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Beyoncé – Lemonade

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What does it sound like?:

Is Beyoncé 4 real? I’ve found myself asking that question many times over the course of her career.

Beyoncé is a commodity, a brand, a commercial product, capable of shifting millions of units all over the world. She’s been schooled in the dark arts of self promotion and maintaining an image from a very young age, first by her father and then by her husband, one of the most astute operators in the music industry, skilled at making money in the absence of musical talent.

As for talent, Beyoncé is overloaded with it. She has a superlative body, enough stamina to dance athletically over a two and hour concert, and a voice that hits notes with the accuracy of a tuning fork. Her videos are a feast for the eyes. The production and song-writing on her records are second to none. When everything falls into place, her work is astonishing. Crazy In Love, for example, must be one of the most excitng records of this century.

The problem is that she keeps her true feelings to herself. She is too controlled to surrender herself to the song, to allow herself to inhabit the song’s emotional core and project it to an audience. Just compare her cover of At Last! to Etta James’s original. Etta tears her heart out and exhausts herself in the process. Beyoncé sings all the notes, striding, almost casually, over octaves and ends the song without a hair out of place. Technically spot on but emotionally empty. The same is true of her acting. On screen, she comes across as neither herself nor her character.

How come, then, that Lemonade is a rip-snorter of an LP from beginning to end? She starts shocked, then works through denial, anger, rage, sadness, grief, more rage, vulnerability, some more rage and finally acceptance. The lyrics are pointed and precise and are genuinely heartfelt. The music matches the varying moods perfectly. The back story and the one expressed so plainly in the songs is Jay-Z’s infidelity. However, the most revealing track is Daddy’s Lessons, a kind of New Orleans jazzed up Country Hoedown, which allows us a small glimpse of her upbringing, especially the responsibilities loaded onto her young shoulders. There are so many highlights. Hearing her roar with Jack White on Don’t Hurt Yourself is something I’ll go back to repeatedly but my favourite is Love Drought where a weary Beyoncé tries to untangle a knot of contradictory, confusing thoughts in the black hours before dawn.

The forty-five minute audio album is a direct, focussed song cycle for the wronged woman. The clarity of that ‘vision’ becomes blurred on the accompanying hour long video. Of course, watching Beyoncé wield a baseball bat in a sexy yellow dress is always a pleasure but a poet providing links, Jay-Z looking remorseful, a blatant attempt to connect to Black Lives Matter and the notion that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, cause me to be less convinced of the emotional veracity on display. This is where the brand image of a powerful feminist icon, a conduit for all black female American suffering, kicks in. Stick to the forty-five minute audio album and you’ll be blown away.

What does it all *mean*?

Lemonade is disarmingly frank, revealing the human being within those tight corsets.

Goes well with…

A volume button that goes to eleven. The attitude, the edge within these songs simply demands to be heard.

Release Date:

Might suit people who like…

Thrilling commercial pop music.

98

Comments

      • Apart from an initial impression of a lack of actual melodies, which I had been expecting, this is surprising. Unlike reasonable old you, I’m pretty quick to consign new listens to the trash, so I’m writing this as it plays. I’m half way through and it’s a keeper. Massive variety of sounds, but it’s coherent. Always something interesting happening at every level (except perhaps the melodic); instrumentation – beautiful mix of organic, “real” musical instruments and contemporary processed techniques. Dynamics! Not afraid of space and silence. Astonishing amount of work and skill serving a purpose. A suite rather than a collection, in spite of the shortish song times. Flow, development. No easy, lazy solutions taken to anything. Art, if you like.

        Thanks, Tigger – I owe you.

  3. Beyonce and Kanye push the boundaries of music and culture and politics from a mainstream position and are further outre and out-there and avant-garde than many who consider themselves indy or outlier or hip.

    It has always been music of black origin that subverts the norm and redefines parameters. Our caucasian cling to our fabled heroes – Presley and Lennon and Dylan and, heaven forfend, Zappa – is touching but misplaced.

    • I think Kanye is a genuine sonic innovator (although his raps sadly lack in razzmatazz). Kendrick throws the rule book away and still sells well. He makes an impressive cameo appearance on Lemonade.

      I see Beyoncé as a magpie, somewhat like Madonna at her peak. She takes other people’s ideas, wraps them up in some gorgeous packaging and incorporates them into the brand. I have no doubt her ‘endorsement’ helps. I’m sure both Warsan Shire’s and James Blake’s careers will be very different now. Plus, I’m certain her public indignation is beneficial to the Black Lives Matter cause. However, she does all of this from a position of safety. Beyoncé doesn’t really take any risks. Lemonade is her most out there project to date. But, it remains a product designed to sell and make money. I don’t think she believes she is changing the world.

      I’m agreeing with you, Fin. I think.

      • “It has always been music of black origin that subverts the norm and redefines parameters. Our caucasian cling to our fabled heroes – Presley and Lennon and Dylan and, heaven forfend, Zappa – is touching but misplaced.”

        Right on, Dave. Frankly to my mind the caucasiocentric hegemony of the heteronormative decelebrators of cultural diversity are capitalist running dogs whose patriarchal repression of otherly-gendered and non-white narratives is, er … silencing non-white/male ancestral voices that are denied a platform in today’s curriculum and, er … is the Uni bar open yet?

        @johnny-concheroo
        @ianess

        • Black Lies Matter. I struggle to reconcile the inherent contradiction between their both being ‘from a mainstream position’, yet also being ‘out-there and avant-garde’.
          As for Presley, part of his genius lay in his melding of blues, pop, gospel and hillbilly music, not all of which are black genres.

          • @H.P Saucecraft. Now, that is priceless. A double whammy of gloopy sarcasm and a callout to your knitting group for help. Truly, I’m awed.

            @ianess – try to be a little less foam flecked and a tad more cogent.

            Anyway, back at “the point”, I believe that the true innovators and challengers in popular music – stuff that people like – are black. In the past and now.

            • Fin, going back to your comment – do you speak like this to your black friends? “Beyonce and Kanye push the boundaries of music and culture and politics from a mainstream position and are further outre and out-there and avant-garde than many who consider themselves indy or outlier or hip. It has always been music of black origin that subverts the norm and redefines parameters. Our caucasian cling to our fabled heroes – Presley and Lennon and Dylan and, heaven forfend, Zappa – is touching but misplaced.” I bet not, right? I can’t imagine it going down too well. So why do you say it here, using the loaded and slightly fey vocabulary? You’re making the point that black music is innovative (few would disagree, nothing ground-breaking there), but also saying that white music isn’t. And you name some of the most original white musicians in support of your non-argument. If you’d just left it at “I believe that the true innovators and challengers in popular music – stuff that people like – are black. In the past and now”, your comment would have been watertight, if grammatically shaky.

              And you might want to look up “sarcasm” some time (<sarcasm – cf your "truly I'm awed"). Your Spartist tendencies were lampooned, as they deserved to be.

              • I don’t have any black friends.

                I laugh in the face of grammar.

                I’m a capitalist.

                And the literal meaning of sarcasm is flesh tearing.

                I didn’t need to look that up.

                And about black over white?

                I’m so right, it hurts.

                But you?

                You still the king.

                Burt.

                • Hey Fin. I don’t think we’re disagreeing about anything (except Presley, Dylan, and Zappa). Sorry if I pissed you off. It’s all been worth it because this thread has introduced this fantastic album.

                  • Don’t go getting all purr faced kitten on me HP.

                    Growly and glowering big cat is a better look. And frankly, a little arousing.

                    It was, initially, a throwaway remark and yet I chose the artists I chose to be contentious, I confess.

                    But the point that black artists are undervalued for innovation remains true.

                    And undervalued further because they operate in genres – Soul, Hip-Hop, R&B – publicly popular but critically subordinate is probably true.

                    Your (and Bob’s and, inevitably, Ianess’) assertion that these points were made from a “Spartist” agenda rather than my take on musical history, is simply not true.

                    I’m not pissed off. It’s a music blog.

                    Presley. Dylan. Maybe.

                    Zappa? Nah.

                  • Sort of. It’s a recurring Private Eye reference.

                    From Wiki:

                    “Dave Spart was a parody of the stereotypical left-wing agitator (modelled on and sometimes directly applied to Ken Livingstone) who featured in editions of the 1970s and from time to time since (for example, after the 2011 England riots and following the split in Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet over the bombing of Syria and military intervention against ISIL). Occasionally, his sister, Deirdre Spart, has offered her views. Private Eye often refers to real-life hard-left activists as “Spartists”, itself a parody of the left-wing Spartacist League”.

                • I’ll never know. Like chiz downthread, I’ve no intention of allowing my hardline prejudices be overcome by actually listening to it.
                  In general, don’t rate tiggs recommendations too highly either.

                  • That’s OK, nessie.

                    If we were to draw a Venn diagram of our musical taste, almost all of your circle would be contained within mine. I enjoy most of the music you do; The Beatles, Stones, Doors, Ramones, John Lee Hooker, etc. The difference is that my circle is twice as big as yours. I’ve continued to buy and enjoy ‘new’ music over the last thirty years.

                    I post Nights In on albums I’ve gone to the trouble of buying. Sometimes, I try to draw attention to an act that might otherwise be overlooked. Other times, like now, I want to provoke a discussion. I don’t actually expect people to buy anything on my recommendation. I’ve reviewed Beyoncé, Kano, David Bowie and The Rolling Stones in Nights In recently. Lord knows they get enough promotion without help from me.

                    I appreciate your well articulated comments, ian. They are not generally those of the mainstream Afterworder and can be controversial but I value them.

                    • I would imagine that our ‘circles’ would be roughly the same size. The difference being that I’ve gone backwards from the 60s as far back as the 30s on occasion (Nat King Cole).
                      I can’t think of one new artist from the 80s onwards who I’ve been particularly smitten by. Almost the entire area of rap, hip hop, modern r & b, leaves me cold, in general. I’ll leave it for ver kidz. My bad.

                    • You’ll be surprised how far back I go. I love ancient blues, big band and jazz combos plus crooners and stride pianists. Fats Waller is a particular favourite but, you are right, Nat is a god.

                      Before we get into a my-circle-is-bigger-than-yours stand off, let’s just say my circle includes a chunk of material released since 1986.

    • Hey, Fin, isn’t that… sort of… bollocks?

      I say that as someone who (like almost anyone who grew up in the 80s and 90s) loves hip hop, RnB etc. and doesn’t see much in quite a few of HP, Johnny and Ian’s 60s shibboleths.

      Unless we’re saying that all pop music is “OBO”, I can’t see how that statement holds much water.

        • It kind of is, you know? 😉

          “Always” was the word you used. You’re saying that – just by way of example – Jerry Lee Lewis, Hank Williams, Elvis, Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell, Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder and the Big Four of thrash didn’t “subvert norms or redefine parameters”?

              • Compromise seems so weak as a premise, doesn’t it?

                Good in the real world perhaps, but on a music blog? Never!

                As for holding a bien-pensant slash PC position, I’m truly not.

                Black artists have – absolutely – led change. I believe that, absolutely.

      • shibboleth:

        “a custom, principle, or belief distinguishing a particular class or group of people, especially a long-standing one regarded as outmoded or no longer important”

        Hey! No longer important? You sure know how to hurt a guy bob.

  4. Hey Tiggs, how come you praise Taylor Swift and Beyoncé but never rave about Justin Beiber? To me he sounds pretty much the same sort of shite genre.

  6. No slight against Black Music which of course has been incredibly influential, but didn’t Kraftwerk have a massive impact on Hip-Hop and Rap.

    I am ready to be educated/put in my place.

    • Yes they did. And without Moroder, Frankie Knuckles and Marshall Jefferson wouldn’t have sounded like they did – no house music as we know it.

      I’m no Beatles idolator but it’s surely reductive to claim that they would’ve been nothing without black influences.

    • That is a good and valid point.

      Which doesn’t contradict the main premise that black artists innovate from the centre and therefore create something genuinely subversive as it has scale.

  8. I suspect I am unlikely to warm to ‘Lemonade’, let alone listen to it. But may I just say that Ms B’s output prior to 1971 would have been much better. Obv’s.

  9. So on a lovely Sunday morning in the Languedoc I listen for the third time to Lemonade. You know what’s the problem? Not one single tune, not one. Lots of meaningful”I’m wronged”” lyrics, lots of lovingly crafted arrangements. But not one single song I would like to sing in my shower.
    After that played Jill Norman, Lorde and Mary Gauthier – each one of them women has more soul in their little finger than…

                • “Cartoon music from a cartoon performer for a cartoon culture in a cartoon world.
                  All the artistic merit of a puddle of cynical spit.”

                  Hmm. That’s not the album I’m listening too, then. Nothing cartoonish about it. Not even CGI. Human beings made this. I never thought I’d be praising a Beyoncé album, being as I am old, white, and male. And it has beaucoup of artistic merit. That’s exactly what sets it apart.

                  The tunes business. It isn’t Carole King’s ‘Tapestry’ in that respect. Not even (gasp) as hummable as a Mariah Carey album. But I love plenty of music that fails the old grey whistle test. If you want an album of jaunty tunes you can whistle on the way to work, this is not that. But it’s a fascinating, strangely moving, beautiful, exciting piece of work. There’s hardly any rapping on it, which I’m grateful for, and what there is, is effectively done.

                  I don’t see how anyone listening to the extraordinary way this album opens and not be hooked into it, as I was. Right from the start, it’s apparent this isn’t cookie-cutter pop, a cynical exercise in product placement.

                  As to the observation that a lot of people were involved in its making – what’s wrong with that? It’s a record. A refreshingly album-length record. There are no rules about how many people should be allowed to get involved in its making, and it’s no less artisitic or valuable for not being just a singer and a guitar, or a power trio.

                  I’m hardly the most open-minded cove on the blog when it comes to new music, but … for shame, Pencilsqueezer!

                  • Sorry bro but it leaves me cold. I usually buy the music that Tigg recommends so I can try to get down wiv da yoof. Occasionally I can find something to enjoy in them but not this time.
                    I listen to lot of new music. Some I like, some I don’t. Same as it ever was.
                    Give The Comet Is Coming – Channel The Spirits a listen. That is fabulous.

  11. Good lord. Listened last night and this morning for the first time.

    I don’t care if she’s sincere or the real thing or any of that, but this record is bloody fantastic.

    • The record is bloody fantastic because this time she is definitely 4 real. Her commitment and determination to have her say are key to its bloody fantasticness.

      Actually, there isn’t that big a team compared to previous Beyoncé albums. Many of the co-writing credits are for samples (deployed brilliantly, by the way) and she is one of two producers for almost all the tracks. Even the guests are used sparingly. Kendrick gets one rap in the latter half of one song. Both Weeknd and Jack White are effectively duets and James Blake gets less than two minutes. Lemonade is indubitably Beyoncé’s album.

      • The hard copy arrives today so I’ll give it a spin before resigning it to the seldom/never played pile.
        On the plus side my great-nieces will think I’m frighteningly happening and hip.

  12. I don’t like it. I haven’t heard it, and I never will, because if I listened to it and liked it, it would mean that my initial uninformed opinion was stupid and prejudiced – and then I’d wonder if any of my ignorant opinions on other topics might also turn out to be untrue if I actually tested them in some way. So best if I never actually listen to it, so I don’t have to face the consequences of actually liking it.

  13. I don’t dislike Beyoncé any more than I dislike Kylie Minogue, which is to say that they’ve both got a fairly decent back catalogue and clearly know their way around a spectacularly rendered pop experience. i.e. on their day, and on their game, brilliant.

    But if I did dislike her — say for the purposes of a binary internet post — I’d say it was because I’m sick to death of being told how great she is; that she’s the voice of her generation; that she speaks for women; that she’s the most influential cultural figure of our age and that she’s a global brand. Singing about putting a ring on it, being bootylicious (even the OP mentions her bodaciousness) and now whinging about her husband’s infidelity are not bad things or wrong, but the fact that they make her emblematic of everything that is great about the female experience in this century probably is.

    None of this is Beyoncé’s fault of course. Although it might be.

    • I didn’t know anything about her at all, including the stuff that puts you off. I came to the album like a wide-eyed child (perhaps an orphan, or a matchseller); hesitant, yes, but without fear or prejudice, and with a childlike receptivity and trust. And I am mightily, mightily impressed by it. Lucky me!

    • I understand. I think that’s what I’m driving at. Up to now, her brand (including bodaciousness) has put me off. I wouldn’t describe what she’s doing here is whinging but, pretty much for the first time, she means it. She definitely inhabits these songs and it’s that that makes it marvellous. She’s always been able to afford the best writers, producers and musicians.

      The video is where the brand message is more apparent. Just stick to the audio is my advice.

    • This, this, THIS.

      My own thoughts, only expressed much more clearly and elegantly.

      Haven’t got on with Lemonade. Some of the production is lovely, but all the cliches are still there, and I’m not inclined to give all that much credit to an artist for being able to dance for a really long time. Seems a bit patronising.

      I’m also struggling with an icon of female empowerment whose husband brought us Ain’t No Nigga and Big Pimpin. Maybe that’s unfair, but there you go.

      • If Bill Clinton had ever issued a State of the Union featuring lines like:

        “You know I – thug em, fuck em, love em, leave em
        Cause I don’t fuckin need em
        Take em out the hood, keep em lookin good
        But I don’t fuckin feed em”

        … rather than keeping them for his diary, then I think Hill’s own icon cred might have taken a knock.

  14. It’s….. okay. I developed a pounding skull-ache today and only managed two listens to the autorip before it hit (not B’s fault, I’m sure), so further listening is required. So far I agree that it’s mainly melody-free, but it has other kinds of hooks. The first half is much better than the second.

    I’m hoping that listening to CD-quality tomorrow with a clearer head will reveal much more.

  16. Rosemary Lane is as you point out HP the essence of Jansch but why stop at just the one. Avocet is perfect for those who may struggle with Bert’s vocal stylings and a majestic album.

  19. Luckily you can all relax, I’ve heard it and am here to settle the debate – it is good, and in fact better then all her other records, far more real from an emotional standpoint and far more varied in tone and detail.

  20. An excerpt from today’s Guardian:

    Commenting on the recent social unrest in North London, Dr Finlay Fiftynine, Dean of The Du Pain Du Vin Du Boursin School Of Bien Pensant Studies at The University of The Whole Of East Britain (formerly Houndsditch Polytechnic) writes:

    I think you can trace back this outbreak of anger to a a blog on The Afterword. Utterly paradigmatic of the prevailing critical dialectic where a study of a work by an oppressed Black female billionaire is hijacked, culturally appropriated and subordinated by a neo-colonial and repressive orthodoxy which posits that a dead white folk performer has an unspoken, assumptive and precursive dominion over the urgent, vibrant and contemporary call to arms that is Lemonade.

    And one might ask why Avocet? Perhaps because it is a black and white wader. Wading into the debate seemingly balanced in its agenda but camouflaging its true intentions of suppressing and subordinating a strong black, albeit auto-tuned, voice.

    Ironically and yet knowingly using folk, previously the artistic standard bearer of the disadvantaged to subvert the discourse and assert the primacy of Caucasian art and the prevailing cultural hegemony

    As a consequence, a disenfranchised heterogenous community sees the futility of downloading Tidal to seek out this incendiary manifesto, only to be crushed by the nasal and twangy tones of an all too familiar oppressor.

    It’s little wonder blood runs in the streets of Haringey tonight.

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