I think we can all agree that 2016 wasn’t the best of years. From the deaths of some beloved celebrities, to that horrible thing we call an election, everyone was more than ready for the year to be over. But one bright light managed to shine through: a visual album called Lemonade by a small artist named Beyonce. With 9 Grammy nominations, the album has been recognized throughout the industry as one of the best.
intuition
denial
anger
apathy
emptiness
accountability
reformation
forgiveness
resurrection
hope
redemption
Weaving together R&B, blues, country, rock, and pop, the album paints a message of a woman dealing with a husband’s infidelity. Playing off of the idea of the five stages of grief, each song off of the album is given its own segment and corresponding music video with spoken word pieces (written by poet Warsaw Shire) peppered in throughout to tie everything together.
The entire sixty-five minute piece is an adventure into the depth’s of Beyonce’s mind as she invites you to see a very intimate part of her life. While I very much encourage you to watch the piece multiple times, as each time you will pick up on things you didn’t notice before, for the sake of this blog and brevity I’m only going to discuss one large very important theme within the piece and that’s the role that water plays.
In art, water is often thematically used to represent cleanliness or healing and we see this early on in the video as Beyonce sits in a bathtub filled with water. Falling under the intuition segment, it seemed to me that Beyonce is trying to wash herself of any thoughts that her husband may not be completely faithful.
"You can taste the dishonesty, it's all over your breath
As you pass it off so cavalier, but even that's a test"
While water is used as a source of healing, it also can be used as a source of power and uncertainty. In the space between her first and second song, we see Beyonce jump off a roof in a suicide dive while at the last second landing not on the street below but in a giant pool of water that transforms into an underwater bedroom.
At the start of this underwater scene you get the feeling that she’s trying to cleanse herself or her relationship, but as it continues you get the sense of it being less pure and more dangerous. While watching, I definitely was struck with the correlation between Beyonce and Ophelia from Hamlet. Driven mad from her relationship with Hamlet, Ophelia eventually ends up drowning in a river in an apparent suicide. As the scene in Lemonade continues, you wonder if Beyonce is going to let this emotion overcome her as Ophelia did or if she is going to take the necessary steps to heal and grow from it.
Here’s a hint: She’s Beyonce.
Not only is the water visually thematic, but you also see it appear throughout her song titles, lyrics, and even in her live performances. Two of my favorite examples of this is from her song Love Drought and the performance of her song Freedom.
In Love Drought, Beyonce sings about the difficulty she’s having forgiving her husband and wondering what she did wrong in her marriage to have this happen. She sings of reformation as she walks through the water wearing white, giving major allusions to the idea of baptism and the re-birth of her marriage.
“You and me would stop this love drought”
The last example I’m going to give and quite possibly my favorite is in her performance of the song Freedom (which is also my favorite song off of the album). Performing this song in a shallow pool, she and her dancers spend the time make large exaggerated movements to splash the water around. As one of the last songs on the album, this song really hits home the idea that Beyonce isn’t going to give up on her marriage and that she’s going to work to move on and heal.
"Hey! I’ma keep running
Cause a winner don’t quit on themselves."
Without a doubt, I only briefly scratched the surface of one of the many themes that Lemonade portrays. It’s my opinion that you go out right away and purchase this album, rent it from the library, see it on HBOGo, do whatever you need to do (legally of course) to listen and watch it many, many, times. You can thank me later.
Lemonade. Perf. Beyonce. 2016. Visual Album. Web
by Amanda Roberts
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