Beyoncé’s “Lemonade” quenches listeners’ thirst

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Photo Courtesy of Columbia Records

Beyoncé’s latest album shows her struggle with her husband’s infidelity as well as showing her pride as an African American, but the ultimate message, the theme of the album, is about overcoming and making lemonade when life serves you lemons.

Beyoncé has once again elevated the music industry with her new visual album, “Lemonade.” After premiering first on HBO, the album was released exclusively to Tidal, a music streaming service, and then eventually became available on both iTunes and Amazon.

Beyoncé is pioneering the combination of music and visuals, which manifests itself in, essentially, a really long music video. However, this album doesn’t disappoint, and viewers get an intimate look into the seemingly perfect relationship of Beyoncé and husband Jay-Z.

Americans’ mouths dropped upon the revelation that infidelity has taken place in our so-called “perfect” couple, as is portrayed through the album where Beyoncé parallels the seven stages of grief she went through after finding Jay-Z to be disloyal. It’s a very personal glimpse of her own demons and problems and is packed with raw emotion. In the visual album, the songs are broken up with spoken word poetry fueled by adultery and racial disparity, two issues that seem to have plagued Beyoncé.

The commercial success of the album is undeniable, as it has already sold more than 650,000 copies, and has reached number one on Billboard’s top 200 chart, making Beyoncé the only artist to have six straight studio albums debut at number one.

At the top of the record, the song “Pray You Catch Me” helps ease the listeners into the album, with its sultry and smooth introduction, while the third track “Don’t Hurt Yourself (Featuring Jack White)” slams the listeners with an angry rage-filled song. Beyoncé takes listeners on a rollercoaster of emotions as she goes through the journey of her tumultuous relationship with husband Jay-Z. The first couple songs represent the anger and betrayal she feels, but over the course of the album the rage-filled songs change into slower and sorrowful ballads, and by the end of the album Beyoncé has appeared to have forgiven Jay-Z and has moved on from the past.

One song that stands out that surprisingly doesn’t quite fit Beyoncé’s pattern of writing songs about Jay-Z is the song “Daddy Lessons.” Beyonce takes listeners back to her Texas roots in this song with a distinct country twang. The song helps tell the story of Beyoncé’s hardship growing up and her rocky relationship with her father.

“Lemonade” is overall sweet perfection from start to finish, each song representing a part of her relationship and giving listeners an inside view into a star’s life. The album is unapologetic showing a different side of Beyoncé to her long time fans. The title “Lemonade” seems to fit the whole album perfectly; Beyoncé was able to take her sour relationship with Jay-Z and turn it into something sweet for listeners everywhere to enjoy.