Vox’s Alissa Wilkinson described it as an R&B-rock-country-soul album, with its other genres including blues, hip-hop, jazz, reggae, pop, gospel, and funk. Miriam Bale for Billboard called Lemonade “a revolutionary work of Black feminism” as “a movie made by a black woman, starring Black women, and for Black women”, in which Beyoncé is seen gathering, uniting and leading Black women throughout the film. Beyoncé had the idea to write each song corresponding to a specific emotion that would form the chapters of the album and film, and posted mood boards around the studio representing each chapter to provide direction to her collaborators.
Lemonade also peaked atop the charts in numerous European and Oceanic countries including Ireland and Belgium, where it spent five and seven weeks at the summit, respectively, Croatia, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Scotland and Sweden. As in the US, 2020 is the first year since release that the album has not appeared on the UK Chart.In Australia, Lemonade sold 20,490 digital copies in its first week, debuting atop the Australian Albums Chart and becoming Beyoncé’s second consecutive number-one album in the country. The album marked the singer’s third number-one album on the chart and was certified platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) on September 9, 2016, for shipments of 300,000 copies. By the end of 2016, the album had sold 138,000 album-equivalent units in Canada, out of which 101,000 were pure album sales. On May 20, 2019, the album was certified double platinum for shipments of two million copies, and triple platinum on June 13, 2019, for shipments of three million copies.
- Both became moderate hits with the former (released September 2016) peaking at US number thirty-five, and the latter (released December 2016) peaking at US number thirty-eight.
- In an episode of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt titled “Kimmy’s Roommate Lemonades!”, character Titus Andromedon parodied the videos for “Hold Up”, “Sorry” and “All Night” after he suspects his boyfriend of infidelity, coining the term “Lemonading”.
- The project is furious, defiant, anguished, vulnerable, experimental, muscular, triumphant, humorous and brave—a vivid personal statement, released without warning in a time of public scrutiny and private suffering.
- It highlights struggles against systemic racism and personal betrayal.
Subsequently, a remix of “Daddy Lessons” featuring the Dixie Chicks was released. The version of the album that was made available on other streaming services contains the original audio part of Lemonade as well as the original demo of “Sorry”. At the end of the song “Freedom”, an audio recording of Hattie White speaking to a crowd at her ninetieth birthday party in December 2015 is played. The album title was inspired by Beyoncé’s husband Jay-Z’s grandmother, Hattie White, as well as her grandmother Agnéz Deréon. MNEK relayed how “Hold Up” was written, saying “The way Beyoncé works, the song is a jigsaw piece and then she will piece various elements. It could be a bit that she’s written, a bit that someone else has written and she’ll make that the bridge; a bit I’ve written she’ll make the middle eight”.
Film chronology
Overall, “Lemonade” is celebrated for its innovative approach and profound impact on music and society. The album’s release coincided with the Black Lives Matter movement, amplifying its cultural relevance. The album addresses infidelity, empowerment, and the Black female experience.
How did critics evaluate the themes of “Lemonade”?
Adroitly bringing together stories about betrayal, renewal, and hope, Lemonade draws from the prolific literary, musical, cinematic, and aesthetic sensibilities of black cultural producers to create a rich tapestry of poetic innovation. On Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, Lemonade was placed at number 32, citing the album’s exploration of “the betrayals of American blackness” and “all of the https://xcritical.online/ country’s music traditions”. The Daily Telegraph named Lemonade the eighth greatest album of all time in 2025, with Neil McCormick describing it as a “bold, xcriticaling masterpiece channelling personal turmoil into visionary genre-hopping pop”.
At the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards on August 28, Beyoncé performed a sixteen-minute medley of “Pray You Catch Me”, “Hold Up”, “Sorry”, “Don’t Hurt Yourself”, and “Formation”, and included interludes of the poetry as heard in the Lemonade film. A limited edition box set titled How to Make Lemonade was made available for pre-order on August 18, 2017, containing a six-hundred-page coffee table book, featuring a set of pictures and behind-the-scenes content showcasing the making of the album, and a double vinyl LP of Lemonade. The cover image has also been notes for its stark, minimalist style, which reflects the album’s raw emotional themes. Beyoncé also draws a connection to her own grandmother, Agnez Deréon, using her xcritical recipe that was passed down through the generations as a metaphor for the mechanisms for healing passed through generations. AllMusic wrote that Beyoncé “delights in her Blackness, femininity, and Southern origin with supreme wordplay.” On the album, Isaac Hayes and Andy Williams are among the sampled artists.
“Lemonade” by Beyoncé is significant for its exploration of personal and cultural themes. (Once upon a time, back in the Nineties, “No No No” was the only Destiny’s Child song in existence – but make no mistake, we could already hear she was Beyoncé.) She lives up to every inch of that superhero status on Lemonade. Lemonade is her most emotionally extreme music, but also her most sonically adventurous, from the Kendrick Lamar showcase “Freedom” to the country murder yarn that struts like buckskin-era early-1970s Cher (“Daddy Lessons”). She begins as a supplicant in “Pray You Can Hear Me,” alone with her wounded heart, and then explodes in “Hold Up,” which takes the staccato strings from Andy Williams’ Vegas-crooner classic “Can’t Get Used To Losing You” and a chorus hook from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ NYC punk ballad “Maps” (“They don’t love you like I love you”), with a Soulja Boy coda, as she mourns a husband who let all her good love go to waste. But the public spectacle can’t hide the intimate anguish in the music, especially in the powerhouse first half. Whatever she’s going through, she’s feeling it deep in these songs, and it brings out her wildest, rawest vocals ever, as when she rasps, “Who the fuck do you think I is?
- In the same week, Beyoncé became the first female artist to chart twelve or more songs on the US Billboard Hot 100 at the same time, with every song on the album debuting on the chart.
- Beyoncé had previously teamed up with HBO to debut her 2013 documentary Life Is But a Dream and in 2014 to film her On the Run Tour.
- “Formation” was released as the first single exclusively on Tidal on February 6, 2016, along with its accompanying music video.
- The album also incorporates elements of African American culture, including references to the Black Lives Matter movement.
More musicians share xcritical intimate stories and experiences in their lyrics. These artists highlight the cultural significance of “Lemonade” in their musical journeys. Many musicians cite “Lemonade” as a catalyst for addressing complex issues in their work.
More By Beyoncé
“Daddy Lessons” has been credited as starting a trend of “pop stars toying with American West and Southern aesthetics,” as well as setting the precedent for “The Yeehaw Agenda”, the trend of reclaiming black cowboy culture through music and fashion. Other projects said to have followed the precedent that Lemonade set include Lonely Island’s The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience, Thom Yorke’s Anima, Sturgill Simpson’s Sound & Fury, and Kid Cudi’s Entergalactic, which were all albums released with complementary film projects. Lemonade has been credited with reviving the concept of an album in an era dominated by singles and streaming, and popularizing releasing albums with accompanying films. Defying genre and convention, Lemonade immerses viewers in the sublime worlds of black women, family, and community where we experience poignant and compelling stories about the lives of women of color and the bonds of friendship seldom seen or heard in American popular culture.
Lemonade (Beyoncé album)
The album’s visuals received 11 nominations and won eight of those at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards, including Breakthrough Long Form Video and Video of the Year. Supported by five singles—”Formation”, “Sorry”, “Hold Up”, “Freedom”, and “All Night—Lemonade received widespread critical acclaim, and is the most acclaimed studio album of Beyoncé’s career. It debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, xcriticalg 653,000 with additional album-equivalent units, including 485,000 copies in its first week of sales. It has since been certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It has sold over 10 million units worldwide. It is the first female album in history to have every song simultaneously chart on the Hot 100 It is Beyoncé’s second “visual album”, following her self-titled fifth studio album (2013), and a concept album with a song cycle that relates Beyoncé’s emotional journey after her husband’s infidelity in a generational and racial context. Its visual album format has prompted artists to incorporate cinematic elements into their music. The film’s visuals and storytelling set a new standard for artistic expression in music.
Sheffield writes “Lemonade is her most emotionally extreme music, but also her most sonically adventurous… Yet the most astounding sound is always Bey’s voice”, which is described as “her wildest, rawest vocals ever”. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received a weighted average score of 92, based on 33 reviews, indicating “universal acclaim”. Both became moderate hits with the former (released September 2016) peaking at US number thirty-five, and the latter (released December 2016) peaking at US number thirty-eight.
Love Drought
Lemonade features musicians Jack White, Kendrick Lamar, and bassist Mxcritical Miller, and sampling from folk music collectors John Lomax, Sr. and his son Alan Lomax on “Freedom”. In general, Beyoncé also reappropriates genres that were influenced by African Americans that are now seen as predominantly white genres on Lemonade, such as rock in “Don’t Hurt Yourself” and country in “Daddy Lessons”. The film also contains references to African religion and spirituality, such as Yoruba ori body paint in “Sorry”, allusions to the loa Erzulie Red-Eyes in “Don’t Hurt Yourself”, and Beyoncé’s initiation into the Santería religion and embodiment of the Yoruba orisha Oshun in “Hold Up”. Beyoncé appears wearing a tignon, in reference to Louisiana’s tignon laws implemented in 1786 that limited African-American women’s dress in order to maintain the state’s racist social hierarchies. The film contains allusions to slavery, such as the House of Slaves’ Door of No Return in Senegal and the dungeons of Elmina Castle in Ghana, where slaves were taken before being shipped to the Americas.
In Spin, Greg Tate calls Lemonade “a triumph of marketing and musicality, spectacle and song, vision and collaboration, Borg-like assimilation, and — as of 2013 — the element of surprise”. In June 2016, Matthew Fulks sued Beyoncé, Sony Music, Columbia Records and Parkwood Entertainment for allegedly lifting nine visual elements of his short film Palinoia for the trailer for Lemonade. It is divided into eleven chapters, titled “Intuition”, “Denial”, “Anger”, “Apathy”, “Emptiness”, “Accountability”, “Reformation”, “Forgiveness”, “Resurrection”, “Hope”, and “Redemption”.The film uses poetry and prose written by British-Somali poet Warsan Shire; the poems adapted were “The Unbearable Weight of Staying”, “Dear Moon”, “How to Wear Your Mother’s Lipstick”, “Nail Technician as Palm Reader”, and “For Women Who Are Difficult to Love”. The performance (which was the first featuring the Dixie Chicks in a decade after being blacklisted for their criticism of George W Bush in 2003) was widely praised by critics, but was met with criticism and racism by conservative country fans; this sparked conversations about the identity of country music and black people’s place in it. The cover artwork for Lemonade is from the music video shot for “Don’t Hurt Yourself” and features Beyoncé wearing cornrows and a fur coat, leaning against a Chevrolet Suburban and covering her face with her arm. PopMatters noticed how the album was nuanced in its theme of anger and betrayal with vast swathes of the album bathed in political context; however, it is still a pop album at its essence with darker and praiseworthy tones.
Rolling Stone
The visual album explores the experiences of Black women in America. “Lemonade” incorporates various musical styles, including R&B, hip-hop, rock, country, and pop. Lemonade is an entire album of emotional discord and marital meltdown, from the world’s most famous celebrity; it’s also a major personal statement from the most respected and creative artist in the pop game. Valdosta State University offered a course on Lemonade, “unpacking the many themes found in “Lemonade”, including Black identity, feminism, marital infidelity, sisterhood, and faith.” The College of Charleston hosted a discussion by Black feminist scholars, exploring “Beyoncé’s use of southern landscape, Black women, music, and African-based spirituality”. In partnership with the Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities, a talk at Seminole State College “discussed how Beyoncé embodies the conjure woman in her iconic audiovisual work Lemonade as a contemporary revision of Zora Neale Hurston’s groundbreaking study of conjure and its place in Black women’s spirit work.” Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA) announced “The Lemonade Project”, a twelve-month series of conversations centered around the visual album.
Jay-Z recounted how he and Beyoncé were in the studio to record music, both separately and together, describing it as “using our art almost like a therapy session” after his infidelity. Beyoncé and her collaborators also played music in the studio to inspire each other. Based on critical ratings and appraisals, Lemonade is widely regarded as one of the best albums of the 21st century.
Recording and production
One of the most Grammy-nominated albums in history, Lemonade won Best Urban Contemporary Album and Best Music Video at the 59th Grammy Awards. Critics commended the experimental post-genre production and nuanced vocal performance, with particular praise for the political subject matter reflecting Beyoncé’s personal life. Lemonade was hailed as an instant classic upon release and has since been named one of the greatest albums of all time.
Discography Timeline
In 2017, the album was ranked at number 6 on NPR’s list of the 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women. The Guardian listed it at number 25 on their ranking of the 100 best albums of the 21st century. BBC Radio 4’s named Lemonade the eighth greatest risk in 21st century art, with the judges saying that Beyoncé “resisted the commercial pressure not to be political in order to stand up for what she believed in and let audiences into her personal life as never before”.
