5 things we learned from Beyoncé's 'Lemonade' special
It's Lemonade season.
By the time Beyoncé dropped Lemonade, her feverishly-anticipated new album, on the world Saturday night via TIDAL, viewers were three-quarters of the way through her heart-stopping, hour-long HBO special of the same name.
Before its premiere Saturday night, fans didn’t know what to expect from Lemonade Few details about it were released. Would it be a music video? A documentary? A little bit of both?
Turns out, it was a visual album featuring video treatments for the 11 new songs Bey introduced the world to en masse — as exquisite an introduction to the Lemonade record as we could have imagined.
Here were our the main takeaways from Lemonade, the movie:
The ups and downs of marriage
Well, somebody messed up. A vengeful string of songs opened the documentary as Bey traces the downfall of a relationship, leaving viewers to wonder who was the subject of Bey's ire — Jay Z? Her father? All men?
As the special progressed through visual movements with titles such as, "denial," "anger," "accountability" and "loss," and tales of infidelity, betrayal and women rising above adversity, it became clear this wasn't a 4-esque album about the Carter-Knowles' marital bliss. It’s not a breakup album, but it's Beyonce's darkest and most grown-up work yet.
Visual masterpiece
Where do we start with Lemonade's iconic visuals? Beyonce drowns in an ornate ballroom, as bubbles escape from her nose. She strides through city streets in a lemon-yellow couture gown, swinging a baseball bat into car windows. A circle of fire surrounds her, as she stands in a flowing red gown. The mothers of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown sit with portraits of their sons.
The special was also, at its core, a celebration of black women's beauty and strength, featuring scenes of Bey surrounded by cadres of stunning women — on a porch with Zendaya and Amandla Stenberg, leading a line of white-clad sirens through the ocean, on a streetcar throne accompanied by dancers with facepaint.
One of the most striking movements was the poignant last video, a beautiful collage of moments with the people Beyoncé loves most — from her mother Tina's wedding edited with her own to clips of Jay and Blue playing with a football on the Superdome's turf.
And speaking of the Superdome...
Love letter to New Orleans
Remember all the ghostly live oaks and ornate mansions with wraparound porches we saw in Bey's Formation video? That was just a taste of Lemonade, full of sumptuous landscapes that channeled Bey's NOLA love from start to finish.
Special guests
Bey wouldn't throw a earth-stopping coming-out party for her new album and not invite some friends along with her. We spotted Serena Williams, Zendaya, Stenberg and Quvenzhané Wallis, in addition to Jay Z's emotional cameo.
And then there are the special guests on the album: The Weeknd, Kendrick Lamar, James Blake all show up, in addition to songs that reference Maps by Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Soulja Boy's Turn My Swag On.
That country song!
Bey goes full classic country for Daddy Lessons. The tale of a woman armed and dangerous, ready to fire on her romantic adversary when “my daddy says shoot," is one of the more adventurous left turns we've heard from her sound-wise. And with some added New Orleans brass-band horns, it works.
Stream Lemonade via TIDAL here.
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