I was served lemons but I made Lemonade.

April 24, 2016 8:14 PM

Beyoncé Knowles Carter treats us to a visual album "bolder and deeper and more uncomfortable than anything [we] could have predicted," blending tracks from her newest record with narration from the poetry of Warsan Shire (more here), and visuals directed by Jonas Akerlund, Kahlil Joseph, Melina Matsoukas, Dikayl Rimmasch, Mark Romanek, Todd Tourso, and Beyoncé herself.

Awesomely Luvvie:

This project is FUBU. For us, by us. It doesn’t give a damb about white gaze. It is for Black people. Black women, to be specific. Everyone else can watch but it ain’t for you. She even quotes Malcolm X saying “The most disrespected woman in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman.” TELL THE TRUTH AND SHAME THE DEVIL. . . . This isn’t just a collection of “Fuck that dude” songs. This is Beyoncé’s exploration of what happens when we place our hearts into the hands of men and boys who can’t live up to expectations.

The Guardian's Syreeta McFadden:

Lemonade is gorgeous; an hour-long manifestation of all the conversations you’ve eavesdropped on social media between black women. As if inspired by the #blackgirlmagic hashtag, an expression of pride in the achievements of black women, Lemonade showcases our complex and intimate selves. Lemonade features cameos from some of those women in the pantheon of black girl magic: high achievers like Amandla Stenberg, Quevzanhne Wallis, Serena Williams, Zendaya and Winnie Harlow, the model who has greatly increased the visibility of people with vitiligo. . . . Forward, Lemonade’s most powerful moment, [] depicts the the mothers of the Black Lives Matter movement dressed regally and seated in various rooms of an old country mansion, holding portraits of their dead sons: there is Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner; Leslie McSpadden, mother of Michael Brown; Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin.

New York Magazine roundtable:

Ashley Weatherford: "At the end of 'Freedom,' Jay-Z’s grandmother, Hattie White, makes an appearance through archival footage. 'I had my ups and downs, but I always find the inner strength to pull myself up,” she says. “I was served lemons, but I made lemonade.' The eleven rubrics that separate each song in Lemonade — intuition denial, anger, apathy, emptiness, accountability, reformation, forgiveness, resurrection, hope, and redemption — can account for so many more corners of life than just relationships. They can speak to jobs, family, and self-scrutiny. They touch on all of our ups and downs in life — our lemons — that we will ourselves to squeeze into lemonade."

"To all the ladies out there: how come we are always the ones who have to make the lemonade? I am here to tell you that you do not have to make lemonade. Read some bell hooks, drink your tea, and give that boy his lemons back." Sarah Jane Forman

Deep dive into the album's credits.
The best Twitter reactions

ashes to ashes
dust to side girls

Previously on Metafilter: Beyoncé's Formation; Beyoncé's "terrible father"

posted by sallybrown (308 comments total)

I watched it a few hours ago, and immediately thought of Prince: if there's anyone living who can be considered a successor to Prince in terms of masterfully crossing musical genres and making bold artistic gestures, it's Beyonce.
posted by Cash4Lead at 8:28 PM on April 24, 2016 [29 favorites]

I still haven't seen the whole thing - I keep getting to Anger and getting so fired up that I scroll through my contacts and text all my girls the link. Watch this.
posted by annathea at 8:28 PM on April 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

YES THANK YOU i have been too lazy to make this post mostly because i have watched it 6 times now

the oshun symbolism in hold up is A M A Z I N G
posted by poffin boffin at 8:33 PM on April 24, 2016 [11 favorites]

This was the first thing that's happened since Thursday where my immediate mental response was not "Who cares? Prince is DEAD."
posted by sallybrown at 8:35 PM on April 24, 2016 [24 favorites]

I'd be delighted to watch, but I am one of the many who don't pay for Tidal or HBO, so guess her message ain't available to us...
posted by twsf at 8:36 PM on April 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Found a rerun on HBO that my DVR is grabbing now. I will probably watch it later tonight. Read some good things about it. Won't be paying for TIDAL though.
posted by hippybear at 8:37 PM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

hbo is free all weekend

the full video is on vimeo

every single song is online

literally just google for it oh my god
posted by poffin boffin at 8:38 PM on April 24, 2016 [54 favorites]

My favorite reaction so far -- a reenactment of Jay-Z hearing Bey drop Don't Hurt Yourself in the studio.
posted by zeee at 8:38 PM on April 24, 2016 [74 favorites]

oh look how easy that was
posted by poffin boffin at 8:41 PM on April 24, 2016 [27 favorites]

a reenactment of Jay-Z hearing Bey drop Don't Hurt Yourself in the studio

I would favorite you more for showing me that - but I haven't any more to give. Thank you metafilter-person for bringing that to my life.
posted by Gyre,Gimble,Wabe, Esq. at 8:42 PM on April 24, 2016 [8 favorites]

@Gyre, Gimble, Wabe, Esq. : The credit goes to the Beyhive on Tumblr, for real. They've been roasting Jay all night; it's great. Another good one:

Jay-Z and Beyonce in their car, quietly driving. They’re listening to a classic Hip Hop station when Big Pimpin’ comes on. Jay locks his eyes on the road, steering stiffly. He tries not to breathe. He can feel Beyonce’s eyes on him, glinting in the passing of headlights. He reaches for the radio, slowly, carefully… “Don’t,” she says, barely a whisper, but somehow he hears it over the bass. “Let’s listen.” His blood runs cold.
posted by zeee at 8:45 PM on April 24, 2016 [35 favorites]

Rumor has it that the album will be on iTunes as early as this evening.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 8:47 PM on April 24, 2016

I really really really love how lately her work has been so explicitly a love letter to her fellow Black women.
posted by gingerest at 8:53 PM on April 24, 2016 [24 favorites]

Watched it earlier today on a fb link and was blown away (and then went to a Hamilton singalong a local queer bar where the album was playing before the singalong started). Now I will go read the links.

Blown away. Did I say that? Damn, girl.
posted by rtha at 8:58 PM on April 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

The New Yorker: Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” Is a Revelation of Spirit
posted by hippybear at 9:00 PM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

i am so in love with the video and the album. i just want to soak them up for weeks. i love how beyonce has been shifting her gaze, her persona, her art to really center black southern womanhood. it's a perspective we don't see near enough of in popular media. i especially loved this storify by femme_esq (her whole stream is filled with great reactions to lemonade right now).

and from reagan gomez - You can like something that centers blackness/black women. You can even connect with it...and still center blackness. It's ok.
posted by nadawi at 9:02 PM on April 24, 2016 [22 favorites]

There's a quick piece on NOLA Defender if you're curious about all the New Orleans that is (and isn't) in the video.
posted by komara at 9:05 PM on April 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

When we were coming home a little bit ago (from the singalong), the woman on the bus in front of us was watching this on her phone.
posted by rtha at 9:06 PM on April 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

i've been completely ignoring prince's death but the thing that has really gotten me down is that he didn't get to see this...he showed her some chords on the piano some years ago and pressed that learning to play would expand her art and musicality. how pleased he would have been to see her sitting at the keyboard in this video (as well as all the rest of it).
posted by nadawi at 9:10 PM on April 24, 2016 [16 favorites]

> i love how beyonce has been shifting her gaze, her persona, her art to really center black southern womanhood.

This! THIS! Her love of women; of black women; of black Southern women! Gonna bust out crying.

(also, her bat is called HOT SAUCE.)
posted by rtha at 9:12 PM on April 24, 2016 [13 favorites]

I especially love "Sandcastles," the video and just the song itself. The whole vibe reminds me a bit of Tapestry.

(Even though it makes me think of Robin Sparkles.)
posted by sallybrown at 9:25 PM on April 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

How Nigerian Visual Artist Laolu Senbanjo Brought His Sacred Art Of The Ori To Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’
posted by gingerbeer at 9:30 PM on April 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

Bustle: Transcript Of Beyonce's 'Lemonade' Because The Words Are Just As Important As The Music
posted by gingerbeer at 9:32 PM on April 24, 2016 [8 favorites]

Waiting for the comparisons to Boys for Pele...
posted by unknowncommand at 9:32 PM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also, I can't even handle how good a country song she dropped.
posted by rtha at 9:37 PM on April 24, 2016 [7 favorites]

Man, Jay-Z must be squirming a lot these past 24 hours or so.
posted by hippybear at 9:39 PM on April 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:41 PM on April 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

"You better call Becky with the cool hair" *all my hair stands on end*
posted by hippybear at 9:48 PM on April 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

Are all the interstitials from the poetry of Warsan Shire? Beyonce's delivery is really impressive. "Her teeth as confetti" was more vicious and menacing than a threat from Joe Pesci.
posted by gingerest at 9:49 PM on April 24, 2016 [9 favorites]

I am not the person this visual album was made for but I seriously enjoyed it.

It made me want to hug my wife and daughter.
posted by M Edward at 9:50 PM on April 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

> "Her teeth as confetti" was more vicious and menacing than a threat from Joe Pesci.

Yeah, all my neck hairs stood up. And ran away.
posted by rtha at 9:56 PM on April 24, 2016 [7 favorites]

The line on Twitter that really got me:
"Jay-Z finally got 100 problems #Lemonade"
posted by gingerbeer at 9:56 PM on April 24, 2016 [41 favorites]

the jokes about how jay-z is doing, how he's reacting, what dame dash's ex is playing at, what solange has to say etc are funny but i just keep twirling the reconciliation theme from the end of the album/video around - the multi-generational story that beyonce is telling us, choosing to center the concept around a quote from jay-z's grandmother, not her grandmother. it's such an amazing, beautiful, riveting, emotional, complex package. it seems so straight forward at first, but she's taking us on a journey - pushing through the anger and the acting out, seeing this is part of something bigger than just their experiences of marriage and fidelity, and trying to fit it in to a larger cultural and historical context - and the part with the women holding the pictures of men and boys lost...my god.
posted by nadawi at 10:01 PM on April 24, 2016 [51 favorites]

I am extremely annoyed by the number of critics who are framing this as an elevated breakup album. Unsurprisingly, most of said critics are White.
posted by Anonymous at 10:10 PM on April 24, 2016

Yeah, this is a personal story that is also universal. If it were told by a white guy, I have zero doubt that everyone would see its universality first, its This Is A Story About People, as the primary (sole?) narrative. A black woman tells the story and so it can only be about the black woman telling it? No. It can be her story, yes - and the story about everyone.

(We are trying to decide which out of these tracks will be the Most Likely to Appear on mixtapes in the coming year, especially, of course. breakup mixtapes.)
posted by rtha at 10:10 PM on April 24, 2016 [11 favorites]

Beyonce's Christian (Methodist, I think?). I think this album is about all sorts of faith and redemption, not just marital fidelity.
posted by gingerest at 10:20 PM on April 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

Yeah, this is a personal story that is also universal. If it were told by a white guy, I have zero doubt that everyone would see its universality first, its This Is A Story About People, as the primary (sole?) narrative.

That is because people mistake White-centered media for universality, especially if made by a White dude. No, your hypothetical White dude is creating media centered on the White experience. Everyone else just has to adapt to it.

Lemonade is unapologetically centered on the Black experience, made by a Black woman for Black women. White people adapt ourselves to it, but that does not mean it is universal or for us.
posted by Anonymous at 10:22 PM on April 24, 2016

to quote myself to expand for a moment : pushing through the anger and the acting out

but also, importantly i think, not ignoring those parts. feminine anger - especially black feminine anger is coded so often as irrational, as invalid, and here we see beyonce standing firm footed in her anger, she's not smoothing him or them over, she is - as she tells us - a soldier.

and i do think this story is universal, but absolutely centered on black women and how they relate to black men and how their specific experiences of trauma are passed down and acted out.

on preview - yeah - the religious themes also can't be ignored - there's a lot of christianity in here, but also quite a bit of other stuff, older stuff. i'm not educated enough to speak on those parts, but i am eager for the african american/theology academic papers that will come out of this.
posted by nadawi at 10:22 PM on April 24, 2016 [13 favorites]

Stunning, wow.
posted by threeants at 10:24 PM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

"You better call Becky with the cool hair" *all my hair stands on end*

It's "Becky with the good hair"
posted by discopolo at 10:25 PM on April 24, 2016 [13 favorites]

It's "Becky with the good hair"

Excuse me while I kiss this guy.
posted by hippybear at 10:26 PM on April 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

Excuse me while I kiss this guy.

I think understanding the significance of "good hair" in that line is pretty important. It's not a silly "she's got a chicken to ride" haha thing.
posted by discopolo at 10:29 PM on April 24, 2016 [32 favorites]

How I am feeling when reading some of these reviews:

Naturally, this film and the album dominated pop culture last night, and will continue to for the coming weeks. And people who write about these types of things for publications will be compelled to do so. Some of these people will be people who happen to be White. And, if you are a person who happens to be White, and you’re compelled to write about Lemonade today or some time this week, here’s a few tips on how you should go about doing it.

1. Don’t

posted by Anonymous at 10:29 PM on April 24, 2016

That's fair.
posted by hippybear at 10:30 PM on April 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

> Lemonade is unapologetically centered on the Black experience, made by a Black woman for Black women. White people adapt ourselves to it, but that does not mean it is universal or for us.

I think you are right, and I think it is universal (for certain values of universal, which, then, hmm...), because I am a woman who is not a black American woman but is a woman of color and...Yeah. I will be chewing this album and film and messages over for a good long time to come. Thank you for the think-check.
posted by rtha at 10:32 PM on April 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

Ah, sorry for making the assumption, rtha. I get worked up because it bugs me that when a non-White person's art is considered "good enough" it is suddenly "universal", while a White artist's work is automatically considered universal. There are all kinds of implications there about the othering of music created by non-White artists. The art we create is informed by our background, including our race, and that applies to White musicians as well as Beyonce. I think the "universality" tag that our culture places on "good enough" non-White art while automatically granting it to White art is another way we enforce the normalization of Whiteness while othering everything else.

I think understanding the significance of "good hair" in that line is pretty important. It's not a silly "she's got a chicken to ride" haha thing.

Yeah, "Becky with the good hair" is an extremely key line that's referring to layers of commentary about Black womanhood and beauty and how hair has been used in that.
posted by Anonymous at 10:39 PM on April 24, 2016

Totally hear you, schroedinger. /high-five
posted by rtha at 10:42 PM on April 24, 2016

Billboard: These Directors & Cinematographers Helped Make Beyonce's 'Lemonade' a Visual Masterpiece
posted by hippybear at 10:44 PM on April 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I've watched it three times already. I fucking loved it. And yeah, this is very definitely By and For Black Women, and that was a joy to see. There's a ton of stuff in it that's not universal, and that's fine! But as a woman of color, there was still some stuff that resonated with my experience of womanhood.

Just, oh my god. The use of Warsan Shire's poetry, and the way Beyonce read it. Stunning. Especially in the section Anger. Beyonce sounded holy shit terrifying: "If it's what you truly want, I can wear her skin over mine. Her hair over mine. Her hands as gloves. Her teeth as confetti. Her scalp, a cap. Her sternum, my bedazzled cane. We can pose for a photograph. All three of us, immortalized. You, and your perfect girl." I felt like a goddamn deer in the sights of a predator, and I'm not even who she's mad at.
posted by yasaman at 10:47 PM on April 24, 2016 [28 favorites]

Well, I hope it's okay if I say, as a gay white 48 year old male, that I enjoyed watching the video album, and it had more than a few moments that were hair-standing-on-end moments and there were a lot of very powerful emotions on display and I felt the entire project was a bold artistic statement.
posted by hippybear at 11:02 PM on April 24, 2016 [7 favorites]

It's not just white-universal vs. black-specific; there's a whole very irritating history of critics acting as if black texts can only be read and understood in a very literal and unsophisticated way, with the narrator identical to the performer and then the audience reproducing the narrator. Thus those who perform or listen to gangsta rap must be gangstas, etc., when no one thinks that either Homer or people who read the Iliad now are literally people who are going to pick up spears and run their enemies through. So I too get uneasy at all these gleeful conclusions that the record must be a literal record of Jay-Z and Beyonce's relationship. I don't know what Beyonce has said or will say to frame it that way, but until then...
posted by praemunire at 11:12 PM on April 24, 2016 [36 favorites]

fuuuuuuuuuuuuck. that was incredible. now i need to get neck deep in warsan shire's poetry, because holy goddamn.
posted by palomar at 11:19 PM on April 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

but also quite a bit of other stuff, older stuff

the entirety of Hold Up is santeria imagery with ochún in her yellow dress spilling out of the floodwaters and dancing to forget her pain. more specifically, during a ceremony you know ochún is angry when she shows up laughing wildly, like bey does when swinging hot sauce.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:23 PM on April 24, 2016 [30 favorites]

(I hope it was clear that I was not saying the only spiritual aspect of this was Christianity. I lack the cultural antecedents to say much about the Southern US Christian bits, much less the Yoruba influences, I just wanted to answer the dumb notion that this is a simple breakup album.)
posted by gingerest at 1:15 AM on April 25, 2016

Billboard: These Directors & Cinematographers Helped Make Beyonce's 'Lemonade' a Visual Masterpiece

(Billboard needs to get themselves a non-US keyboard, or at least figure out how to type diacritical marks on the ones they have.)
posted by effbot at 2:06 AM on April 25, 2016

So frustrated with some of the comments I've seen elsewhere: "heard this was great but wasn't going to bother till I saw Jack White collaborated". Not surprised, but just ugh.
posted by thebots at 2:18 AM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

"heard this was great but wasn't going to bother till I saw Jack White collaborated"

Isn't that one of the reasons she's got the guy on the album? To get more ears?
posted by colie at 2:21 AM on April 25, 2016

That was sensational.
posted by h00py at 2:29 AM on April 25, 2016

And are the people saying it's a breakup album not actually listening to/watching the whole thing?
posted by h00py at 2:31 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

That was fucking incredible. I'll admit I've never really had a lot of time for Beyonce before I heard Formation, when I was really damn impressed. Now I'm floored.

I'm also SUPER interested in the use of clothing/costume throughout this, positioning (black) women in relation to the 19th century and also prom dresses in this really interesting way.

In terms of the specific/universal conversation, I definitely as a woman find a lot here that resonates to my experience but I also recognize I'm an onlooker (as a white women) for much of the specific culture being spoken. If that makes sense.
posted by threeturtles at 3:03 AM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

i've been completely ignoring prince's death but the thing that has really gotten me down is that he didn't get to see this...

How do we know he didn't get an advance screening?

As someone who's gone through an abusive relationship, so much of that first half was pretty cathartic. And I'm not even that big of a Beyonce fan. I know this isn't for me, specifically, since I'm not a Black woman, but thank God and Beyonce for depictions of anger and rage post-relationship-meltdown and for the ability to regrow and refresh from that.

Is this award-winnable? Like, does it qualify for an Oscar? Emmy? Some other thing? The only music-video-related award I can think of are MTVs' but it seems like it needs MORE than just Music Video of the Year.
posted by divabat at 3:15 AM on April 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

God, that underwater sequence was incredible.
posted by angrycat at 3:54 AM on April 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

Isn't that one of the reasons she's got the guy on the album? To get more ears?

I truly doubt it. I think he was used for his particular talents, to get a sound and to help weave together the meanings that femme_esq highlighted in the storify that nadawi links to above.
posted by sallybrown at 4:22 AM on April 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

(Because, to finish the thought - Beyoncé doesn't need Jack White to get more ears.)
posted by sallybrown at 4:23 AM on April 25, 2016 [26 favorites]

What would it say about her skill as an artist, about her sensitivity and capacity to absorb, reflect, communicate, if this album wasn't autobiographical? If it was actually not her lived experience but her understanding and empathy and intellect driving this art? I have heard grumbling about how it's manipulative to use the spectre of divorce this way but I am just all the more impressed when I think about the talents required to make this work, absent direct personal experience.
posted by gingerest at 4:24 AM on April 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

In terms of the specific/universal conversation, I definitely as a woman find a lot here that resonates to my experience but I also recognize I'm an onlooker (as a white women) for much of the specific culture being spoken.

This was really driven home in the fact that for about 98% of the video, there are no non-Black people to be seen, until at the very end, in the montage of happy couples. Sort of a Beyonce saying "Yes, non-Black women can connect to this at some level, but this is fundamentally our story".
posted by damayanti at 4:51 AM on April 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

If you liked this, please watch Daughters of the Dust. I wouldn't be surprised if Julie Dash's film was an inspiration for Bey.
posted by pxe2000 at 4:51 AM on April 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

As a white guy I couldn't be any more of an outsider to this album but holy fuck am I loving it anyway.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 4:57 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Creating uncomfortably intimate art about your marital issues and then releasing it both a) as a primetime HBO special and b) exclusively for purchase through your husband's beloved business venture is like some kind of comic book power fantasy for women. How is Beyoncé even real?
posted by almostmanda at 5:14 AM on April 25, 2016 [22 favorites]

Of course as soon as I hear its on Vimeo it is removed from Vimeo. :(
I'm going to go ahead and name this album of the year based on Twitter reactions alone.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:34 AM on April 25, 2016

I don't have a way to watch this at the moment (googling brings up broken/taken down links, though I am sure there are ways to find it if you are creative), but the trailer looks great and the comments here are only underlining that. I'm looking forward to seeing it, hopefully soon.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:35 AM on April 25, 2016

I think the album is for sale at iTunes now? I don't have the software installed so I can't check.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 5:45 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Meanwhile on the Jay Z cam.
posted by bukvich at 5:49 AM on April 25, 2016

Bustle: Transcript Of Beyonce's 'Lemonade' Because The Words Are Just As Important As The Music

I read this and I cried.
posted by corvine at 6:00 AM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

The blending of music, art, politics, religion, family, and love is simply masterful. This is iconic. She is an icon.
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 6:05 AM on April 25, 2016

Dip Flash, the fb link still appears to be working - I've checked on a browser where I'm not logged in, and it plays, so...

It's also on sale on Amazon, and comes with the video.
posted by rtha at 6:10 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

So it is! Linking because it doesn't seem to have been added to their site's search DB yet.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:25 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this movie-album but came back here to say that I would kill for an audiobook of Beyoncé reading poetry.
posted by annathea at 6:31 AM on April 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

I have a mentee that I am working with. She is a young black woman from the South and she is in a lot of pain, but she is super freaking strong. I love that this is for her.

I haven't been able to watch it yet, but I've been reading black women's takes all day yesterday. Based on everything I've heard, I am so excited to get home this afternoon and watch it, in full. SO excited.
posted by Sophie1 at 6:33 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

"Why can't you see me? Everyone else can."
posted by sallybrown at 6:37 AM on April 25, 2016 [8 favorites]

your husband's beloved business venture

Nit: Beyoncé is a co-owner.
posted by effbot at 6:48 AM on April 25, 2016 [9 favorites]

My jaw was open for most of the hour. The underwater scenes were so intense and must have been so difficult to create (Allison Williams said it was SO HARD for her 5 second underwater scene in Girls, and then of course Beyonce Beyonces an entire underwater performance).

The anger, hurt, and raw emotion reminded me of Bjork's recent album and how amazing it is to be able to watch these two artists create such total artworks.

And then everything else happened...
posted by armacy at 6:53 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Beyoncé's Black Feminist Declaration (from Kathleen of Lainey Gossip):

Lemonade was a worldwide event but it felt very personal. It felt personal not just because the album is Beyoncé's most emotionally revealing to date but the conversations surrounding black men and infidelity hit home for me.

Over the past two years I have watched my parents' marriage deteriorate. I've learned things about my father I wish I never knew and thought could never be true. In a roundtable about Lemonade for NYMag called “Beyoncé’s Lemonade and the Undeniable Power of a Black Woman’s Vulnerability,” editor Dee Lockett wrote something I still can’t shake: “[black] love is always political, it has no choice. When it fails, it’s a failure for all black lovers.”

The broken home is a black stereotype. It’s one I never thought my family would perpetuate. There’s a multitude of emotions that come with losing your solitary black male role model in a world where only black women are holding black men up to the highest standard. It’s dark sh-t. When Bey took us through the stages of these emotions, intuition, denial, anger, apathy, accountability, reformation and forgiveness, I felt like I was in therapy. But this is the beauty of Lemonade. Beyoncé is affirming that we aren’t alone. She is giving power to a sisterhood of women who have held up communities even when dealing with heartbreak and loss.

posted by sallybrown at 6:55 AM on April 25, 2016 [20 favorites]

If you've never signed up for Tidal before you get the first 30 days free (just remember to unsubscribe before the 30 days is up).
posted by misskaz at 6:55 AM on April 25, 2016

I read this and I cried.

Wow. I only watched the first song on HBO Go last night because it was late, but I'm going to watch the whole goddamn thing tonight.
posted by middleclasstool at 7:23 AM on April 25, 2016

Someone in Gawker comments referred to Lemonade as "American YAAAAAStoral" and...yes.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:43 AM on April 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

One aspect of Beyoncé that I've loved with her last two releases is how her videos show such an elaborate and diverse cross section of blackness. So many different types of individuals find themselves on screen, people in different situations, places, etc. It's a beautiful kind of alternate reality where blackness/diversity is celebrated. I love everything that she's doing, such a beautiful and powerful artist.
posted by Fizz at 7:51 AM on April 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

Has there been any chatter about releasing the visual album to theaters? Just thinking about seeing that in a packed house and on a 60-foot screen feels like a natural fit.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 7:54 AM on April 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

I was visiting my parents this weekend but knew I had to watch it live, despite not expecting it to be "their thing". I was ready to not make them sit through it if it was just a 'making of' or something (oh me of little faith...), but we all sat rapt for the hour at Beyoncé's incredible art. Just want to add this to the chorus of definitely not for us, but easy for many to love if me and my old, white, suburban Texan parents could get into it as well. We are from Houston so maybe that distorts the sample, but I very rarely see my dad stay up that late on a Saturday (he literally opens the church in the morning) and apparently he tried to work Lemonade into their Sunday school lesson for young adults.

Slightly off topic, when I got in Friday night after our 3 hour drive my dad had me sat down within 10 minutes in front of the TV to play me his favorite parts of Purple Rain that he'd DVRed on MTV.
posted by DynamiteToast at 7:56 AM on April 25, 2016 [16 favorites]

How do we know he didn't get an advance screening?

i might just make myself believe this is true because it's comforting, but when the self titled album was released, the producers on the album didn't know their songs had made it to the tracklist until release. one way parkwood entertainment can do the nearly impossible task of almost no leaks is to keep everything quiet. although, if anyone understood the need to create art in secret that may never be released, it's prince.
posted by nadawi at 7:58 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

one way parkwood entertainment can do the nearly impossible task of almost no leaks is to keep everything quiet.

It is insane that Beyoncé has pulled off the stunner twice. She must have the most intense NDAs in existence. That or she's just so great that everyone is entirely loyal to her. Pretty impressive either way.
posted by DynamiteToast at 8:04 AM on April 25, 2016 [14 favorites]

I mean, I sure as hell wouldn't cross her. She has a monster truck.
posted by beerperson at 8:09 AM on April 25, 2016 [8 favorites]

FYI the mp3 purchase option on Amazon includes the entire video (it's in the track listing at the bottom, 65 minutes long).
posted by Lyn Never at 8:11 AM on April 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

middleclasstool: “Wow. I only watched the first song on HBO Go last night because it was late, but I'm going to watch the whole goddamn thing tonight.”

Yeah, that's a nice thought, and it's the thought I had, but keep in mind: Lemonade is not on HBO anymore, so you won't be able to watch through Comcast on-demand or through HBO Go.

The only way to watch this now is (a) through the Facebook link posted above, as long as it's still available, or (b) by buying the album through Amazon, which apparently comes with the video.

Just a heads up – I got up all excited to watch this on HBO myself, and found out that that isn't possible anymore.
posted by koeselitz at 8:13 AM on April 25, 2016

Ah, crap. I was hoping it'd still be up there tonight. Well, it's still available online, so.
posted by middleclasstool at 8:15 AM on April 25, 2016

You can still watch it on vimeo!

-Edit: oops! I swear I had just finished watching it and had open in another tab before posting and now I clicked on it again and it is gone! booo
posted by bitteschoen at 8:20 AM on April 25, 2016

Ha. That link is already dead, bitteschoen.
posted by koeselitz at 8:20 AM on April 25, 2016

Yeah I know, I just realised! I’m glad I managed to watch it all just in time!
posted by bitteschoen at 8:22 AM on April 25, 2016

... and having watched the first ten minutes, I'm gonna just go ahead and recommend that you head to Amazon and drop the eighteen bucks if you can, because this is literally the best thing.
posted by koeselitz at 8:22 AM on April 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

Anyone know who was playing guitar on "Daddy Lessons"? After I buy Lemonade I want to buy that guy's albums.

I just want to echo the sentiment that her performance of Warsan Shire's poetry was done masterfully.
posted by GrapeApiary at 8:27 AM on April 25, 2016

you can also watch it with a free trial of tidal.
posted by nadawi at 8:28 AM on April 25, 2016

I spent the extra $1 (and resigned myself to waiting another week and a half) for the physical album because it's good enough I don't want to rely on DRM'd digital copies or a Tidal subscription to watch it again down the line.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:31 AM on April 25, 2016

Is the video on the physical album? Here's hoping.
posted by koeselitz at 8:33 AM on April 25, 2016

Yeah, it's the music on one CD and then a DVD with the visual album.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:34 AM on April 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

I think I still have my free trial of Tidal. I'll have to check because I want to watch the fuck out of this.
posted by Kitteh at 8:34 AM on April 25, 2016

> FYI the mp3 purchase option on Amazon includes the entire video (it's in the track listing at the bottom, 65 minutes long).

Caveat: Does not include the spoken-word portions. The album is its own thing, like the film is its own thing. I listened to it on the way to work and it is amazing - but different.
posted by rtha at 8:36 AM on April 25, 2016

Anyone know who was playing guitar on "Daddy Lessons"? After I buy Lemonade I want to buy that guy's albums.

The NOLA Defender piece from upthread says this:

"On the country track “Daddy Lessons,” Beyonce returns to Fort Macomb to sing alongside a blues guitarist. That guitarist in the throne looks a lot like Little Freddie King although “Lemonade’s” 3,105 credits attribute guitar work on the track to Eric Walls."
posted by DynamiteToast at 8:38 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

For some reason, my brain cannot let go of linking her plunge into the water with the beginning/end of The Monkee's movie Head, where Mickey Dolenz jumps off a bridge and is rescued by mermaids or something.

I know the contexts are entirely different, but my brain...
posted by hippybear at 8:57 AM on April 25, 2016

thank you
posted by GrapeApiary at 8:59 AM on April 25, 2016

A Call and Response with Melissa Harris-Perry: The Pain and the Power of 'Lemonade'

The call-and-response tradition is so deeply embedded in black cultural practice, so to help understand the meaning of this moment I sent out a call of my own to writers and thinkers who center black women and girls in their work. They responded. I like to think of this as MHP's lemonade stand, getting in-formation about Bey's latest contribution.

posted by damayanti at 9:01 AM on April 25, 2016 [10 favorites]

Y'all, I'd like us to think hard about just buying the damn thing. It's hard not to feel entitled to good art, but it's also good to support artists.

I know, I know, Bey doesn't need our dollars, but c'mon.
posted by allthinky at 9:01 AM on April 25, 2016 [7 favorites]

I figure I already paid for it with my DISH HBO subscription. Not going to download the album, but my DVR holds the video.
posted by hippybear at 9:03 AM on April 25, 2016

A Call and Response with Melissa Harris-Perry: The Pain and the Power of 'Lemonade'

I am finding this article wonderful and informative and educational and really appreciate this link.
posted by hippybear at 9:12 AM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

I can't afford to buy the album. I appreciate the discussion about where to see it through legitimate sources. (And I'm glad it's available that way.)
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 9:18 AM on April 25, 2016

Lyn Never: “FYI the mp3 purchase option on Amazon includes the entire video (it's in the track listing at the bottom, 65 minutes long).”

rtha: “Caveat: Does not include the spoken-word portions.”

Is this true? I really hope this isn't true. Can someone confirm this isn't true before I buy it (because I really want to buy it)?
posted by koeselitz at 9:25 AM on April 25, 2016

My DVR has the video, but I bought the iTunes album which includes the video anyway. Worth it!

The album tracks don't include the spoken word bits, which is a shame. Looks like they edited some of the songs down for the video, so there wouldn't be a 1:1 correspondence with the album:video anyway. The video has the spoken word bits, and the video is included as part of the Amazon or iTunes purchase.
posted by yasaman at 9:27 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

yasaman: “The video has the spoken word bits, and the video is included as part of the Amazon or iTunes purchase.”

Ah, that's what I wanted to know. Thanks! Seemed strange that they'd show those on HBO but edit them out when releasing the full video elsewhere, but weirder things have happened. I just really, really like Warsan Shire, and this is an amazing piece of work.
posted by koeselitz at 9:29 AM on April 25, 2016

... and the Facebook link is now dead.
posted by koeselitz at 9:31 AM on April 25, 2016

Yeah, I think Warsan Shire's poetry is what really sent this into the stratosphere for me, though the album on its own is plenty powerful enough. The poetry is such a strong and enriching framing device, so even when I'm listening to the album without it, it's informing my take on the music. "Am I talking about your husband or your father?" right before "Daddy Lessons" was a hell of a gut punch.
posted by yasaman at 9:35 AM on April 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

Oh, yeah, sorry for the lack of clarity about the spoken-word stuff. The album itself is still completely amazing. Just different.
posted by rtha at 10:22 AM on April 25, 2016

Also sort of interesting echoes back to Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 video album, insofar as the cinematography is full of very iconic images.
posted by hippybear at 10:26 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

Miriam Bale at The Hollywood Reporter: Beyoncé's 'Lemonade' Is a Revolutionary Work of Black Feminism

Wesley Morris at NY Times: Beyoncé Unearths Pain and Lets It Flow in ‘Lemonade’
posted by Awkward Philip at 10:55 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm hoping at some point for a complete reference guide to all the imagery. People have already pointed out that the bat is called "Hot Sauce", the allusions to Oshun, the menstruation imagery of the red hallway, how Serena and Beyonce swapped roles for those shots, the symbolism of the kintsugi bowl, etc... It's just so visually dense and rich, I can easily see Lemonade spawning a hundred academic theses.
posted by mhum at 10:58 AM on April 25, 2016 [12 favorites]

Does anyone have thoughts about "6 Inch"? It feels the most out of step (pun intended) with the rest of the album to me, but I can't put my finger on why.
posted by sallybrown at 11:05 AM on April 25, 2016

I thought the same, sallybrown. The video for it is one of my favorites (that loooong, sloooow shot of the red hallway, how drenched in red the whole video is, how perfect the lighting is for the throb of the bassline), but it does feel like a song from a different album. It also reminded me a lot of Frank Ocean's "Pyramids."
posted by yasaman at 11:16 AM on April 25, 2016

... and the Facebook link is now dead.

Saved it for later and it started playing a few minutes ago when I tried it. Then got excited to watch it, tried to click over and accidentally closed the tab. Avenge my death.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 11:21 AM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

The vimeo link was up earlier today but I saw it was an hour so I was going to save it for later. WHY DID I WAIT?!? Amazon UK doesn't seem to have the video option either or else I would totally drop the 15 quid.
posted by like_neon at 11:39 AM on April 25, 2016

I'm hoping at some point for a complete reference guide to all the imagery.

Not a reference guide, but here's an attempt to figure out who was involved in what part.

(have only seen various screenshots and GIFs, so the only source I recognize right now is Pipilotti Rist's Ever is Over All.)
posted by effbot at 11:39 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

As someone who's gone through an abusive relationship, so much of that first half was pretty cathartic. And I'm not even that big of a Beyonce fan. I know this isn't for me, specifically, since I'm not a Black woman, but thank God and Beyonce for depictions of anger and rage post-relationship-meltdown and for the ability to regrow and refresh from that.

So I've been having some complicated feelings about this, but first some caveats:
1. I really, really, really loved the video.
2. I know that relationships are extremely complex and personal and don't need to fit a neat narrative or to be a model that can/should be extrapolated to other relationships or to express perfect politics.
3. Abuse and cheating are different situations
4. I am not a black woman and the video was not made for me.

That said, I really connected to the righteous anger and also the power of women in groups that support each other and as interconnected generations, but had more trouble buying into the the forgiveness and reconciliation piece of the story, and there seemed to be an element of "we have to forgive mistreatment and make the best of things just as our mothers and grandmothers did" that made me a little sad (and I've seen a few other comments, like Sarah Jane Forman's above and some of Roxane Gay's tweets, that seem to suggest I'm not alone).

My little sister called yesterday. She had just watched Lemonade with an emotionally abusive ex-boyfriend who she can't seem to stop spending time with. What he said to her at the end was, "See, we just have to get past everything that happened before and move on and love each other again" - granted, this is a pretty facile reading (and, as I said above, the situations are not identical). But given that context, she had a very "stand by your man" interpretation of the song and is bummed out that that's the message her feminist hero, Beyoncé, is sending her, and I've been having trouble coming up with a very coherent defense.

Like I said, I really loved the video (and I've watched it 3 times!) but I am having trouble entirely wrapping my head around it.
posted by naoko at 11:41 AM on April 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

It's so incredible I can't get over it. I have tickets to see her in May in Seattle and I cannot WAIT to see how the film will be a part of the tour.
posted by SarahElizaP at 11:47 AM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

One thing i saw again during the fanfare of this is that holy fucking shit white beyonce fans online are like worse than Stephen Universe fans or something. Like, this is great powerful art but holy fuck no one wants to listen to you except for other people just as awful as you.

My entire newsfeed is people raring for a fight with someone who dares question this and... no actual questioning, just posturing. And then lots of ignorant tiresome thinkpieces by white people.

What.
posted by emptythought at 2:03 PM on April 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

This is why I'm keeping my advocacy to "hey, this is a good thing, you should watch it, here's how" unless directly asked to elaborate.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:34 PM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

re: 6in heels - my immediate reaction, and one i saw other people saying, is that it - especially when considered with the video vignette - is a companion piece to partition - she's still in the back seat, she's still on the stage, but the setting is entirely different. it also echos part of 'ghost' from the self titled album ('9 to 5 just to stay alive' contrasted with 'grinds from monday to friday, works from friday to sunday). i could be reading this into it, but i think beyonce is likening her work as a pop star and wife with sex work - she's basically saying every woman is on her own hustle and we shouldn't be tearing each other down. or to put it more simply, lets turn to missy elliot - girls girls get that cash - if it's 9 to 5 or shakin your ass - ain't no shame ladies do ya thing - just make sure you ahead of the game
posted by nadawi at 3:42 PM on April 25, 2016 [8 favorites]

naoko - maybe point out to your sister how humbled jay is when he shows up in the video and how against type that is for him and his profession. beyonce didn't just get angry and then subsume herself in him again. she came to him differently and demanded he came back to her differently. the tweets i liked up thread by femme_esq get into this. a read you can have on this is that in her relationship she is trying to break down the harmful generational effects of the white supremacist patriarchy - at first she's focused on how it harms her, but very quickly she turns to how it hurts him as well - the way he's acting out, the way he's being macho, that's the patriarchy harming him, and them, and her. she can just walk away, and maybe he deserves it, but she can also stay and not make the sacrifices her mother did to stay with her father as long as she did.

and yeah - cheating and abuse are so different (although i think some abusive partners can go through this sort of transformation but the abusive partner has to do the work). it's tough stuff and i appreciate that beyonce didn't give a simple, pat, cliche view of marriage and infidelity, but rather showed very human and messy reactions to human and messy relationships. it's easier maybe to give us 'stand by your man' or 'hit em up style' but the strength of this work, i think, is how all the mess is laid bare and not tidied up.
posted by nadawi at 3:55 PM on April 25, 2016 [22 favorites]

Has anybody seen those annoying tweets about how many writers are on each track? What is with people and not understanding how powerful and important collaboration is in art? I find that "true genius is done alone" kind attitude a real sign of immaturity. When are these dudes going to grow up?
posted by discopolo at 4:17 PM on April 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

Roxane Gay linked this on twitter and I am dying:

Bey: Do you want me to wear her skin

Jay: Don’t

Bey: I could literally pay anyone to bring me her skin. That wasn’t just a poem, Sean.
posted by yasaman at 4:20 PM on April 25, 2016 [17 favorites]

discopolo: OMG YES THANK YOU! I've been seeing people decry her as "well you know she has an entire team with her right, she didn't even write the poetry" like so??? collaboration is important and doesn't make anything less powerful???
posted by divabat at 4:24 PM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm curious, to what extent are the extensive credits on the album a courtesy/kindness to the relevant artists versus a desire to avoid a costly lawsuit? Some of the quotations don't seem to rise to the level of needing to be credited, to my layperson's eye/ear, like the "My Girls" line turned from "I don't mean to seem like I care about material things," to "She too smart to crave material things." I wouldn't have clocked that as a deliberate reference. Even the use of "they don't love you like I love you," which is a fairly direct quotation of "Maps," could just as honestly be the result of, y'know, arranging the limited words of the English language together in a way that might have been used before. I get why any samples used are credited, but where's the line with lyrics?
posted by yasaman at 4:47 PM on April 25, 2016

Also, people basically ruin everything: Confused Beyoncé fans think Jay Z had an affair with TV chef Rachael Ray

"I can't believe @rachelray helped Jay-Z do that to the Queen. Never makin' those 30 minute meals again"
posted by GuyZero at 4:54 PM on April 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

Beyoncé's Lemonade is about much more than Jay Z and infidelity

We are the women left behind. We are the women who have cared for other women’s children while ours were taken away. We are the women who work two jobs when companies won’t hire our men. We are the women caring for grandchildren as our sons are taken by the prison industrial complex. We are the women who march in the streets and are never marched for. We are the women expected to never air our grievances in public. We are the women expected to stay loyal to our men by staying silent through abuse and infidelity. We are the women who clean the blood of our men and boys from the streets. We are the women who gather their belongings from the police station.

posted by Anonymous at 4:55 PM on April 25, 2016

A quick Google search didn't confirm it for me, but I assume that was one of Yinka Shonibare's dresses (I did find that Beyonce had worn his stuff/mentioned him in the past & it fits in with the rest of what she's doing here). I would be surprised if it wasn't.

As far as "6 Inches" goes, I felt it was meant to be jarring. It was definitely about the performative aspects of her life -- she needs to put out this image of perfect, sexy wife and mother because it's her job.

I need to watch this whole thing again. I really think this is one of the most honest and bravest pieces of art I've seen. I kind of shrugged it off initially until I read more about it. If anything, I think people undersold it.

(I signed up for the free Tidal trial because I'm broke but as soon as I get paid, I'm buying this.)
posted by darksong at 4:59 PM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

if people could just line up writers and producers and other collaborators and come up with beyonce's last three albums, then why aren't they doing it? like, fka twigs has a lot of writers, so does kanye, and yet they're all making singular interesting bold music. it's like 'my 5 year old could do that' ok, then why aren't they? this isn't a just world thing, but rather, when people decry how easy something is or how untalented someone is, they never can account for how that person stands out among the rest.
posted by nadawi at 5:10 PM on April 25, 2016 [12 favorites]

I also think people tend to disregard or intentionally ignore how many "fine artists" have assistants helping them make work, or fashion designers having whole workshops of people actually fabricating the clothes. Art tends to not happen in a vacuum and the whole idea of music being the product of one mind (or one band) is a pretty recent one (see, for instance, The Wrecking Crew). I see nothing wrong with Beyonce finding other great musicians to work with. Everyone so far has said these songs, while a collaboration, were very much directed by her.

Part of making art, to me, is knowing what your strengths are and also knowing what other's strengths are. If there was something she couldn't do herself, I'm all for her bringing in others to do it. It doesn't take away from her vision. It makes it better.

(No one gripes about actors not writing their own lines, after all.)
posted by darksong at 5:28 PM on April 25, 2016 [4 favorites]

this isn't a just world thing, but rather, when people decry how easy something is or how untalented someone is, they never can account for how that person stands out among the rest.

At this point, when people bust out the number of credits on this album as though it's some sort of knock against Beyoncé, I'm comfortable calling it straight-up racist & sexist. Because - well, for example, hundreds of people worked on 2001 and Jaws and Miller's Crossing, but I have literally never seen a single person claim that Kubrick or Spielberg or the Coens aren't artists because their art was collaboratively created with a large number of people. Anyone who thinks that Beyoncé doesn't control her art in the same way that the Coens control their movies is willfully obtuse.
posted by Frobenius Twist at 5:32 PM on April 25, 2016 [46 favorites]

I can't stop listening to this album.
posted by rtha at 5:48 PM on April 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

Frobenius Twist : agreed.
posted by nadawi at 6:36 PM on April 25, 2016

I tried to make a home out of you, but doors lead to trap doors, a stairway leads to nothing. Unknown women wander the hallways at night. Where do you go when you go quiet?

You remind me of my father, a magician ... able to exist in two places at once. In the tradition of men in my blood, you come home at 3 a.m. and lie to me. What are you hiding?

The past and the future merge to meet us here. What luck. What a fucking curse.

Jesus. This is so good.
posted by triggerfinger at 8:19 PM on April 25, 2016 [6 favorites]

I signed up for Tidal. Whole thing is riveting. I'm glad I did it.

Then I saw Michael, Trayvon, and Eric's moms. Christ.

This isn't usually a kind of music I hook into easily, and I know it wasn't written for people like me, but it's marked me.

It's agonizing and I'm grateful to have been alive to witness it.
posted by middleclasstool at 8:32 PM on April 25, 2016 [12 favorites]

Commentary on the presence of a Black ballet dancer in Lemonade:

[...] This dancer had both her hair and her real skin tone. And she was beautiful. She had a flower crown, she was graceful and elegant, not relegated to a “passionate” role or a villain, but a beacon of femininity. She dressed in traditional white, with a skirt reminiscent of the swan in Swan Lake that is regarded as The Whitest Role in All of Ballet.

This was one of many giant Fuck Yous to the traditional Establishment Beyonce embedded in Lemonade. I know it’s a small one. I know there were many more important ones that much more qualified people have talked about.

But for me it was exhilirating and powerful to imagine the Artistic Directors of all the major companies who have told Misty Copeland she’s worthless choking on their own bile, with this very special middle finger, embedded just for them.

posted by divabat at 9:03 PM on April 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

A lot of Formation takes on a whole new meaning, now.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:14 PM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

While both Formation and Lemonade are/were described as "unapologetically black", I'd like to suggest another adverb in that description: "uncompromisingly black". Beyonce surely has almost unprecedented (practically Prince-like) creative freedom and what she's choosing to do with it is to create work that's practically 100% targeted to black women, mainly with Southern roots. Everyone can, of course, enjoy and appreciate it but it is always clear who she's made this for. There doesn't seem to be any part of Lemonade that's watered down to appeal to the (largely white) mass audience. Can you imagine the terrible notes that would have been attached by big label execs? "Not a big fan of the spooky, skeleton face paint stuff," "Are there any white people in this video? Or men? Maybe we can add some in," "Who are these older ladies holding pictures? Are we supposed to know who they are? If so, we should add captions."
posted by mhum at 10:42 PM on April 25, 2016 [20 favorites]

It's uncompromisingly black and uncompromisingly female, it's squarely centered on and of the black woman, it's womanist. After the self-titled album came out there were all the thinkpieces and criticism and praise of Beyoncé from a feminist perspective, but that was really a womanist triumph and this is a womanist masterpiece. It's essential.

Womanist writer Trudy@Trudz (formerly @GradientLair) has a good storify about Lemonade here: Lemonade: A Southern 'Visual' Novel Unapologetically About The Humanity and Complexity of Black Womanhood, and there are a lot of excellent insights and tidbits

One of the main feminist-oriented criticisms that has followed Beyoncé throughout her career has been her focus on men: pleasing them, being angry with them, wondering what are they going to do for her, talking about how much she doesn't need them while still talking about them. A lot of these critiques came to a head after her self-titled album, particularly surrounding the song/video "Partition" (boy do I love the juxtaposition with "6 Inch" in every possible way, the video and the song).

For many African-American women, our relationships with the men in our lives (or the ones who should have been there but are not due to violence, abandonment, and other loss) is inextricably tied to our sense of humanity. But our oppression by and for and with them is deeply rooted. However, Beyoncé has also always displayed a strong and profound sense of sisterhood and prioritized her black femininity, even though there have been times when her black womanhood has been denied (after "Formation" and now "Lemonade" I would like to see people try, but to some of us she has always put her Southern black female identity on a pedestal). There is a lot here about women and for women too, what we do for and to each other.

Personally, though I have listened and watched repeatedly, this album has been harder for me to jump into than the last (that album felt like an awakening) in large part because I have chosen to put men at arm's length for a significant portion of my life precisely so I wouldn't get hurt. People consider me a Daddy's girl because I praise my father to high heavens and argue with my mother all the time, yet I can't talk to him for more than 5 minutes because we have little to say. My brother is one of my favorite people in the world and we only pretend to listen to each other. I'm hardcore celibate. I have all kinds of walls up, so I haven't been hurt in many of the ways Beyoncé is talking about. But I've thought about it, dreamed about it, held other women through it and watched it closely, and I've feared for men as much as feared them.

What I most love about Lemonade the visual album is how comfortable it is with black women, it's what I wish for all black women, and women, and people everywhere, to just be able to sit/stand/squat/dance/lie comfortably in your skin.
posted by Danila at 11:27 PM on April 25, 2016 [16 favorites]

Oh god, why was Don't Hurt Yourself not in my life 10 years ago? This music is so... cleansing.
posted by like_neon at 2:26 AM on April 26, 2016

I really liked the song Formation and commented on it favorably in another thread. I was very moved by it.

However

I am singularly unimpressed with all of the lyrics which condone or glamorize infidelity. Fuck these rich people. I don't think their relationship is "cool" and I'm disgusted their drama is something they are making money off of.

I get it. They use others and each other. Since I'm not interested in filling their bank account in exchange for gawking at their marital dysfunction - I'll pass.

These people and their marriage should not be promoted. This is what little girls will think a "good" relationship looks like. Gross.
posted by jbenben at 3:31 AM on April 26, 2016

The entirety of Lemonade is about surviving the aftermath of your lover's infidelity and going through the whole gamut of emotions when dealing with it. The only part of Lemonade that could be vaguely considered endorsing infidelity is the part where she says she could get a better dick - which was said in anger and could also mean "I could leave you for someone better".

Unless you think that the second half, where she decides to reconcile with the full knowledge that mutual work needs to be put in to rebuild, is somehow glorifying infidelity!

You didn't get Lemonade at all. Boy bye.
posted by divabat at 3:36 AM on April 26, 2016 [41 favorites]

You didn't get Lemonade at all.

That's what's so great with art, it talks to everyone in exactly the same way, and there's never more than one way to interpret things.
posted by effbot at 4:47 AM on April 26, 2016

Unnecessary sarcasm. There's a big difference between interpretation and missing the entire premise because you've already made up your mind about something. Particularly, and correct me if I'm wrong, if you haven't actually seen the thing in question and are just basing your opinion on parts of the work completely out of context.
posted by h00py at 4:57 AM on April 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

At this point, when people bust out the number of credits on this album as though it's some sort of knock against Beyoncé, I'm comfortable calling it straight-up racist & sexist.

Oh god yes, if anyone has any doubt on that, (don’t) check out the comments on the linked piece in the Guardian, and any other piece on the Guardian about Beyonce, it’s a classic by now! Entire comments consisting only of how she’s got so many collaborators and credits and basically everyone else does everything for her and all she does is sing and perform - which is hilarious in itself because even if "all" she did was "only" that, well, hahaha... I can’t even bother commenting on that really. You bet it’s the usual rock/indie fan male readers who just cannot stand it. It really drives them insane with anger.
posted by bitteschoen at 5:22 AM on April 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

bitteschoen: I've seen similar criticism levied from Black people, mostly in comparison to Prince.
posted by divabat at 5:32 AM on April 26, 2016

I'm disgusted their drama is something they are making money off of

Boy, just wait until you hear the news about literally all art ever created.
posted by almostmanda at 5:33 AM on April 26, 2016 [49 favorites]

Finally broke down and listened to it without videos. Orinoco Flow my gawd.

The most amazing thing about this (purely musically) is that she is KILLING IT as a rapper. Like insane natural but intricate flows. Don't care who wrote it, the performance is... just incredible clearly but I mean she NEVER rapped before 2016. At least that I recall she's never full on just rhymed on a record before. This would be like what if when Lil Wayne decided he could play guitar but just out of nowhere started both shredding AND crooning jazz chords the moment he stepped on stage. Her style is super original, sophisticated, emotive and even at times harsh. Her cadence at times dives into toasting, shrieks like a driller, mutters like a trappist, and just chill vibes like, well like Jay. She may be a better rapper than Jay on this record.

More than anything the current trend of eclectic symphonic virtuoso HH albums reminds me of how much people made fun of Mos Def and q-tip when they made rap-rock records in the early 2000s. Nobody's laughing at this ambition now, and they never should have. We are witnessing something astonishing.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:36 AM on April 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

> These people and their marriage should not be promoted. This is what little girls will think a "good" relationship looks like. Gross.

I feel like you listened to some alt-universe version of this album, but I really don't understand how you could have read any of the comments in this thread and then decided to say the thing you said.
posted by rtha at 5:38 AM on April 26, 2016 [32 favorites]

Listening to 6inch, sure you can make a case for its fundamental feminism I suppose. It's also just a sick catchy strip club anthem that will be making Bey royalty bank for the rest of her life. Don't need to pretend that's not a goal.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:39 AM on April 26, 2016

I think all the rock references (in Freedom especially, but YYYs and Jack White and the Bonnie Raitt take on country in Daddy Lessons) are doing something more than providing theatricality. It seems very deliberate: like she said "I want to reclaim what's ours". Or even more "We will reclaim what is ours." So much revolution in every gesture.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:57 AM on April 26, 2016 [9 favorites]

Final thought as a longlonglong time fan of B: She's ALWAYS been this political and interesting, even when seeming to be advocating for submission or materialism. Always. If you don't agree you just haven't been paying attention.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:02 AM on April 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

apparently daddy lessons is already showing up on country radio. i wonder if she'll end up charting on rock and country charts.
posted by nadawi at 6:08 AM on April 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

Potomac Avenue - i've seen people saying things like 'omg, she's never talked about infidelity before!' and it's like.....have you heard the other records? because, well.

also of course 6 inch is supposed to be strip club banger, lots of purposes going on for a lot of the songs, but even beyond those purposes i think they all fit into the greater work.
posted by nadawi at 6:21 AM on April 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

I'm not the target demographic, though I am a woman. When watching this in bed on Sunday morning (through TIDAL, which turned out to be far better than I ever thought it'd be) I had the biggest and longest crying bout in the last two years. My eyelids were swollen until yesterday afternoon-ahaha. Beyoncé, thank you so much for your art.

An interesting article I came across on twitter linked via Gene Demby; How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You: The BeyHive by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, March 17, 2014
posted by one teak forest at 6:38 AM on April 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

She had a number one ten years ago that was a re-arranged Country song, 'Irreplaceable'.
posted by colie at 7:04 AM on April 26, 2016

one teak forest - I can't recommend Rachel Kaadzi Ghandah's work highly enough. Every article of hers I've read has been just as good as that great piece on Beyoncé.
posted by sallybrown at 7:19 AM on April 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

As a straight, white, 40-year-old male, I absolutely CAN'T WAIT to watch this (haven't had time yet). I've just loved watching Beyoncé's art deepen over the last few years, and even though I'm not the audience (or, rather, it's not about me), I have tremendous respect for the craft and commitment that she puts into everything she does.

Danila (or anyone else), would you please explain the difference between "womanist" and "feminist"? I don't trust the internet to give me an accurate answer.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 8:19 AM on April 26, 2016

jbenben: “I am singularly unimpressed with all of the lyrics which condone or glamorize infidelity. Fuck these rich people. I don't think their relationship is "cool" and I'm disgusted their drama is something they are making money off of. I get it. They use others and each other.”

Er – I get the feeling you haven't watched it, listened to it, or even read the lyrics. The lyrics are about a woman in intense pain because of the cheating her partner has put her through. They are about what a devastatingly painful and terrible thing cheating is. They are about how cheating is an analogue of slavery and racial injustice. (!!!) Nothing you could say about infidelity could possible be as terrible as what Lemonade says about infidelity, which is that infidelity is the most basic and awful form of personal betrayal imaginable for human beings.

Seriously, I ain't even mad. I'm more confused, although I think I can understand. Infidelity is shitty, and as such it's easy to have a personal reaction to it, and to assume that rich people are just glamorizing it and making it look cool. Rest assured, though, that is not what is happening here. This album is savagely and defiantly calling out all men ("am I talking about your husband or father?") who participate in the patriarchal system, who participate in

"... the tradition of men in my blood, you come home at 3 a.m. and lie to me. What are you hiding? ... What a fucking curse."

Like I say, your misunderstanding this doesn't upset or annoy me – I get that you just heard some things, and it sounded like another "we're rich, we fuck whoever we want" free-love bullshit festival to you, so you switched it off. That misunderstanding doesn't bother me like a lot of other misunderstandings about this album bother me. All I can say is: you should give it a try. Because I think you'll be surprised at how powerful this film is when it's talking about the hideous pain and utter betrayal of infidelity – and about what it means to move past that.

And – yeah, little girls are watching. What they're going to get from this is that the mothers are strong, that they don't take shit, and that they speak honestly and openly about it when they are hurt, demanding to be taken seriously and respected. I think that's a fine thing to be telling little girls.
posted by koeselitz at 8:20 AM on April 26, 2016 [22 favorites]

It seems very deliberate: like she said "I want to reclaim what's ours". Or even more "We will reclaim what is ours."

Or "I am reclaiming what's ours."

Count me on the "not understanding at all how this shows infidelity as anything other than an oozing wound" train.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:33 AM on April 26, 2016

would you please explain the difference between "womanist" and "feminist"? I don't trust the internet to give me an accurate answer.

Womanist is a term with at leasat 30 or so years in academic and activist discourse, originated by Alice Walker (short definition, although there's a whole book.) The distinction vis feminism is that womanism starts from the experience of black woman (who, in the historical feminist movement, were often sidelined), and often examines racism, colonialism, and sexism as interlocking oppressions. I hesitate to generalize more than that because just like feminism, womanism is a wide umbrella of a movement/dialogue that many thinkers with sometimes contradicting views can genuinely identify with.
posted by Krom Tatman at 8:37 AM on April 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

Thanks, Krom Tatman! Very helpful.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 8:48 AM on April 26, 2016

I really don't understand how you could have read any of the comments in this thread and then decided to say the thing you said.

these knees were made for jerkin
and that's just what they'll do
one of these days these knees are gonna jerk all over you
posted by poffin boffin at 9:57 AM on April 26, 2016 [23 favorites]

Eeeeewwwwww
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:23 AM on April 26, 2016

All the African influences in Beyoncé’s visual album, Lemonade, explained
posted by infini at 10:55 AM on April 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

Piers Morgan, you don't like Beyonce in Lemonade because her blackness isn't white enough for you any more
You are a middle aged, British white man. You have no idea, I repeat: NO IDEA what it is like to be a black woman, and furthermore the sacrificial, struggle-filled, tongue-biting, mask-wearing fight it is to become a successful one
posted by infini at 10:57 AM on April 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

colie: Isn't that one of the reasons she's got the guy on the album? To get more ears?

discopolo: Has anybody seen those annoying tweets about how many writers are on each track? What is with people and not understanding how powerful and important collaboration is in art? I find that "true genius is done alone" kind attitude a real sign of immaturity.

From an NPR review:

Beyoncé is stomping, frolicking, crawling and sashaying back and forth across the genre line, all over Lemonade. When she hears a sound she wants, she goes straight to the source: When she needs melancholy, she turns to reclusive electronic crooner James Blake. When going for a kind of emotional detachment, and talking about money, she taps newly minted pop superstar The Weeknd. And when she's righteously angry — just one shade of the emotion she explores thoroughly on Lemonade — she calls on blues rock giant Jack White.

Beyoncé uses these men as tools. She digests their work and filters it through her art, creating a new and distinct product.

That last line is great, and answers the comments from others. Also, that criticism of Beyoncé sounds similar to people who critique hip-hop and sample-based music, saying that those musicians can't make their own music or stand on their own. Appropriation has over 100 years of history in art, and that's only in the most blatant forms. This BBC article, titled "Good artists copy, great artists steal," looks back as far as 1500, and also notes "Counterfeiters copy, and conceal they are doing so. Students copy, as artistic training. Assistants copy, as labour for more famous artists."

Artistic creation and originality is not cut and dry, and there are many layers of nuance and history that add to the final product in Lemonade. In the end, I'm sticking with that final line in the NPR quote above: "She digests their work and filters it through her art, creating a new and distinct product. "
posted by filthy light thief at 11:24 AM on April 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

Beyoncé uses these men as tools. She digests their work and filters it through her art, creating a new and distinct product.

I'm sure that's part of it, but on a more prosaic level it's similar to when Quincy Jones asked Eddie Van Halen to do a metal guitar solo on 'Beat It'. Successful pop artists are always looking for ways to broaden their appeal or else people get bored of them. I was responding to another poster who found it distasteful that some people would check out Beyonce's album only because Jack White was on it; I don't see that as a problem and perhaps she doesn't either. The artefact in question is the result of a set of decisions in a recording studio after all, not a divine revelation, any more than Michael Jackson's or The Beatles' albums are.
posted by colie at 11:49 AM on April 26, 2016

It feels really strange to talk about "go[ing] straight to the source" when two of the three examples cited are white men whose work is heavily influenced by black musicians and what was once considered "black music". I don't even disagree with the broader point, that it's a question of Beyoncé as auteur finding people to help execute her vision, but I wish the writer had dug a little deeper into what it means, c.f. Potomac Avenue's comment.

I disagree that the genre-hopping is merely about "broadened appeal" or even about a talented artist flexing her skills or creating a certain mood; I think it also plays into the story she's telling about history, about generational and cultural resonances.

What really makes Lemonade a masterpiece, rather than "just" a very good album, IMO, is how deftly woven together all its individually excellent aspects are: the personal flows into the historical and the political, how aesthetics (musical and visual) and emotion and theme and genre all support and reinforce one another.
posted by Krom Tatman at 12:00 PM on April 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

I'm sure that's part of it, but on a more prosaic level it's similar to when Quincy Jones asked Eddie Van Halen to do a metal guitar solo on 'Beat It'. Successful pop artists are always looking for ways to broaden their appeal or else people get bored of them

Orrrrrrrrrrrr maybe Beyonce saw a creative Thing in them that she wanted to tap into so she could achieve her vision.

Plus I submit that "people getting bored of Beyonce" is about as likely in the foreseeable future as The Queen doing a pole dance.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:41 PM on April 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

(The Queen as in Elizabeth, not Bey)
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:43 PM on April 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

I loved how she delved into different musical traditions to support each chapter, ignoring the arbitrary barriers and focus-grouped expectations that is the modern corporate structure of music; the visual, spoken, and musical callbacks through the whole thing was beautifully constructed.

She may be collaborating with (white )men in some cases, but it's not like she wasn't very familiar with these musical traditions before. As a Southern woman (particularly one interested in music, particularly with her origins in Texas, particularly as a black woman), these forms of music would have been endemic in her life from childhood, just as the architectural and landscape images we saw were. These were the sounds of her young and young adulthood and growth as an artist and shaped the way she visualized this project. She recruited people who could help her achieve what she wanted.

The only thing worse than the focus on the celebrity gossip archaeology is the continuing need to find ways to make this achievement less than it is by trying to erase her vision, her command, her creativity, her craft from the piece.
posted by julen at 12:46 PM on April 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

Let's Dive Into the Most Fascinating Credits on Beyoncé's Lemonade
posted by DynamiteToast at 1:53 PM on April 26, 2016

but let's be honest I'm really relishing the idea of a dude who watches all of Lemonade for the like eighth of a second where Jack White says 'Don't hurt yourself' a couple times
posted by beerperson at 2:18 PM on April 26, 2016 [12 favorites]

but let's be honest I'm really relishing the idea of a dude who watches all of Lemonade for the like eighth of a second where Jack White says 'Don't hurt yourself' a couple times

Hahahaha, seriously! Who cares about Jack White?
posted by discopolo at 2:22 PM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Last night walking home I imagined an alternate video of "Don't Hurt Yourself" where Beyoncé straight up murders Jack White during it, and though I have nothing personally against Jack White (in fact, I like him just fine), I'm still hoping against hope for it.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 4:15 PM on April 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

I watched the first half of this last night, and WOW. It is pretty much everything. At the line "You best call Becky with the good hair" my husband turned to me and said "I feel like I should run and hide, and I'm not even who she's mad at!"
posted by KathrynT at 5:06 PM on April 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

We are from Houston so maybe that distorts the sample

So, like, yeah, "this is not for us", etc.

But being a white girl from the same soggy postage stamp of the world that Beyonce is from*, and being the same age, with similar family histories (country come to suburbia, parents with troubled marriages), I feel like everything Bey has been doing lately holds up a dark mirror to my own experience. AND I FUCKING LOVE IT. Quvenzhane Wallis is from my hometown. When I see Spanish moss and front porches and fire hydrants draped with Mardi Gras beads, that's home to me. And it means something that Beyonce (and my black girl friends from growing up in Louisiana, too, of course) and I look up at the same moon every night, so to speak. The south does not only belong to racist asshole white people babbling on about heritage.

I feel like this film is a testament to a truth that has been important to me for a long time. I don't want to take away from the Black Womanness of it, at all. But I think just as much as it's important that this is For Black Women, it's also important that this is universal, too. Not just because I want cornrows and frilly Victoriana, too, or because I like yaka mein and bounce, too, but because the South doesn't belong only to white people. Maybe it doesn't belong to white people at all.

*Well, South Louisiana, not Houston, but lots of family in Houston, her mom's from New Iberia, all the New Orleans and Louisiana swamp imagery, a baseball bat called Hot Sauce, etc.
posted by Sara C. at 6:14 PM on April 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

yeah i think that just goes back to reagan gomez was saying - You can like something that centers blackness/black women. You can even connect with it...and still center blackness. It's ok. - and i think it's good for us anti-racist, 'good' southern women to still recognize how white women's tears have been used to elevate and center us and actively work to give black women the floor, even if we love what they're doing with it.
posted by nadawi at 7:13 PM on April 26, 2016 [11 favorites]

This right here is what spectacularly great powerful, emotional, political art by a great artist looks, sounds, and feels like. Man, the second I heard the sample from "Can't Get Used to Losing You" (what a fucking brilliant claiming of appropriated sound), my brain started to melt, and by the time the Malcolm X quote popped up, there was like a massive brain puddle on my living room floor. And I haven't even played the audio album yet. No, it's not made for or about me, but thank the damn cosmos I get to experience it anyhow.
posted by FelliniBlank at 7:39 PM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh, yeah, nadawi, this is not a "white girl tears" thing at all, more like a high five with a side of "sestraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa"
posted by Sara C. at 8:17 PM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

absolutely - totally not accusing you of that at all - just discussing how i as a southern white woman works through the tension of relating and not centering myself.
posted by nadawi at 8:28 PM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think this -- and Formation -- are some of the first Black Feminist texts where I *didn't* have to pass through that phase.
posted by Sara C. at 8:40 PM on April 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Look, I get that the yellow dress is one of a slate of references to Oshun but I also want it to be kelp, okay? As part of the water symbolism but not necessarily related to Oshun? (Oshun's a water orisha, but I don't think I can sell the notion that she's a big kelp enthusiast - she's a goddess of sweet/fresh water, she's got her own river, and Nigeria has a lotta coastline but it's not famous for kelp forest the way the seas of the Cape are.)
posted by gingerest at 11:02 PM on April 26, 2016

Is this award-winnable? Like, does it qualify for an Oscar? Emmy? Some other thing?

HBO to Submit Lemonade for Emmy Consideration
posted by FelliniBlank at 11:56 PM on April 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

another thing occurs to me about the redemption narrative - there is a view point that isn't "she takes him back and they move forward." the shot of miss tina, beyonce's mom, - looking resplendent - is with her second husband. "you try this shit again you gonna lose your wife" is what happened between mathew and tina.
posted by nadawi at 9:45 AM on April 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

I don't like to be cynical... so I'll let someone else do it for me http://www.theonion.com/article/beyonce-quickly-releases-new-song-about-how-buying-52810
posted by Shikantaza at 9:49 AM on April 27, 2016

how about no
posted by Krom Tatman at 9:50 AM on April 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

I saw that onion article yesterday and thought it was annoyingly reductive. I mean, sure, I thought that because Lemonade is a thing I really like, and I suppose anytime the onion skewers something you really like, that's how it feels. But speaking of white male universalness...
posted by Sara C. at 9:55 AM on April 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Sara C. - The onion article is reductive but that's the point right? Nobody would take it as an straight up opinion piece because it's an obvious simplification for comic effect. I haven't heard the album so I don't actually have an opinion on it. In terms of white male universalness what makes you so sure? Is it so unlikely that a woman/poc would write the piece?
posted by Shikantaza at 10:29 AM on April 27, 2016

From NPR's The Record, Close To Home: A Conversation About Beyoncé's 'Lemonade', a conversation between Armstrong State professor Regina Bradley and writer (and personal friend to Jay-Z) dream hampton about Lemonade.

dream hampton: We really do say the worst things to our lovers. And we really do treat our lovers the very worst and the very best. That's part of what intimacy is about, being so up in somebody's stuff that they can't avoid all the parts of you. But I do love that Beyoncé, unlike blueswomen before her, rejects the idea of sacrificial love as the wife's duty in a cis-het relationship. In this suite, she demands accountability before we get forgiveness. She's also being fully present in her rage, and fully understanding of what it is she deserves.

posted by mhum at 10:34 AM on April 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

Sara C. - The onion article is reductive but that's the point right? Nobody would take it as an straight up opinion piece because it's an obvious simplification for comic effect. I haven't heard the album so I don't actually have an opinion on it. In terms of white male universalness what makes you so sure? Is it so unlikely that a woman/poc would write the piece?

hey how about instead of mansplaining humor to a woman who has done it professionally and doing this idiotic just-asking-questions routine, you go watch/listen to Lemonade
posted by Krom Tatman at 10:35 AM on April 27, 2016 [11 favorites]

hey how about instead of mansplaining humor to a woman who has done it professionally and doing this idiotic just-asking-questions routine, you go watch/listen to Lemonade

Please don't be hostile I'm genuinely trying to get to grips with this point of view because I'm not totally familiar with it. I'm on this site because I value people's thoughts and opinions. If my comments gave off an air of condescension I apologise, that was not my intention.
posted by Shikantaza at 11:10 AM on April 27, 2016

You might have a more informed opinion about it if you listened to Lemonade before trotting out a tired Onion article that trivializes literally every single thing Beyonce is doing with this album.

Understanding that trivialization, and understanding that said trivialization generally comes from people who are white and/or men, might give you a deeper insight into why you have been met with what you call hostility.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:26 AM on April 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

Ok thank you
posted by Shikantaza at 11:31 AM on April 27, 2016

Please don't be hostile

Please don't assume that women being honest and direct with you are therefore hostile. I know it feels that way, because our culture expects women to apologize for having opinions. But you need to let that go.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 11:32 AM on April 27, 2016 [18 favorites]

It was more the use of the phrase "idiotic" than making any assumptions on the user's gender. I realise I've been a little bit hasty with my contributions here anyway so once again, I'm sorry.
posted by Shikantaza at 11:36 AM on April 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's totally possible for commentators' points of view to diverge from or critique the authorial and narratorial perspectives of Lemonade. And it's totally possible for people to crack jokes about the work in good faith. But man, if there's one joke that is really really not the joke to be cracking about this particular piece, it's some tired offensive shit about Beyoncé pandering superficially and disingenuously to women's pain and strength in order to turn a buck.
posted by FelliniBlank at 11:38 AM on April 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

(And that's aimed at The Onion, not you, Shikantaza. I hope you'll share your opinions of Lemonade once you've had a chance to watch it.)
posted by FelliniBlank at 11:40 AM on April 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

The Onion piece was poor but I would have thought Beyonce's enormous wealth (450m?) is a relevant part of the discussion about her position and the role of art under capitalism.
posted by colie at 11:47 AM on April 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sure. And given the subject matter, it seems to me like the only appropriate people to be making that criticism at this point are black women. (Which, yes, the writer of the Onion piece may well be.)
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:49 AM on April 27, 2016

Mod note: Probably we can just set aside the Onion thing at this point in any case.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:54 AM on April 27, 2016

you can get 30 days of tidal free, you can buy the mp3s or the physical product, there are a million places to pirate the whole package from - i don't understand the argument that just because someone is wealthy, they shouldn't sell their art. there are ways to listen to it and not buy it and if you think paying into the studio system is pissing your money away, then go on and pirate it (i've certainly done this for other big label works, saving my limited music buying budget for independent artists who directly receive the money). but when the capitalist critique is levied specifically at a black woman - one who says on the album, 'best revenge is your paper', the complaint seems to be about a lot more than just her wealth.
posted by nadawi at 12:11 PM on April 27, 2016 [13 favorites]

I would have thought Beyonce's enormous wealth (450m?) is a relevant part of the discussion about her position and the role of art under capitalism.

Absolutely, and she seems to start the conversation herself in "6 Inch".
posted by FelliniBlank at 12:12 PM on April 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Let's not be coy, this is straight up what she says:

She works for the money, she work for the money
From the start to the finish
And she worth every dollar, she worth every dollar
And she worth every minute
She works for the money
She works for the money
She works for the money
She works for the money

So yeah, she's rich. She's successful. And she has worked fucking hard to get there.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:16 PM on April 27, 2016 [8 favorites]

I don't mind paying for the music (and have done), fair enough.
posted by colie at 12:21 PM on April 27, 2016

And – yeah, little girls are watching. What they're going to get from this is that the mothers are strong, that they don't take shit, and that they speak honestly and openly about it when they are hurt, demanding to be taken seriously and respected. I think that's a fine thing to be telling little girls.

Delightful case in point
posted by FelliniBlank at 1:14 PM on April 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

Why doesn't anyone question the legitimacy of wealthy white men's art "under capitalism"?
posted by Sara C. at 1:42 PM on April 27, 2016 [8 favorites]

Don't we sometimes question the legitimacy of Bono or Paul McCartney and their relation to power and money etc?

I'm only responding because of the scare quotes around 'under capitalism'.
posted by colie at 2:08 PM on April 27, 2016

Sometimes. Rarely. It's usually only female artists who get accused of writing something only for money, or not doing the work and only being the face, etc.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:13 PM on April 27, 2016 [8 favorites]

not nearly as much as we question the legitimacy of wealth from people who aren't white men. i don't remember anyone asking why u2 or beck or paul mccartney still sell albums or put their music on streaming services instead of just giving it away.
posted by nadawi at 2:15 PM on April 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

It's usually only female artists who get accused of writing something only for money, or not doing the work and only being the face, etc.

also used against black men who sing about gaining the expressions of wealth usually reserved for white men - conversations on kanye are a great place to see that play out.
posted by nadawi at 2:17 PM on April 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

U2 created one of the biggest shitstorms of hate in recent memory by literally giving away their last album in return for getting paid by Apple. Some of that residual rancour about tech-meets-music is what makes people dislike Tidal.
posted by colie at 2:26 PM on April 27, 2016

Also platform exclusivity has only recently become a thing for music and it's not surprising to see pushback when a major release is only available on a specific streaming service. Although the pushback is definitely overblown given that it stopped being exclusive before the weekend was over.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:30 PM on April 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think just about every artist gets some version of the capitalism corrupts your art thing thrown at them, look at all the vitriol directed at any artists who "sell out." Like being able to feed your family with your art suddenly makes it less authentic, like you should somehow be above such petty human needs for the sake of your art. Which, whatever, people gotta get paid. Art has value, and the people who make it are allowed to demand that value.

That said, it's specifically women who get the "she's just the pretty face/she's just the product" thing thrown at them. Men get "ugh, what a sellout," women get "she's not a real artist, she's just a corporate creation." Add race and suddenly the word "uppity" is hanging in the air, invisible and unsaid, but very much felt. (See also: any conversation about Kanye West.)
posted by yasaman at 2:42 PM on April 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

That said, it's specifically women who get the "she's just the pretty face/she's just the product" thing thrown at them.

Last night at dinner a friend's husband said "I don't like Beyonce all she's good at is dancing". It's been a day and I still can't believe that's a position someone can truly believe. The good news is I already knew he was an asshole.
posted by DynamiteToast at 2:53 PM on April 27, 2016 [8 favorites]

It needs to be said that if a white male artist of similar popular and creative stature to Beyonce (Macklemore? Imagine Dragons? Jack White? Mumford & Sons?) did something analogous to this, NOBODY would be chiding them for charging people money for an album, or for making a film project in promotion of same. It would be the apotheosis of the best artistic expression a human being could achieve, on par with Shakespeare, Mozart, etc. It would win everything, and it would be the punchline or the gotcha when comparing white male music with that of people like Drake, Beyonce, or Taylor Swift. It would be like that time everybody was supposed to go see "The Interview" for America, or whatever, but bigger. Can't we let Beyonce have just a little bit of that treatment?
posted by Sara C. at 2:53 PM on April 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Can't we let Beyonce have just a little bit of that treatment?

Think Serena Williams
posted by infini at 3:18 PM on April 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

apparently daddy lessons is already showing up on country radio. i wonder if she'll end up charting on rock and country charts.

Since reading this yesterday, every time I hear the "it's your second amendment" lyric, I imagine a black woman singing that on a country station, or god willing a country-charting song, and the disconnect that would cause for so many people, and it makes me smile.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 3:42 PM on April 27, 2016 [12 favorites]

Linking is hard on mobile, but Azealia Banks went off on Twitter accussing Lemonade of being anti-feminist because it still centers women in service of man.
posted by divabat at 5:51 PM on April 27, 2016

U2 created one of the biggest shitstorms of hate in recent memory by literally giving away their last album in return for getting paid by Apple

but that was people mad that they were forced to have a u2 album, not demanding that u2 not get paid or that he shouldn't charge for his album or control the distribution of it.
posted by nadawi at 6:18 PM on April 27, 2016 [9 favorites]

I had an IM conversation where the other person dropped "Beyonce is the female Kanye". It took a lot of willpower not to reach through the internet to shake him (of course it was a him) to his senses.
posted by like_neon at 1:40 AM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

A podcast I listen to had a conversation between a guy who had listened to the album but not watched the visual album, and a guy who had not seen either (because he didn't realize he could buy them through iTunes and didn't have to sign up for Tidal), but who had read a zillion articles about the project. It was an interesting thing. I'd say they got some things right and some things wrong and some things that made me do a facepalm and generally I thought they were brave even trying to discuss it. But they were generally sensitive enough that, while they might not pass MetaFilter muster for their discussion, there really wasn't much to fault about it, other than the stuff they got truly wrong.

I really want to once again point out the article linked in this comment, which gave me a lot of required context.
posted by hippybear at 2:51 AM on April 28, 2016

"Be careful of those who admire you deeply, think you're brilliant but resent your light."-- Warsan Shire
posted by infini at 5:20 AM on April 28, 2016 [6 favorites]

I don't really understand anyone who is trying to discuss this without experiencing it. Or see how that is "brave", or really anything beyond lazy podcasting. It takes AN HOUR to watch this thing. If you can't watch it because you don't want to look into how to find it on a service you want to use, then podcast about something else.

Is this what they mean when they say "have the confidence of a mediocre white guy?"
posted by Sara C. at 9:02 AM on April 28, 2016 [9 favorites]

I'm lying here on the sofa listening to it with headphones and following along with the lyrics on my phone and it's like I'm a teenager absorbed into an LP's liner notes all over again. Amazing.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:12 AM on April 28, 2016 [8 favorites]

some cmt writer tried to say that daddy lessons was no more country than single ladies, and was obviously not country because she didn't go through nashville to do it, as if shania twain didn't settle this stupid argument over 20 years ago.
posted by nadawi at 10:04 AM on April 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

also, i'm not sure how you can be a country music writer and not see the genre differences between single ladies and daddy lessons, and also not know the (black) history of the roots of country music.
posted by nadawi at 10:05 AM on April 28, 2016 [7 favorites]

step one: misogynoir
steps two through ten: repeat step one
posted by poffin boffin at 10:21 AM on April 28, 2016 [11 favorites]

I guess Beyoncé is selling "Boycott Beyonce" merch on her tour. There's something so savvy and great about this...
posted by hippybear at 10:56 AM on April 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

some cmt writer tried to say that daddy lessons was no more country than single ladies

Beyonce's proven ability to do country in her own way seems to be one of the less talked-about aspects of her success so it's interesting to see this come out explicitly. Single Ladies' verse sounds to my ears like a jittery double-speed country song. Taylor Swift took a lot of that into her stuff.
posted by colie at 11:51 AM on April 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

The criticism against female artists always seems to center around them making money from preaching empowerment, which is such an amazing catch-22. It's fine, I guess, to make money if you're already so privileged and secure in the world that you never have to advocate for yourself or your gender in your art. And if you're disempowered, you had better show us your intentions are pure by staying that way.
posted by sunset in snow country at 11:52 AM on April 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm a white girl from the South, and yes, "Daddy Lessons" is country. In fact, I was just listening to it in the car on the way home, A) wishing all country was so great, and B) thinking "OMG THIS IS MY SHIT"/cranking it up on the freeway.

Anyone who thinks this is not a country song because Reasons is glossing over their biggest reason: Beyonce is black.

I've also seen people describe it as "blues" (more from the perspective of trying to seat it within African-American roots styles, rather than out of racism or othering), which is dumb because it's not a blues song at all.
posted by Sara C. at 11:55 AM on April 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

i totally agree that beyonce has long used country influences in her music, but to be fair, i think "daddy lessons" is more country sounding than about 90% of t.swift's output. to my ear single ladies is much more 60s girl group pushed through dancehall and disco than country. i'd love to hear beyonce do a straight up slowed down country version of it though.
posted by nadawi at 3:39 PM on April 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yeah, to me not only is the sound country, but the themes of parent/child relationships, family heritage, defending honor or property, explicit mention of guns, etc. is all straight out of the contemporary Nashville songbook. This is more country than fucking "Butterfly Kisses", for chrissakes.
posted by Sara C. at 3:43 PM on April 28, 2016 [6 favorites]

apparently daddy lessons is already showing up on country radio.

Yes, this really tickles me; I think it must sound very out of place there because it has such a rootsy sound, while all the actual "country" singers are trying to sound like Kelly Clarkson or Drake (!).
posted by threeants at 6:25 PM on April 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

a white male artist of similar popular and creative stature to Beyonce (Macklemore? Imagine Dragons? Jack White? Mumford & Sons?) [...]

This interested me to read, because unless I live in a totally warped bubble, none of these people are even remotely at the same stature as Beyoncé. Honestly I don't think there is a white male artist of her generation with "similar popular and creative status." I'm not saying that to downplay how much easier white men have it in this and most every other industry-- just, I guess, to highlight how singular Beyoncé the individual really is.
posted by threeants at 6:47 PM on April 28, 2016 [6 favorites]

I actually had a hard time coming up with someone. Though I think it's more because "rock is dead" etc.

Radiohead at the height of their popularity might be a good example. If there had been an hourlong film project of cutting-edge music videos -- one for every song on something like OK Computer or Kid A -- broadcast on premium cable in exactly this way, we'd probably still be talking about it now.
posted by Sara C. at 6:52 PM on April 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

a white male artist of similar popular and creative stature to Beyonce

For a white male solo artist combining cultural impact plus sales in the tens of millions since 2000ish, you are only really looking at Eminem...
posted by colie at 11:22 PM on April 28, 2016

I didn't know that "Becky" is a longtime term for a particular type of white woman before this week. My former mother-in-law used to call me "shiksa" when she was mad at me, and though of course at the time I was privately defensive about my relative shiksa-ness, I get the reasons why the term was created and why it lives on. It seems like Becky and shiksa are roughly equivalent words for the same kind of white woman - can anyone confirm?
posted by aabbbiee at 10:27 AM on April 29, 2016

i've seen lots of arguments that while becky usually means a certain type of white woman, beyonce was likely not doing that, rather it's more likely she was talking about that same personality in a black woman with "good hair." she might have meant someone specific but she might have also just meant the types who hang around to hook up with married celebrities if they get a chance.
posted by nadawi at 10:37 AM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

It seems like Becky and shiksa are roughly equivalent words for the same kind of white woman - can anyone confirm?

Well, none of the women who have been suggested as the inspiration for "Becky" have actually been white, so no, it isn't this simple. She's using the trope, but also subverting it. She does that a lot.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 10:38 AM on April 29, 2016

For a white male solo artist combining cultural impact plus sales in the tens of millions since 2000ish, you are only really looking at Eminem...

So Bey has sold in the 100-million-albums range. I'd say that the one group of similar stature that gets "sell out" epithet thrown at them a lot by their own fans is Metallica, also in the 100-million-album-sales club. Now, I think the underlying analysis of what it means to say Beyonce is "too commercial" (or whatever the criticism is, it's dumb regardless) vs what it means for Metallica to "sell out" is a 10 page essay I'm not qualified to write, but it happens to guys too I suppose. It's a trivial, meaningless criticism to either of them.
posted by GuyZero at 10:43 AM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yeah, the use of the term "good hair" implied to me that if this person has a specific real-life counterpart, she identifies as black.

"Becky with the good hair" certainly isn't a slur against or implied insult of All White Women Everywhere, as I've been seeing around the more clueless corners of the internet.
posted by Sara C. at 10:47 AM on April 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

Also Metallica hasn't been culturally relevant in probably 20 years, which makes them very much NOT a Beyonce analogue. Also, don't they do the casino reunion tour circuit now? They literally are sellouts. It's not an epithet hurled at them by people with sour grapes.

It would be kind of amazing if an artist or group with that level of "hey remember them?" status were to make something as creatively compelling as Lemonade, though.
posted by Sara C. at 10:59 AM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Well, Duran Duran, Pet Shop Boys, and Santana have all released pretty amazing albums over the past 6 months. As excellent as I think all of these offerings are, however, I don't think any of them are, in your words, as creatively compelling as Lemonade.
posted by hippybear at 11:09 AM on April 29, 2016

Black Magic Woman
posted by infini at 11:13 AM on April 29, 2016

I agree Sara C. that I don't think Beyonce meant anything controversial with the 'Becky' name, but it did prick up my ears a bit because I grew up in north London near to several Jewish areas, and 'Beck' was a harsher version of 'Jewish Princess.'

http://www.jewish-languages.org/jewish-english-lexicon/words/1540

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=beck&defid=384988

I am old and it's just a coincidence. But, sensitivity etc.
posted by colie at 11:15 AM on April 29, 2016

So, the connections to Santeria in this are interesting. The references to Yemaya, the water goddess (blue and water) and then Ochun, dressed in yellow and flirtatious but vindictive... and that's just in the first two scenes, basically.

Interesting stuff about the Orishas here.
posted by hippybear at 11:17 AM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Didn't some girls-in-high-school movie like Clueless etc use "Becky" as a category of girls? I have "Don't be such a Becky" running in my head somehow.
posted by hippybear at 11:20 AM on April 29, 2016

Metallica have been called sellouts for as long as they have been a group and please don't think I'm trying to sell this comparison for more than it is - it is a fairly weak comparison. It is indeed pretty difficult to point to a direct contemporary male equivalent of Beyonce.

Eminem may be the most contemporary solo male performer that's had the same level of success. He also gets criticized a lot but it would be pretty crazy town to try to compare the criticisms leveled at him vs beyonce.
posted by GuyZero at 11:21 AM on April 29, 2016

Where "Becky" Comes From article with more detail on the term and its use in Lemonade
posted by aabbbiee at 11:23 AM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Oh, I think she MEANT something, for sure.

I'm just positive it wasn't "KILL WHITEY", which is the way it's being interpreted by the #alllivesmatter set.
posted by Sara C. at 11:25 AM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

No, of course not, and no one here is saying that.
posted by aabbbiee at 11:30 AM on April 29, 2016

oh, in case you don't camp the soundcloud page for release whenever any big beyonce news happens, the read has posted their lemonade episode (might also include rip prince, i'm actually listening right now).
posted by nadawi at 11:36 AM on April 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

(kid fury and crissle discuss the good hair part, if you're wanting another pov on that - they're also the best and i love them)
posted by nadawi at 11:37 AM on April 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

Eminem may be the most contemporary solo male performer that's had the same level of success. He also gets criticized a lot but it would be pretty crazy town to try to compare the criticisms leveled at him vs beyonce.

Bear in mind also that a lot of Em's criticisms stem from the fact that he has not evolved much artistically, and people will be much harder on you at 45 for doing stuff they gave you a pass on at 25.

Compare that to Beyonce, who has evolved so much in the past two decades that it's pretty damn staggering. She was always a talented singer, but now she's occupying a very, very rare artistic space.
posted by middleclasstool at 11:47 AM on April 29, 2016 [5 favorites]

I would like to better understand the multicolored swirl-patterned dress that Beyonce is wearing during various parts of the visual album. There is nothing about any part of this project that wasn't specifically chosen, and that is a part that I don't have any context for.
posted by hippybear at 11:52 AM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

I mean, honestly, it is one part amongst many, but it is the one I am asking about right now. #aimingforunderstanding
posted by hippybear at 11:54 AM on April 29, 2016

Do you mean the ankara pattern dress? That article is a good jumping off point.
posted by Lyn Never at 12:12 PM on April 29, 2016 [8 favorites]

Thanks Lyn Never, that was an opening into its context that I was looking for.
posted by hippybear at 12:34 PM on April 29, 2016

I'll be completely honest here. This album isn't meant for me. And I watched it mostly because it seemed like a Big Cultural Moment that I should at least witness.

So my DVR grabbed it, and I watched it. And I was impressed. But I wasn't planning to watch it again. But the images and the music kept echoing in my brain in little bits and snatches. And I will be the first to admit, much of the imagery doesn't have any context for me. (The Santeria stuff does a little because I had a friend who practiced and taught me quite a bit.) But the imagery is striking, and even without my full understanding, it is obvious that this a Deep Text.

So, I watched it again today. It's a multi-layered work of true artistry.

I guess I'm going to end up buying my first-ever Beyonce album.
posted by hippybear at 12:38 PM on April 29, 2016 [4 favorites]

Yeah, that's about how it happened for me. In fact, on Monday, when I first started talking about it with friends, I was saying things like, "Look, Beyonce isn't really 'my shit', or whatever, but as a piece of art you have to admit it's an important thing..." and on Wednesday I downloaded the album just out of curiosity about what it sounds like divorced from the imagery/Warsan Shire's poetry, and last night on the way home I listened to "Freedom" on repeat, full blast. So, yep, downloaded my first Beyonce album.

(FWIW I have enjoyed previous Beyonce songs, but mostly as singles and not downloaded until they became ubiquitous megahits, such as "Single Ladies", "Ring The Alarm", etc)
posted by Sara C. at 12:43 PM on April 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

hippybear: "Didn't some girls-in-high-school movie like Clueless etc use "Becky" as a category of girls?"

Clueless had "Betty" as a synonym for "attractive girl", with Betty Rubble being the original.
posted by mhum at 12:48 PM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

but now she's occupying a very, very rare artistic space.

p sure she is the messiah tbh
posted by poffin boffin at 2:05 PM on April 29, 2016 [6 favorites]

Does anyone know how to get the video to play on an Amazon Fire? I bought the album and it shows up in my music library on my computer, including the video, but how do I get it onto the TV for more satisfying viewing?
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:06 PM on April 29, 2016

As far as artistic progression goes, the only white-male artist I can think of that's had a similar trajectory is Darren Hayes: he went from Top 40 pop music (both with Savage Garden and his first solo album Spin) to high-concept electronic-alt-pop. He released 1 narrative concept double-album as well as its video album version, and has also experimented a lot with alternate forms of media and performance.

He hasn't had nearly the commercial success of Beyonce though.
posted by divabat at 7:30 PM on April 29, 2016

Benny Andersson. Or we can accept that Beyonce is incomparable.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:40 PM on April 29, 2016

Benny Andersson

THAT is an interesting name to bring up. I think one could look at Super Trooper and compare it to Lemonade on a few levels. But at its core, ABBA is men writing words for women to sing. Despite all the names listed as credits for each song, I want to think that Beyonce wrote her own lyrics.
posted by hippybear at 7:43 PM on April 29, 2016

You can come up with folks who

• have a certain autonomy to do whatever they want (either through power of past sales, controlling their own label or sub-label, etc)
• who have had been incredibly creative in distinctive unique ways,
• who have mastered the art of combining performance and artistry,
• who are groundbreaking,
• who can appeal to a widespread audience, or
• who make critically acclaimed music

but finding people who do ALL of those things at the same time is vanishingly rare.

I can name folks who have or had 3 of those things going on at the same time (not always producing something great), and folks who have dwelled in each of those categories at different times in their career, but it's hard to come up with folks who hit all 6 at the same time. Whether you are talking trailblazers like the Carter Family or Caruso or Armstrong, beloved musical icons like Willie Nelson or Aretha Franklin or Madonna, supergroups like the Beatles (who may have been hitting 5 of the 6 at one point), constructors of their own universe like Bing or Sinatra - none of them have managed to achieve what Beyonce has.
posted by julen at 9:44 PM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

didn't know that "Becky" is a longtime term for a particular type of white woman before this week

See, I can understand "good hair" and the Chris Rock documentary, though I took it in reference to hair extensions being from Desi women (and I thought she was singling out Rachel Roy because Roy is Desi), Desi women having great hair, such good hair that poor women in India sell theirs then it gets sold here in the US as wigs and extensions, and etc. but if Becky references a white woman, Im not understanding.

Though it seems right. Anyone remember 30Rock when Tracy Jordan dressed up as a white woman with a monster claw and said "Liz, it’s Becky, your college roommate. See Liz Lemon, you’re already treating me with more respect" ?
posted by discopolo at 9:56 PM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

But which of the Beckys (Beckies?) on Roseanne had the good hair? I'm going with Sarah Chalke.
posted by hippybear at 10:01 PM on April 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

From my understanding, Becky is (partially) a reference to "Oh my God, Becky, look at that butt" from Baby Got Back. "Good hair" also carries a lot of connotations with Black people - Black women especially - being policed, denied jobs, and otherwise attacked for their hair.
posted by divabat at 10:30 PM on April 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

A question that I hope is not insensitive to ask is, how much of that hair policing and attacking is coming from within the black community and how much of it is white supremacy stuff, and how much does THAT Venn Diagram overlap?
posted by hippybear at 10:40 PM on April 29, 2016

I like the Sorry video and song so much. Beyoncé is especially adorable when she's telling Jay Z/cheater/whoever to suck her balls. It's funny how it just makes me smile and warms my heart. It's beyond cute or adorable, really. It's lovely.

I feel like I see so much free spiritedness in that it makes me think...she'd be better off without Jay-Z. She doesn't have "sad wife eyes" in it. Man, it's getting to me. Beyoncé got to me. Like when we had that FPP on why women work so damn hard in heterosexual romantic relationships and to just get disrespected so easily because of some selfish, low empathy dude.

Sigh, Beyoncé, I just want you to be happy! (And ignore any overtures from John Mayer because you know he's going to be sniffing around looking for fame and attention.)

Now I have to see what's going on with Jay Z's Twitter. I wonder if Beyoncé has an individual stake in tidal.
posted by discopolo at 10:53 PM on April 29, 2016

If the 'who is comparable in white guys?' game is open to dead people, then you might have David Bowie - including the whole 'Bowie Bonds' thing where he took business control of his music.

the Beatles (who may have been hitting 5 of the 6 at one point),

Sorry to be the bore who insists that they definitely hit all 6, but they also hit others such as 'exploration of altered consciousness' and 'direct engagement with the avant garde.' They also had 'engagement with politics', which of course should be Beyonce's 7th bullet point on julen's list (with which I totally agree, just to be clear.)
posted by colie at 12:44 AM on April 30, 2016

I Am Becky With the Good Hair--And I Am Also Beyoncé

As I watched Lemonade, I heard a wife, a Beyoncé, cry about a Becky. I listened to her wail on songs like "I Pray You Catch Me" and "Sandcastles," and I resonated with how she felt as a woman who was promised forever and faithfulness only to have these notions dashed by a woman, or women — by “Becky with the good hair.”

I saw my role. I saw hers. I saw an endless march of Beckys who can never be stopped no matter the rage, no matter the brilliance of the lyrical vein cutting.

And I listened to a woman who seemingly has it all but is riddled with the same insecurities of a woman who has not nearly as much. I witnessed as she went through the same stages I’ve gone through and am still traversing through as a wife, and the stages I have contributed to as a Becky.

Until Lemonade, I thought these two women were mutually exclusive but quickly realized they are not and are, in fact, often the same woman.

Because a woman is all things.

posted by Krom Tatman at 12:59 AM on April 30, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sorry to be the bore who insists that they definitely hit all 6, but they also hit others such as 'exploration of altered consciousness' and 'direct engagement with the avant garde.' They also had 'engagement with politics', which of course should be Beyonce's 7th bullet point on julen's list (with which I totally agree, just to be clear.)

Hah! I knew my Beatles note was debatable (they were the closest I came in comparison with Beyonce), and whether they hit all 6 or 7 (am thinking hard about your proposed #7, which I had amortized somehow into other points, but am now contemplating a 7th bullet for political/social impact) at the same time (probably depends on definition of bullet points and how much credit is given for being something in the moment versus being something cumulatively gathered). This exploration really demands a tasty beverage and an appetizer.

I like the Bowie comparison a great deal, not necessarily because he hit everything at once, but when talking about creating personal, resonant, innovative art on his own terms driven by his own animus, he's up there. I feel like Beyonce is really exploring her ideas on multiple axes, experimenting and constructing, spelunking and soaring, at levels that most artists can only dream of. Bowie did it, too, with a similar fearlessness.

Ultimately, I think the game of finding the dude she can be compared to is going to fail, not only because it's a bit of bullshit that we tend to quantify her impact by comparing it to an already existing (almost always male) standard, but because she comes out of an experience where she isn't from the traditional power dynamic in music (white + male). Her challenges are different, but so are her opportunities.

Getting back to Beyonce, and not dudes who are definitely not Beyonce, one of the things I really like about both Formation and Lemonade - Beyonce's creative confidence is in full flower, and she is FEELING IT. I love seeing when a person is totally in their element, knocking it out of the park. There's a glory in that, and a beauty and a kind of hope for the rest of us.
posted by julen at 6:25 AM on April 30, 2016 [2 favorites]

You can come up with folks who

have a certain autonomy to do whatever they want (either through power of past sales, controlling their own label or sub-label, etc)
who have had been incredibly creative in distinctive unique ways,
who have mastered the art of combining performance and artistry,
who are groundbreaking,
who can appeal to a widespread audience, or
who make critically acclaimed music

but finding people who do ALL of those things at the same time is vanishingly rare.

Of the artists I know a lot about, I think the below fit that definition, at least at the height of their artistry:
The Beatles
Bob Dylan
Aretha Franklin
Prince
Michael Jackson
Ray Charles
David Bowie
Stevie Wonder

Maybe:
Madonna (critically acclaimed?)
Kanye West (mastered the art of performance?)
Bruce Springsteen (groundbreaking?)
posted by sallybrown at 12:19 PM on April 30, 2016

I actually think Bob Dylan would make a really interesting comparison to Beyonce, especially (a) the extent to which both intentionally present personas to the public and use those to sell their art; (b) the walls each eventually erected between their "real" lives and the public; and (c) the passion of their fans for studying their art and their personas.

As a superfan of each, I find it very telling how much of a respect disparity there is between how Dylan and Dylan fans are described and treated vs how Beyonce and Beyonce fans are described and treated.
posted by sallybrown at 12:38 PM on April 30, 2016 [4 favorites]

Stumbled on this article the other day on the Citylab blog and thought it was a great interesting take on one key scene (and scary to learn that there can be such restrictions on how many people can sit on a porch!):

Beyonce's Simple But Radical Porch-Front Politics
– The squad-deep, front-porch perching exhibited in Beyonce’s Lemonade video is the kind of thing that can get you evicted in certain corners of New Orleans.
posted by bitteschoen at 12:57 PM on May 1, 2016 [9 favorites]

Roxane Gay on Lemonade: 'by the power of Beyoncé, I'll overcome my fear'
posted by rtha at 5:46 AM on May 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

One of the non-streaming films I typically teach in my summer online Lit and Film class is now so far out of print that it'd be super-hard for students to find cheap (or any) used DVD copies. So I figured that was a message from the universe telling me to say fuck it and assign Lemonade and the Shire poems instead. How conveeeeeenient.
posted by FelliniBlank at 2:34 PM on May 3, 2016 [4 favorites]

The physical album is out today! Meaning the digital version just unlocked in my Amazon account and I can finally listen to it again. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 4:24 AM on May 6, 2016

So, look. I'm a 48 year old gay white male who grew up in an area that was majority hispanic and had basically zero American Black Culture going on.

Is there any source, anything, which has a sort of going-through-the-timeline (I mean this with no disrespect, it's what I need) Blacksplaining of all the imagery in this visual album? I get some of the symbols and stuff, but certainly not even half of them. Maybe a quarter. And there was an article linked upthread which gave a bit of a roundtable discussion of some of the images which I found illuminating. But I want more. More depth and more understanding.
posted by hippybear at 7:32 PM on May 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

hippybear, I've been digging through all the links in this thread, following the links in those pages and whatever 'related posts' get suggested. It's been really good and has led to me finding so many recommendations of books to read and music to listen to and people to follow on Twitter and Instagram. So I can recommend starting there. I already knew about the significance of the "good hair" because of Chris Rock's documentary of the same name, it's pretty good and shows the nuances without judgement. So that's another worthwhile source.

But I'm hungry for more and this path isn't clear, I'm assuming because of the general media neglect of black stories and information. And I'm guessing it will take a while for a really comprehensive analysis to come out. So in the meanwhile if any MeFites know of good links about even the tiniest aspect of Lemonade, i would be so grateful to read them.
posted by harriet vane at 11:10 PM on May 6, 2016

All of which is to say... In the big intersectional Venn diagram of life, I share the sections labelled 'woman', 'wife' and 'in love' with Beyonce. And those parts of Lemonade were electrifying. So accurate and heartfelt and beautiful and terrifying. Which makes me feel like the sections I don't understand must also be fucking amazing, and the reactions so far from black women prove that. And she has done us all the favour of laying it out so invitingly! Beyonce made this gift for herself and for black women, but she's not excluding anyone who's willing to learn. It could have been a little personal side project but nope, she made it bigger than Ben Hur. And she's very kindly provided pointers to so many artists that I'm only scared of missing something along the way.
posted by harriet vane at 11:36 PM on May 6, 2016 [2 favorites]

The Lemonade Syllabus
posted by divabat at 9:30 PM on May 7, 2016 [8 favorites]

I love that someone made a syllabus! And that it has music in it!
posted by harriet vane at 2:31 AM on May 8, 2016

And a research guide.
posted by unknowncommand at 4:11 PM on May 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Sorry, I'm still gushing over here. One of the things I love about the 6-Inch Heels section is how it reverses the genders of the standard music video trope of a rich dude in a limo staring at women in the street with his ennui on display.
posted by harriet vane at 8:13 PM on May 9, 2016

The great bell hooks on Lemonade -

In her fictive world, Beyoncé can name black female pain, poignantly articulated by the passionate poetry of Somali-British poet Warsan Shire, and move through stages evoked by printed words: Intuition, Denial, Forgiveness, Hope, Reconciliation. In this fictive world, black female emotional pain can be exposed and revealed. It can be given voice: this is a vital and essential stage of freedom struggle, but it does not bring exploitation and domination to an end. No matter how hard women in relationships with patriarchal men work for change, forgive, and reconcile, men must do the work of inner and outer transformation if emotional violence against black females is to end. We see no hint of this in Lemonade. If change is not mutual then black female emotional hurt can be voiced, but the reality of men inflicting emotional pain will still continue (can we really trust the caring images of Jay Z which conclude this narrative).

posted by sallybrown at 8:21 PM on May 9, 2016 [3 favorites]

janet mock discusses bell hook's critiques

Feminist scholar and critic bell hooks wrote this piece on Beyoncé's visual album LEMONADE. We are friends, and like friends with different life experiences we have consistently disagreed privately and publicly about many topics, and our disagreements about Beyonce are on record...so let's move beyond the clickbaity soundbiteness of "bell vs Beyonce" and discuss the dismissal of black femme feminists which I feel parts of bell's critique is steeped in. (ie: "Utterly-aestheticized," "not dressed up bodies," "fashion plate fantasy" reek of judgment of glamour, femininity & femme presentations.) It echoes dismissal of femmes as less serious, colluding with patriarchy, merely using our bodies rather than our brains to sell, be seen, survive. We gotta stop this. All of us. Femme feminists/writers/thinkers/artists are consistently dismissed, pressured to transcend presentation in order to prove our woke-ability. Our "dressed up" bodies and "big hair" do not make us any less serious. Our presentations are not measurements of our credibility. These hierarchies of respectability that generations of feminists have internalized will not save us from patriarchy. Femmephobia (and whorephobia!) must be abolished in our spaces, our theories and our critiques of one another and one another's work.

(quoted in full since i know some people don't have facebook accounts/don't like clicking over there)
posted by nadawi at 8:20 AM on May 10, 2016 [9 favorites]

Ooh, janet mock puts it very well. I myself don't go for traditional feminine presentation at all, but I really dislike the way that certain strains of feminist don't respect the fact that to some women, that presentation is absolutely their way of owning themselves, loving themselves. The idea that it is somehow more *truly* feminist, that you are somehow more liberated if you deny the self-expression that you want... really hate that.

At least hooks was less trollish this time than the last time she went off on Beyonce.
posted by tavella at 9:52 AM on May 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

Today on Feministing, A Feminist Roundtable on bell hooks, Beyoncé, and “Moving Beyond Pain”.
posted by mhum at 10:15 AM on May 11, 2016 [4 favorites]