Analysis Of Beyoncé's Lemonade

In Beyoncé’s sixth solo album and her second visual album Lemonade, the context of the songs can be summarized as an epiphany within herself to publicize an emotional truth of her eight-year marriage with rapper and producer Jay Z. Beyoncé is a public icon of powerful music and a self-confident attitude that people around the world look up to. The album plays out similar to the years of the marriage. The first half of the album shows Beyoncé’s signature feminist strong-independent lyric soul jams directed at an unfaithful partner. The second half of the album has a twist because the listener thinks the album is going to lead to a divorce from what seems to be a cheating Jay Z, but she ends it with “Don’t Hurt Yourself” and “Sorry” giving a

When analyzing the music video, the viewer can find key points that emphasis the message to women that focusing on their self is the best way to move on. The most important symbolic point in this whole music video is that all of the cast is of color. A key visual that is important is Serena Williams being featured as a dancer. Williams is a six-time Wimbledon champion and the highest paid female athlete. She accepted the role to be in the music video because of the message that Beyoncé was displaying: having no shame over enjoying her life after a problematic ex. Though Williams is known to be a world class athlete, her being in this music video shows that she has a personal life past tennis that could have related to the lyrics in “Sorry.” Another detail of the visual aspect of this song is the Nefertiti/African inspired look. The braids and hair styles gave the looks of Egyptian culture and royalty. At one point of the music video, she poses as Egyptian royalty. Traditionally, Egyptian sculptures and paintings show women without arms. Beyoncé mimics the pose of no arms and then slowly breaks out of that image. There are also scenes of African beauty. A poem written by Somali-Brit Warsan Shire plays at the beginning of the music video as she begins the journey on the bus. The poem talks about what a cheating partner would say at a funeral of a dead women because of her broken heart. The journey on the bus represents the beginning of her journey of loving herself and not being sorry for who she is. There is a scene of Beyoncé on a bus with other females, with African painting on their face, called Yeboah face marking. Beyoncé, along with the rest of the cast has an African hairstyle during the whole video. The hairstyle shows women embracing their culture. Towards the ending, there is a line, “Becky with the good hair,” that