I’m not sure if it’s sacrilegious or not, but I’m not in love with Lemonade. I like it a lot, sure. But it’s not a crush—we’re just friends. The songs are solid, but the subject matter felt less like disclosure and more like a PR move. I don’t follow TMZ, but I read the music blogs, and where we are in the current Beyoncé/Jay press cycle seems to indicate that I wasn’t necessarily wrong. This song is fire either way.
I also don’t really understand the concept of the “visual album.” There are some striking images in this set of videos, particularly this one for “Formation,” but am I excepted to plop down and watch a movie to get the full experience or can the music stand on its own? I know we all have these magic devices that let us watch anything anywhere, but that just seems tedious to me.
With that said, Bey deserves her Queen title. She is constantly killing it. It’s been interesting to watch the opposite career trajectories between her and her husband, but in a way it’s emblematic of her ascension to pop music’s feminist throne. And while it’s far out of my wheelhouse, she is an important icon of black womanhood and strength that is vital to American culture. That this song got a bunch of Fox News-watching assholes all bent out of shape was just delightful, especially because many of them hail (heil?) from the states she shouts out in one of this song’s catchiest moments. Black Lives Matter. ACAB. She slay.
“I got hot sauce in my bag, swag.”