'Lemonade' by Beyoncé

Lemonade

by Beyoncé

Release Date: 23rd April 2016

Tracklist: Pray You Catch Me / Hold Up / Don't Hurt Yourself (feat. Jack White) / Sorry / 6 Inch (feat. The Weeknd) / Daddy Lessons / Love Drought / Sandcastles / Forward (feat. James Blake) / Freedom (feat. Kendrick Lamar) / All Night / Formation //

I've never been a massive fan of Beyoncé - I've maybe listened to the odd song here and there, but I've never loved and listened to an entire album - Lemonade is the exception.

Yes, it’s a conceptual album, and a brilliant one at that - the narrative of the album is how Jay-Z cheated on Beyoncé – that’s both audio and visual (where it’s accompanied by a film, and even without this it still visually stands). A lot of people speculate about conceptual albums, in the sense that the concept then overshadows the actual work of the album. From that, half of the time, the work is then overlooked when reviewing because they are more interested in what it’s about and that’s a sad thing – especially when, musically, this is Beyoncé’s best work.

It’s by far the most diverse album of hers, sampling tracks from all over the music scene, and working with a range of people from Jack White to The Weeknd to James Blake. Pray You Catch Me, the introducing track, has, funnily enough, an incredible introduction. It’s lush from the get go – incorporating these rich, full harmonies (that, at the start sound slightly a-tonal), which slowly builds up, with an accompanied electronicism, overlaying them on and off-beat. Where it then continues into the track, and carries on exploring these harmonies and introduces both strings and piano. Hold Up is where the epic sampling begins – the main instrumental section of Hold Up is sampled from Andy Williams' Can’t Get Used To Losing You, panning beautifully from one ear the other while the sample practically circles your mind, which fits perfectly into the song while she sings: “Hold up, they don’t love you like I love you, they don’t love you like I love you.” These two tracks are only the start of the diversity and demonstrate how she explores past her typified genre.

Don’t Hurt Yourself (feat. Jack White) is, I would like to say, ‘one of the stand-out tracks on the album’, but then again, if I do I’ll end up saying that for every track on the album. When I heard this, I realised how varied the album actually is, only the third track in and I was already overwhelmed. Not only does Don’t Hurt Yourself sample Led Zeppelin’s When The Levee Breaks (that was a brilliant realisation), but it also has that flare of The White Stripes (strong bass lines and percussion) from Jack White’s influence and addition to the track.

If you haven’t noticed Beyoncé has completely out-done herself on this, not just with the level of diversity. Part of Beyoncé's rise in music was due to how incredible her voice is. She’s always had brilliant control over it, an outstanding range, and knows how to use it – a pretty good example being in Love On Top where she modulates more than enough as she comfortably moves to the top of her range. In Lemonade she proves how well she can use it and that she can sing not only to the standard of pop that she’s used to - example one: Don’t Hurt Yourself, example two: Daddy Lessons.

Daddy Lessons is this country guitar-line with the cross over of southern American brass, demonstrating, once again, the range of genres on this album by just how easily she can switch between them and how much her voice excels at it. Daddy Lessons also reveals how the musicality of her tracks don’t always have to be forward thinking and experimental. The more traditional style of this track fits with the chapter that it is in the conceptual part of the album, as it illustrates the parallels between her father and Jay-Z. And just the finish the track off, it ends with this adorable recording of her daughter, Blue Ivy, saying, ‘Good job, B’. Freedom (feat. Kendrick Lamar) continues the sampling expedition, with probably the most obscure sample on the album where she’s taken the organ section from Kaleidoscope’s track ‘Let Me Try’. Freedom, speaks to black rights, and rightly so with both Kendrick’s section as he raps:

“Ten Hail Mary’s, I meditate for practice / Channel 9 News tell me I’m movin’ backwards / Eight blocks left, death is around the corner / Seven misleadin’ statements ‘about my persona / Six headlights wavin’ in my direction / Five-O askin’ what’s in my possession. ”

and Beyoncé’s:

“Freedom! Freedom! I can’t move / Freedom, cut me loose! / Freedom! Freedom! Where are you? / Cause I need my freedom too! / I break chains all by myself / Won’t let my freedom rot in hell / Hey! I’ma keep running / Cause a winner don’t quite on themselves”.

The track is then concluded further by giving you the answer to the title of the album with a sample of a speech from Hattie White saying, “I had my ups and downs, but I always find the inner strength to pull myself up. I was served lemons, but I made lemonade”.

Now when I saw that James Blake featured on this track, Forward, it made me unbelievably happy – it’s exactly the sort of track I expect from James Blake. This track, although feels more like an interlude, is the only track that Beyoncé doesn’t lead on the vocals and actually just harmonises in the second half, not that her voice isn’t amazing, I think that was already established but James Blake’s voice is astounding and drives the emotional grasp of the song, forward (that pun was very intended).

She addresses both the issues of black rights and feminism within her main narrative of the album. I cannot express enough how well Beyoncé has done with this album; it is, by far, her best work. I would embed the album to listen to below, but unfortunately it currently still isn’t on Spotify or YouTube. I seriously recommend going and buying it – that decision would not be something that you would regret doing – or being one of the many that got the Tidal trial just to listen to her album. However, I did find the link for the Formation video - so definitely watch that.