Lemonade (album)
Lemonade is the sixth studio album by American singer-songwriter Beyoncé. It was released on April 23, 2016, by Parkwood Entertainment and Columbia Records, accompanied by a 65-minute film of the same title. It follows her self-titled fifth studio album (2013), and is a concept album with a song cycle that relates Beyoncé's emotional journey after her husband's infidelity in a generational and racial context. Primarily an R&B and art pop album, Lemonade encompasses a variety of genres, including reggae, blues, rock, hip hop, soul, funk, Americana, country, gospel, electronic, and trap. It features guest vocals from James Blake, Kendrick Lamar, the Weeknd, and Jack White, and contains samples and interpolations of a number of hip hop and rock songs.[3]
For other albums with similar names, see Lemonade (disambiguation) § Albums.Lemonade
April 23, 2016
2014–2016
- Apex and Mad Decent (Burbank)
- The Beehive, Conway, Henson, and Record Plant (Los Angeles)
- Jungle City (New York City)
- Larrabee, Mirrorball, and Pacifique (North Hollywood)
- Skip Saylor (Northridge)
45:45
Lemonade was released to widespread critical acclaim and is considered to be one of the greatest albums of all time. The album was music critics' top album of 2016,[4] and was named the greatest album of the 2010s by publications such as the Associated Press.[5] In 2020, the album was placed at number 32 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. The album was nominated for nine Grammy Awards at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards (2017), including Album of the Year, Record of the Year and Song of the Year. It won Best Urban Contemporary Album and Best Music Video. The album's visuals received 11 nominations at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards, of which it won eight including Breakthrough Long Form Video and Video of the Year. The film also received four nominations at the 68th Primetime Emmy Awards. The album won a Peabody Award in Entertainment.
Lemonade topped the charts in various countries worldwide, including the US Billboard 200, where it earned 653,000 with additional album-equivalent units, including 485,000 copies in its first week of sales. It has since been certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).[6] By the end of 2016, Lemonade had sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States, making it the third-best-selling album of the year in the US,[7] and it was the best-selling album of 2016, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), with 2.5 million copies sold worldwide.[8] The album was supported by five singles: "Formation", which was a top-ten hit on the US Billboard Hot 100, "Sorry", "Hold Up", "Freedom", and "All Night". In April 2016, Beyoncé embarked on The Formation World Tour to promote the album, an all-stadium tour visiting North America and Europe.
Background[edit]
On February 6, 2016, Beyoncé released "Formation" for free on the music streaming service Tidal and an accompanying unlisted music video on her official YouTube account.[9] The unlisted format of the video meant it was inaccessible by search, and viewers could only watch it through others who had shared the video link, or through articles and webpages that embedded the video.[10] Beyoncé later released an identical public version of the unlisted video on YouTube on December 9, 2016. Both videos still exist.[11] The day after the song and video's release, Beyoncé performed "Formation" during her performance at the Super Bowl 50 halftime show.[12] Immediately after the performance, a commercial aired announcing The Formation World Tour, which kicked off in Miami, Florida on April 27, 2016, with the first pre-sales going on sale just two days after the announcement on February 9, 2016.[13] Beyoncé was both praised[14] and criticized[15] over her "Formation" and the Black Panther-influenced costume for her Super Bowl halftime performance.[16] As a result of this, the hashtags "#BoycottBeyonce" and "#IStandWithBeyonce" began trending on social media platforms such as Twitter and Beyoncé faced boycotts from police unions.[17] A group of protesters planned to stage an "anti-Beyoncé" rally outside of the NFL's headquarters in New York City, New York on the day general sale of tickets went for sale,[18] but no protesters showed up; instead, dozens of Beyoncé supporters held a rally for her.[19]
When asked what she wanted to accomplish with the next phase of her career in an interview with Elle, published on April 4, 2016, Beyoncé said: "I hope I can create art that helps people heal. Art that makes people feel proud of their struggle. Everyone experiences pain, but sometimes you need to be uncomfortable to transform."[20]
Recording and production[edit]
Lemonade was recorded between June 2014 and July 2015 across 11 studios in the United States.[21] Beyoncé had the idea to write each song corresponding to the eleven chapters that can be seen in the Lemonade film, and posted moodboards around the studio representing each chapter to provide direction to her collaborators.[22][23] Beyoncé and her collaborators also played music in the studio to inspire each other.[24] The album was written in stages, with Beyoncé retreating to her home to work on the recordings with recording and mixing engineer Stuart White, as well as to take care of her daughter. The process began at the Record Plant in Los Angeles, which the team used for a month. They then took a break, and later went to Paris for 45 days. The team stayed in a hotel and set up two studios in two different hotel rooms, one for Beyoncé and one for Jay-Z.[25] Jay-Z recounted how he and Beyoncé recorded music both separately and together, describing it as "using our art almost like a therapy session" after his infidelity. The music that Beyoncé recorded separately was what became Lemonade and was released first.[26]
Lemonade was produced through Beyoncé's synthesis of the work of many collaborators, including both popular and lesser known artists.[27] MNEK relayed how "Hold Up" was written, saying "The way Beyoncé works, the song is a jigsaw piece and then she will piece various elements. It could be a bit that she's written, a bit that someone else has written and she'll make that the bridge; a bit I've written she'll make the middle eight".[23] MNEK also explains that Beyoncé was "overlooking everything, saying "I like this, I like that, this is how this should sound, this is how that should sound.""[28] "Don't Hurt Yourself" collaborator Jack White describes how "she took just sort of a sketch of a lyrical outline and turned into the most bodacious, vicious, incredible song... I'm so amazed at what she did with it."[29] "Hold Up" and "Sorry" co-writer and co-producer MeLo-X explains that "she has a way of creating that I've never seen before as an artist. She produces, alters and arranges tracks in ways I wouldn't think of."[27] When talking about how he scored the Lemonade film as well, MeLo-X explains "She's hands on with everything. She gives direction on everything and is very involved with the whole process. It's inspiring to see an artist on that level be able to just still have an eye for certain things and an ear... We would just sit down and go over with different things and different scenes and sounds and kind of put it together piece by piece."[24]
Music and lyrics[edit]
The album features musicians Jack White, Kendrick Lamar, and bassist Marcus Miller, and sampling from folk music collectors[62] John Lomax, Sr. and his son Alan Lomax on "Freedom". Beyoncé and her team reference the musical memories of all those periods,[62] including a brass band, stomping blues rock, ultraslow avant-R&B, preaching, a prison song (both collected by John and Alan Lomax), and the sound of the 1960s fuzz-tone guitar psychedelia (sampling the Puerto Rican band Kaleidoscope).[63]
The Washington Post called the album a "surprisingly furious song cycle about infidelity and revenge".[64] The Chicago Tribune described the album as not just a mere grab for popular music dominance, rather it is a retrospective that allows the listener to explore Beyoncé's personal circumstances, with musical tones from the southern United States, a harkening back towards her formative years spent in Texas.[65] AllMusic wrote that Beyoncé "delights in her Blackness, femininity, and Southern origin with supreme wordplay."[66]
According to The A.V. Club, the tracks "encompass and interpolate the entire continuum of R&B, rock, soul, hip hop, pop, and blues", accomplished by a deft precision "blurring eras and references with determined impunity."[67] The Guardian and Entertainment Weekly both noted that the album touches on country,[68][69] and Entertainment Weekly noticed the use of avant-garde musical elements. Consequence of Sound wrote that the album's genres span "from gospel to rock to R&B to trap";[70] On the album, Isaac Hayes and Andy Williams are among the sampled artists.[68] PopMatters noticed how the album was nuanced in its theme of anger and betrayal with vast swathes of the album bathed in political context; however, it is still a pop album at its essence with darker and praiseworthy tones.[71] In 2020, Marc Hogan from Pitchfork considered Lemonade among the great art pop albums of the last 20 years to "have filled the void of full-length statements with both artistic seriousness and mass appeal that was formerly largely occupied by [rock] guitar bands".[2]
Title and artwork[edit]
There are two suggested inspirations for the album's title. The song "Freedom" includes at its end an audio recording of Hattie White, grandmother of Beyoncé's husband Jay-Z's, telling a crowd at her ninetieth birthday party in December 2015: "I had my ups and downs, but I always find the inner strength to pull myself up. I was served lemons, but I made lemonade", referencing the proverb "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade" that encourages turning sourness and difficulty to something positive. Beyoncé also draws a connection to her own grandmother, Agnez Deréon, using her lemonade recipe that was passed down through the generations as a metaphor for the mechanisms for healing passed through generations.[37]
The cover artwork for Lemonade is from the music video shot for "Don't Hurt Yourself" and features Beyoncé wearing cornrows and a fur coat, leaning against a Chevrolet Suburban and covering her face with her arm.[72] In 2023, Joe Lynch of Billboard ranked it the 99th best album cover of all time.[73]
Commercial performance[edit]
In the United States, Lemonade debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, with 653,000 album-equivalent units, out of which 485,000 were pure album sales. This made the highest opening-week sales for a female act of the year. Subsequently, she broke the record she previously tied with DMX, by becoming the first artist in the chart's history to have their first six studio albums debut at number one.[255] In the same week, Beyoncé became the first female artist to chart twelve or more songs on the US Billboard Hot 100 at the same time, with every song on the album debuting on the chart.[256]
The album slipped from number one to number two in its second week, selling 321,000 album-equivalent units, out of which 196,000 were pure album sales. It remained at number two in its third week selling 201,000 album-equivalent units, out of which 153,000 were pure album sales. Lemonade was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in June 2016. According to Nielsen's 2016 year-end report, it had sold 1,554,000 copies and 2,187,000 album-equivalent units in the United States.[257] Following its April 23, 2019 release on all streaming services, Lemonade returned to the top ten on the Billboard 200 at number nine,[258] while its only added song, the original demo of "Sorry", debuted at number four on the US R&B Songs.[259] On May 20, 2019, the album was certified double platinum for shipments of two million copies, and triple platinum on June 13, 2019, for shipments of three million copies. In Canada, the album debuted at number one with sales of 33,000 copies.[260]
The album debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart selling 73,000 copies in its first week of release, with 10,000 equivalent sales (14% of the total sales) accounting for streaming, marking the largest ever for a number-one album since the chart began including streaming.[261] The album marked the singer's third number-one album on the chart and was certified platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) on September 9, 2016, for shipments of 300,000 copies.[261] All of the album's tracks also debuted within the top hundred of the UK Singles Chart.[262] As in the US, 2020 is the first year since release that the album has not appeared on the UK Chart.
In Australia, Lemonade sold 20,490 digital copies in its first week, debuting atop the Australian Albums Chart and becoming Beyoncé's second consecutive number-one album in the country.[263] It received a double platinum certification from the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) in 2023, for sales of 140,000 equivalent units.[264]
Lemonade also peaked atop the charts in numerous European and Oceanic countries including Ireland and Belgium, where it spent five and seven weeks at the summit, respectively, Croatia, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Scotland and Sweden.[265] In Brazil, it debuted at number one and received a platinum certification from Pro-Música Brasil.[266]
Impact and legacy[edit]
Music industry[edit]
Lemonade has been credited with reviving the concept of an album in an era dominated by singles and streaming, and popularizing releasing albums with accompanying films. Jamieson Cox for The Verge called Lemonade "the endpoint of a slow shift toward cohesive, self-centered pop albums", writing that "it's setting a new standard for pop storytelling at the highest possible scale".[267] Megan Carpentier of The Guardian wrote that Lemonade has "almost revived the album format" as "an immersive, densely textured large-scale work" that can only be listened to in its entirety.[268] Myf Warhurst on Double J's "Lunch With Myf" explained that Beyoncé "changed [the album] to a narrative with an arc and a story and you have to listen to the entire thing to get the concept".[269] The New York Times' Katherine Schulten agreed, asking "How do you talk about the ongoing evolution of the music video and the autobiographical album without holding up Lemonade as an exemplar of both forms?"[270] Joe Coscarelli of The New York Times describes how "some brand-name acts are following Beyoncé's blueprint with high-concept mini-movies that can add artistic heft to projects," with Frank Ocean's Endless and Drake's Please Forgive Me cited as examples of artists' projects inspired by Lemonade.[271] Other projects said to have followed the precedent that Lemonade set include Lonely Island's The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience, Thom Yorke's Anima, Sturgill Simpson's Sound & Fury, and Kid Cudi's Entergalactic, which were all albums released with complementary film projects.[272]
Beyoncé's use of various genres on Lemonade has been credited with setting the precedent for music to transcend genre, with NPR writing that the album "leads us to this moment where post-genre becomes a thing".[273][274] The use of various genres has also been credited with kickstarting the reclamation of certain genres by black people. "Daddy Lessons" has been credited as starting a trend of "pop stars toying with American West and Southern aesthetics,"[275] as well as setting the precedent for "The Yeehaw Agenda", the trend of reclaiming black cowboy culture through music and fashion.[276][277] "Don't Hurt Yourself" has been credited with the reclaiming of rock by black women, with Brittany Spanos for Rolling Stone writing that "the re-imagination of what rock can be and who can sing it by Beyoncé and her superstar peers is giving the genre a second life – and may be what can save it."[278]