfaithful men to throw middle fingers up and tell ’em “boy, bye!” The track is a return to territory, but still feels fresh and unlike anything we’ve ever heard from Bey. The song is one of the album’s best, and somehow, there is an even better version of it on the digital version of Lemonade. Labeled as the original demo, this version is slower and is centered around the lyrics that make up the outro of the finished version.

The album takes an intermission from the breakup theme with the Weeknd-assisted “6 Inch” and her ode to Mathew Knowles, “Daddy Lessons,” which finds Bey going full country. Even though the latter is primarily about her dad, Bey makes reference to her troubled marriage when Bey sings that her father said “he’s playing you.”

On “Love Drought” — another one of the album’s best — and “Sandcastles — one of the album’s worst — Bey is back to singing about her unfaithful husband. This time, however, she’s a lot less aggressive and seems to be opening the door for a possible reconciliation. On the 79-second-long “Forward” (featuring James Blake), the album takes a clear turn towards making up, which is actualized on “All Night” — arguably the album’s best song.

Sonically speaking, Lemonade runs the full gamut of popular music without feeling too forced or unfocused. The album would go on to become one of 2016’s best sellers and was widely regarded as an instant classic. As we await its follow-up — because The Gift wasn’t really a Beyoncé album — Lemonade serves as a reminder that it is never impossible for the Queen to outdo herself.

Favorite track: “All Night”

1 Comment
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