NOW Magazine
On Lemonade, the pop superstar explores how history and family lineage can weigh on personal relationships in the present
The institution of marriage has long been essential to Beyoncé’s creativity. The pop superstar’s songs are rarely written or sung from the point of view of someone unattached (Single Ladies included), and if her matrimonial standing ever seemed iffy she might turn up in the video wearing a wedding dress to reassure us that, yes, she has her man on lock.
Lemonade is her most out-there album yet – both in the nakedness with which the notoriously private star is seemingly describing marital strife with husband Jay-Z, and in the huge scope of musical influences it encompasses, from wild and raw gospel and blues rock to precisely calibrated R&B.
Collaborators include The Weeknd, Jack White, James Blake, Kendrick Lamar, Diplo, Boots, Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koening, Father John Misty. There are also samples and references lifted from Animal Collective, Led Zeppelin, Soulja Boy, Isaac Hayes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Burt Bacharach and Outkast.
Lemonade also acknowledges that, in relationships, inner strength only goes so far. “Why are you afraid of love?” Beyoncé asks on the film's dialogue track, seemingly in conversation not just with Jay-Z, but with male pop singers and rappers that play up cavalier attitudes toward intimacy.
What sets Lemonade apart are the ways it continually highlights the fine line between empathy and anger. It’s a line Beyoncé walks with supreme confidence: “When love me/ you love yourself,” Jack White sings on the incendiary Don’t Hurt Yourself. “Love God herself.”
RATING: 4/5 stars, 80/100 on Metacritic
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