Just Watched Lemonade and I Don't Think...

[Music 15,215]

i'm still in awe of this album and it's accompanying film.
the film is honestly a cinematic journey that allows us to travel with Beyonce through her hardships and triumphs.

i think she stands a great chance of AOTY at next years Grammys, of course with Adele being her major contender.

[Didymus 32,819]

13 hours ago, StrawberryBlond said:

I just think that making it all one big long movie was a mistake. I mean, she waited a year to put her last album's videos on Vevo and 9 out of 16 (including short interludes) of them have less than 20 million views because of it. This is why I'm surprised she's not putting the whole movie out there by now. To a fan, they might think the public are taking it in. They're not. They're really not. The views and likes of her self-titled albums videos are testament to that. If the public weren't all that interested in returning to watch them a year later, what does that say about how well they've been remembered?

Well, I never really got this argument in your posts. I'm not sure if you think public acknowledgment is important or not. Or is that just a response to delusional Beyoncé fans who think these releases are going to be embedded in public awareness, with which you disagree based on numbers?

The word "mistake" makes me wonder that, because then it seems you're putting commercial gain ahead of artistic effect as a value, which I find surprising, since you do place Tropico as a "good example" opposite to Lemonade as a short film. Obviously Tropico didn't help Lana forward commercially, and imo the Lemonade film didn't either. It was shown, twice, for free days before official release, users could use the TIDAL option of watching it for free as well if they still had trial time. Very different from her Beyoncé era which was literally "buy or get nothing".

I find that more admirable than a "mistake", but like I said, I'm not sure what you mean or what the intention is of writing about it like that. Imo the Lemonade film only has an appropriate artistic effect when shown in full, so I can't disagree more with that, especially if the only reason for splitting up the segments is for impact on public memory, which I don't find a very important goal, personally. I wouldn't think you'd say that Lana made a mistake with her music video's because they weren't designed to be beneficial commercially.

13 hours ago, StrawberryBlond said:

Watching Lemonade, I can't help but see so many parallels to Lana's Tropico movie, especially the dramatic, artistic monologues. You only need to listen to Beyonce in interview to know she couldn't make up such poetic musing if her life depended on it. That was totally fed to her by someone else. Lana actually made Tropico herself, it was truly her creation and it was just her and 6 other people who actually made the movie (not including cast of characters and hair and make up teams). She wrote the film and composed the music. The only other people involved in the actual making of it was the director, producer, production supervisor, cinematographer, editor and telecinator (don't know what the official term is for that). The credits are so short because it's mostly just all her. And this beautiful piece of art created by her, that inspired other artists only has 6.8 million views in 2.5 years and mixed critical reviews. Beyonce does a concept that isn't even original and involves a huge team behind her creating this vision, gets a lot more views and critical acclaim. When I see this kind of thing, I think it's amazing how money talks and the media decide who they want you to like while the true artists who are more alternative get trodden on. It's nothing to do with being a pop fan, it's just having a love for music in general and wanting to see true artistic talent break through and be praised.

It's clear where Beyoncé was involved and where she wasn't though. The credits speak for themselves. Lots of writers credited, and in terms of directing she put herself second in the list, which I found satisfying. She worked together with Warsan Shire for the more poetic writing, as credited. All the production design etc. credits are given to other people, so I find that quite fair.

You also brought up the Beyoncé video's in a way I don't really think is correct. She never claimed to create all of them, she's only credited as a co-director (never a director) for four music video's (out of 17). From the interviews I heard she never claimed to write any of them, she just communicated the general feel she wanted and the writers did the rest. This is very standard procedure though. Gaga may say she writes her own music video treatments, but I doubt that goes further than just an abstract, after which she comments on what her creative team comes up with. In fact Gaga, at least earlier in her career, consistently presented her work as the outcome of a collaboration between creative people, her being their spokesperson in the spotlight. Yet her fans usually credit just her. As nearly all pop fans do.

So again, I get the frustration, but the critics imo usually get it right (you'll probably disagree). I haven't seen a review in which Beyoncé is praised for creating the Lemonade film or the Beyoncé video's on her own. Many reviews even directly bring up the idea of Beyoncé being the overseer of a creative project that extends way beyond her own actions. And that's exactly how the biggest female pop stars have always worked, notably since Madonna who became the exemplar of that way of working. I get that you think it's unfair that the outcome products get more attention, but I find that a bit childish. They get more attention because the artists are bigger. And if the quality is fantastic, it matters little who created it, the product is praised, and Beyoncé is credited for making the release happen in the first place, which is a credit she deserves.

Of course there are better albums and better musical short films out there (I myself prefer Tropico a thousand times more and I do think it's sadly underrated) but that doesn't mean the end result isn't glorious. And Lemonade is expertly made. I don't see why it should be praised less just because Beyoncé is the one promoting it, the critics having to calculate the fact that she's not 100% involved creatively and giving her a less enthusiastic review. That would deligitimize nearly all reviews of every single pop star in the business, incl. Gaga. With the same logic you could criticize the critical success Gaga is receiving right now for doing something that other people have done a lot better in the past, and even some of her peers now (obvious example being Grimes who truly exemplifies the idea of a female pop artist taking full control, about 10x more than Madonna ever did in her prime). But that's just silly. If you want to find truly ahead-of-time, ultra creative releases and look at their reception, you just need to switch the medium you're looking at. Pop forums, popular magazines, etc. will never credit them that way. But they are credited elsewhere, hidden from popular view. And I find that perfectly ok.

13 hours ago, StrawberryBlond said:

This was the realest she'd ever been. Up until her last album, she had kept so quiet about her relationship and always made it out to be lovey dovey perfect or just wrote break up songs to give the public what they want. But this time, she went for the jugular, accusing Jay of all sorts and even insulting him, saying he had a god complex. I have to give her props for finally dropping all the pretence and just saying exactly what was on her mind, even if it made her look angry or unlikeable. [...] It was a shock to see Beyonce, who used to never speak about her private life, open up so explictly about marriage problems in her last two albums and have her never swear in her lyrics to throwing around f words with no qualms. So, naturally, I wonder, what's brought this on? What's with the change of heart and change of image?

I think that's a bit contradictory. First she's barely involved creatively and now you're praising her for that creative angle? I'm more hesitant. She was not the main writer on any of the songs about that theme, notably Sorry where she's only third. I think she just communicated the idea and let things develop from there, but I think it's a bit dumb to suggest, after you've criticized nearly her every career move as having a motive of gaining success and relevance, that this is somehow protected from that logic.

I don't know exactly where the idea came from, maybe it did happen, but in the end I felt that it overshadowed the actual themes on the album. That album and that visual film are not about infidelity, as the second halves should make clear. Beyoncé recovers her relationship, which is the true thematic core. That got lost almost entirely in the media chaos, her fans calling out several celebrities, completely missing the point. But it was very convenient to get people talking about the album anyway. So convenient that I wonder if that was the intention all along. I find that a bit of an artistic betrayal since the theme of the album and film run counter to it.

13 hours ago, StrawberryBlond said:

The race stuff, while powerful, would have been better suited on an political themed album, not as part of a body of work about tension in a marriage. That's what broke the album at the end for me - she should have picked one theme and seen it out until the end.

Wholeheartedly disagree with this, I thought the whole thing fit nicely together. The album represents Beyoncé's personal storyline, the film merges it with not just the struggle of black women but also the struggle between the black community and dominant Western culture. The same narratives in the end, which was quite a beautiful touch. Personally I find the addition of Formation at the end of the tracklist another powerful statement. Throughout the film especially it's clear that only when we let go of our sense of separateness, and the obstacles they create in our love life but also our lives on a bigger scale, we are able to truly stand together and make change happen. Cue the transition between Freedom to All Night to Formation.

The marital struggle becomes a metaphor. As several critics pointed out, Beyoncé (or all the creative power behind the product, you know what I'm saying) presents the idea that her relationship with her lover is a solitary unit that is worthy to fight for, countering the far more popular idea of the betrayed to take revenge on the betrayer (which is why I don't like that people are talking about Jay cheating rn). Beyoncé presents that idea in the first half and then lets it go, its cathartic function completed. In the end, though, the unit her and her lover have is bigger than the two of them, and thus more stronger, something to protect and fortify even when it's temporarily broken. That's quite a unique statement to present as a woman who's being cheated on. Some might mistake it for being anti-feminist, but I find it most definitely empowering, not just on a personal level, but as a cultural statement, esp. as a Beyoncé product which is usually solely about her own glorification.

That's how I read it. And personally I see Lemonade as a complete product as the outcome of a huge creative enterprise, and that doesn't make me love it less. But I understand completely that it may frustrate you that other people mistake the enterprise for the efforts of only one person, who they can then portray as superior to other persons who are usually equally the front of a huge creative enterprise. And I agree that sometimes the critics may fall into that logic as well, but at least consider the idea that grand, undoubtedly insanely creative releases like Lemonade (both musically and visually but esp. in their combination) at least help us to transcend the usual pop superficiality to which, indeed, Beyoncé contributed earlier in her career. We're talking about music again, about art, about statements. I fear that's the best we'll ever get in the pop galaxy, so I do hope you can appreciate it from that pov.

[YaaaasGaga 6,119]

On 28 May 2016 at 1:36 PM, Dangerous Man said:

... anyone can top it. Gaga might.. but it will be really hard and I don't think she'll be making a visual album or another MV that is long for LG5. From the concept to the execution, the cinematics, the direction, and most of all the music, everything is just perfect. I'm still bald right now and i can't find my weave. The film was just brilliant. I think imma stan for Bey now. I wanna cry. Sorry Bey for calling you overrated and calling Lemonade boring, please forgive me  for my unholy sins.  

Tbh she put a lot of work into Lemonade and it really paid off, it's visually stunning and the album itself is amazingly cohesive and brilliant and I think it will be extremely hard to top. HOWEVER, I think a lot of people in the music industry today who make these epic videos owe A LOT to Gaga; she totally revived the concept of a music video being a major pop event, a piece of art that the artist uses to put across the visuals they imagine of the song, a bit of a synaesthetic mash of imagery and sound. Before Gaga, there was no one making cinematic, beautifully crafted music videos since Michael Jackson stopped making music (the person who invented the major music video concept). When MJ stopped, artists just put out a cheap video with a bit of choreo and some nice outfits and product placement in order to have their songs played over MTV as well as the radio. So yes, it is amazing, and I love Beyonce so bloody much, but everyone who makes these videos such thank Gaga for their revival and ultimately MJ for inventing that concept.

[StrawberryBlond 13,332]

5 hours ago, Didymus said:

Well, I never really got this argument in your posts. I'm not sure if you think public acknowledgment is important or not. Or is that just a response to delusional Beyoncé fans who think these releases are going to be embedded in public awareness, with which you disagree based on numbers?

The word "mistake" makes me wonder that, because then it seems you're putting commercial gain ahead of artistic effect as a value, which I find surprising, since you do place Tropico as a "good example" opposite to Lemonade as a short film. Obviously Tropico didn't help Lana forward commercially, and imo the Lemonade film didn't either. It was shown, twice, for free days before official release, users could use the TIDAL option of watching it for free as well if they still had trial time. Very different from her Beyoncé era which was literally "buy or get nothing".

I find that more admirable than a "mistake", but like I said, I'm not sure what you mean or what the intention is of writing about it like that. Imo the Lemonade film only has an appropriate artistic effect when shown in full, so I can't disagree more with that, especially if the only reason for splitting up the segments is for impact on public memory, which I don't find a very important goal, personally. I wouldn't think you'd say that Lana made a mistake with her music video's because they weren't designed to be beneficial commercially.

It's clear where Beyoncé was involved and where she wasn't though. The credits speak for themselves. Lots of writers credited, and in terms of directing she put herself second in the list, which I found satisfying. She worked together with Warsan Shire for the more poetic writing, as credited. All the production design etc. credits are given to other people, so I find that quite fair.

You also brought up the Beyoncé video's in a way I don't really think is correct. She never claimed to create all of them, she's only credited as a co-director (never a director) for four music video's (out of 17). From the interviews I heard she never claimed to write any of them, she just communicated the general feel she wanted and the writers did the rest. This is very standard procedure though. Gaga may say she writes her own music video treatments, but I doubt that goes further than just an abstract, after which she comments on what her creative team comes up with. In fact Gaga, at least earlier in her career, consistently presented her work as the outcome of a collaboration between creative people, her being their spokesperson in the spotlight. Yet her fans usually credit just her. As nearly all pop fans do.

So again, I get the frustration, but the critics imo usually get it right (you'll probably disagree). I haven't seen a review in which Beyoncé is praised for creating the Lemonade film or the Beyoncé video's on her own. Many reviews even directly bring up the idea of Beyoncé being the overseer of a creative project that extends way beyond her own actions. And that's exactly how the biggest female pop stars have always worked, notably since Madonna who became the exemplar of that way of working. I get that you think it's unfair that the outcome products get more attention, but I find that a bit childish. They get more attention because the artists are bigger. And if the quality is fantastic, it matters little who created it, the product is praised, and Beyoncé is credited for making the release happen in the first place, which is a credit she deserves.

Of course there are better albums and better musical short films out there (I myself prefer Tropico a thousand times more and I do think it's sadly underrated) but that doesn't mean the end result isn't glorious. And Lemonade is expertly made. I don't see why it should be praised less just because Beyoncé is the one promoting it, the critics having to calculate the fact that she's not 100% involved creatively and giving her a less enthusiastic review. That would deligitimize nearly all reviews of every single pop star in the business, incl. Gaga. With the same logic you could criticize the critical success Gaga is receiving right now for doing something that other people have done a lot better in the past, and even some of her peers now (obvious example being Grimes who truly exemplifies the idea of a female pop artist taking full control, about 10x more than Madonna ever did in her prime). But that's just silly. If you want to find truly ahead-of-time, ultra creative releases and look at their reception, you just need to switch the medium you're looking at. Pop forums, popular magazines, etc. will never credit them that way. But they are credited elsewhere, hidden from popular view. And I find that perfectly ok.

I think that's a bit contradictory. First she's barely involved creatively and now you're praising her for that creative angle? I'm more hesitant. She was not the main writer on any of the songs about that theme, notably Sorry where she's only third. I think she just communicated the idea and let things develop from there, but I think it's a bit dumb to suggest, after you've criticized nearly her every career move as having a motive of gaining success and relevance, that this is somehow protected from that logic.

I don't know exactly where the idea came from, maybe it did happen, but in the end I felt that it overshadowed the actual themes on the album. That album and that visual film are not about infidelity, as the second halves should make clear. Beyoncé recovers her relationship, which is the true thematic core. That got lost almost entirely in the media chaos, her fans calling out several celebrities, completely missing the point. But it was very convenient to get people talking about the album anyway. So convenient that I wonder if that was the intention all along. I find that a bit of an artistic betrayal since the theme of the album and film run counter to it.

Wholeheartedly disagree with this, I thought the whole thing fit nicely together. The album represents Beyoncé's personal storyline, the film merges it with not just the struggle of black women but also the struggle between the black community and dominant Western culture. The same narratives in the end, which was quite a beautiful touch. Personally I find the addition of Formation at the end of the tracklist another powerful statement. Throughout the film especially it's clear that only when we let go of our sense of separateness, and the obstacles they create in our love life but also our lives on a bigger scale, we are able to truly stand together and make change happen. Cue the transition between Freedom to All Night to Formation.

The marital struggle becomes a metaphor. As several critics pointed out, Beyoncé (or all the creative power behind the product, you know what I'm saying) presents the idea that her relationship with her lover is a solitary unit that is worthy to fight for, countering the far more popular idea of the betrayed to take revenge on the betrayer (which is why I don't like that people are talking about Jay cheating rn). Beyoncé presents that idea in the first half and then lets it go, its cathartic function completed. In the end, though, the unit her and her lover have is bigger than the two of them, and thus more stronger, something to protect and fortify even when it's temporarily broken. That's quite a unique statement to present as a woman who's being cheated on. Some might mistake it for being anti-feminist, but I find it most definitely empowering, not just on a personal level, but as a cultural statement, esp. as a Beyoncé product which is usually solely about her own glorification.

That's how I read it. And personally I see Lemonade as a complete product as the outcome of a huge creative enterprise, and that doesn't make me love it less. But I understand completely that it may frustrate you that other people mistake the enterprise for the efforts of only one person, who they can then portray as superior to other persons who are usually equally the front of a huge creative enterprise. And I agree that sometimes the critics may fall into that logic as well, but at least consider the idea that grand, undoubtedly insanely creative releases like Lemonade (both musically and visually but esp. in their combination) at least help us to transcend the usual pop superficiality to which, indeed, Beyoncé contributed earlier in her career. We're talking about music again, about art, about statements. I fear that's the best we'll ever get in the pop galaxy, so I do hope you can appreciate it from that pov.

Yes, I do think public acknowledgement is important. And it's even more important if you're considered a superstar, like Beyonce is. When you're on that level of fame, being acknowledged by your fans alone doesn't cut it. Superstars are supposed to encapsulate everyone, release of their work is supposed to be an event, people are supposed to be aware of it on a grand scale. Now, you may think this was the case for Beyonce because the image of Lemonade was beamed over Times Square and it had good first week sales and so on, but really, don't judge it based on what you see. Judge it based on who's actually talking about it. Outside this forum, I'm actually not aware of its existence. If I didn't review albums or followed pop music, I wouldn't know of a single song from it. Its music isn't used in ads, she isn't promoting it, its music videos are not on Vevo, its songs (at least where I am) aren't played on the radio or instore radio. So, how on earth will the public at large know about it? For all that AP passed by the public's consciousness so much, people were aware of it, they just weren't buying it. She promoted it, Applause was a top ten all over the world, it got featured in an ad, it ended up on the new gen version of GTA V on their radio station, DWUW was also well known and the collab gained notoriety, she got a tour out of it and performed to more people in the UK than she did for her last, more successful album, the videos have surprising views and likes, all things considered, especially G.U.Y. I could actually be aware of the album, even if I didn't go searching for it. Ultimately, she put it out there for public consumption, so she got some public acknowledgement out of it. I offer up this argument to anyone who claims that their fave's music is so embedded into public consciousness when the reality is very different. It's easy to think the whole world's talking about your fave because there's gossip about it on a pop forum or gossip magazines are reporting on it. But those things are niche. People who don't listen to pop or read gossip magazines being aware of an album is truly an achievement and I'm sorry, but at large, very few people who weren't part of these groups have been made aware of Lemonade.

Artistic effect is all very well, but commercial response is what allows your music to be heard by all and your art embedded into culture. Nothing can be sunk into the public's consciousness if it is exclusive and not promoted. While observing Vevo figures are hardly the be all and end all of how many people are witnessing your music (videos are getting so much more views than ever before on this service due to its status rising and the population growing and it's a shame older videos are not translated into modern day scale), I think, when the videos in question weren't made available until a year after your album release, it is very conclusive indeed as to how much the public have remembered your work in that time and what level of relevance it bears. The figures show that it must just be the fans watching them since. I'm not the only one who says that she should have dropped all those videos on Vevo on the same day as the album. That would have broken the internet and she'd have so many more views on them all now if that were the case. But she went the exclusive route, the pretentious route, the money-grabbing route. And her music failing to sink into the public consciousness because of it. Even Drunk In Love, as a proper single, didn't make much of a dent. I don't care if Lemonade was available for free for a limited time. The clue is in the word limited. It still has a "buy or get nothing" feel to it as that's the only way you can get hold of it now. That's why people are downloading illegally, because they want to find out how good it is for free, and she's not giving it away on Vevo (bad business move again). I find it comical how her fans seem to think every single one of these songs are public knowledge. They should take a gander at Vevo some time, as they clearly aren't watching them! The world hasn't gone nuts over a Beyonce single since Halo. That's just a fact. It blows my mind how Beyonce thinks making her work exclusive and not releasing singles and music videos in the public eye will benefit her. The statistics show that traditionally released albums with singles and readily available music videos sell the best and get immersed into the culture. It's common sense. Her husband's a businessman, shouldn't he be the one to talk sense into her?

I don't think it's clear where she was involved at all. It's never been explained exactly what positioning on credits means or if it even means anything. It's obviously not alphabetical, so that only leaves the theory of names closest to the beginning signifying the biggest roles played and the closer you are to the beginning, the more involved you are. But honestly, I still don't know if that's accurate, considering I've seen artists who are unquestionably creators being all over the place on credits lists of completely original work with no samples. So, I don't really know what to think anymore. Then there's the whole paying for credits thing, so, you know...

Beyonce did once say in a documentary: "I write my own songs, write my own treatments for all my videos, decide what I wanna wear, how I wanna look, how I wanna sound, it's all me," when it came to explaining her work (this clip was played over a series of YouTube videos that accused Beyonce of plagiarism). I don't where specifically it came from and it was in the early days of her solo career but point is, she did make this claim once. If she's making this claim while having a team behind her, I find it very hard to believe that she wants the public to think anything different. It's all about the impression she wants to give. And I've got the distinct impression that she wants to see her work as all her own doing. Gaga definitely makes her own video concepts, which explains why they take so long to put out. She once explained that she needs the time to come up with an idea and put it into motion, she doesn't just let a bunch of other people crank out something quick, she's got to be the one to do it.

Yes, I totally disagree that critics usually get it right. It doesn't take long to realise when a critic has let themselves be consumed by hype (when they're coming out with stuff that would make you puke or is incredibly narrow-minded from a musical knowledge standpoint or spouting stuff that wouldn't look out of place on a deluded fan forum) or hopping on a backlash bandwagon (coming out with pretentious hipster statements about lack of authenticity and lack of cohesiveness and general straw-clutching). They're so fake and seem to have different rules for different artists and don't seem to know their own minds. While, yes, many critics have picked up on the idea that she may have had a lot of writers for the songs, they always had such a baseless reason for defending this (in a way that they don't defend other artists) or they just went full on ass-kissing her in every way. Rolling Stone's 5 star review was shocking. Calling her the queen and the most creative woman in the pop game. It didn't even read like the review of a professional but of a deluded fan. Calling artists queens should be off limits to professionals - personal bias has no place in reviews. Thankfully, a lot of the commentators said as much. One even said she'd ripped off the whole concept of the movie from Daughters Of The Dust. When even the public seem to know more than a reviewer, you know there's problems. I have an issue when critics praise one artist for something but not another and act like some artists can do no wrong. That's what partly helps these artists be so big - undeserved overpraise.

Problem is, a movie will of course see more input from her team of professional movie makers rather than a singer, so, naturally, we can only give so much praise to the singer. This doesn't mean we give the music a lower review, but just be explicit in the review about who the true masters behind this wonderful product are. I would have given retro artists in the past who never wrote their own stuff a nod to this with every review. I feel we've always over-praised those who don't write their own material just because they've got good voices, even going as far as calling them artists. And I'm not saying we give praise just because someone does write all their own stuff. Whether it's good or bad, we need to be real about the creation process. But don't you find it strange that mainstream outlets won't praise truly ahead of their time, ultra creative releases? Because they won't, these artists can't become bigger. They hold the key. And plenty are stuck in the middle - too out-there for mainstream, not experimental enough for the indie crowd. Gaga's kinda in that space, along with Lana. So they can struggle to get praise from any outlet at times.

All I'm saying is that Beyonce decided she wanted to make her album about infidelity and to be cutthroat about it. But that's it. I think what followed after that required a whole bunch of help but I don't deny that the infidelity angle was her vision. After all, it happened to her, so she felt the need to say it was a good idea for an album and gave the intimate details to help her team compose the songs. How do you know what parts she put more thought to? I'm not saying that she didn't make this choice to be talked about and be scandalous but I have no doubt that this was her vision nevertheless. But as far as credits go, she could have got credit simply for putting forward an idea, as opposed to a lyric. You can get credit for anything these days. Gaga credited RedOne on Gypsy because she was reminded of one of his lyrics while writing it. Maybe she just forward an idea or two and her team took it from there, just like you said. It's funny, because I think the whole theme of the album is about infidelity, minus the last 3 songs. Again, don't let the videos themes and add-ons hinder your view of the music. The first time I listened to it, it was all audio and I got no racial overtones until the last 3 songs. The movie makes the themes flow together and seem relevant but the music alone sure as hell doesn't.

You put forward a very beautiful interpretation of the piece, but sorry, I just think the movie flows together in a way that the music alone simply does not and it's the music that's the most important at the end of the day. I listen to music more than I watch music videos (I usually prefer watching audio instead of the MV because it means my mind isn't distracted and I can focus on the music - a fact a lot of artists try to work against, as previously explained). I can't let my views on music videos hinder my views on the music behind them and I felt that Lemonade tried to manipulate people into doing just that. When I hear some fans say that they can't listen to the music without the visuals, it only further proves to me that the manipulative angle served its purpose. I sometimes wonder how this album would have got received without the visuals and if someone other than Beyonce had released it. Oh, and suffice to say, I don't think she made a feminist statement at all. Jay's supposedly cheated on her multiple times now. It's not feminist to keep going back to a man who can't treat you right. I could have given her the advice on Daddy Lessons and I don't even know her. We all could have given her the same advice. And now that she's made it clear that she won't put up with it again, if her next album is composed of more "is he cheating on me?" songs, she's going to look a fool.

Yes, I suppose projects like this help us reject pop superficiality for a moment and make popstars question how much effort they put into something, I wonder how much it's seriously going to change anything. I can't say her last album encouraged everyone to make visual albums or encouraged people to put more effort in (on the contrary, music videos have got more boring ever since). But I disagree that this is the best statement we'll ever get, not while Gaga's still the game and she's undoubtedly more creative. And I regard Lana as alternative pop too. I don't even regard Beyonce as pop anymore. She's been distinctly urbanised ever since 4.
 

[Pharamon 6,672]

I've not watched it yet but once I'm done i'm gonna be like...

 

[Sister 9,907]

While it is really good, it hasn't made me start stanning for Beyoncé, but I do admire her more and think that she deserves all of the acclaim and awards for it.

[Dangerous Man 9,245]

Y'all really need to watch it!  

[ALGAYDO 26,606]

I watched it, and I agree that it's cinematically amazing! But the actual music was honestly not THAT great. Good? Definitely, better than a lot of recently released albums. But not fantastic. 

Self-titled >>>>> 

[Kayla 7,595]

@StrawberryBlond Sorry if you've already answered this, but have you watched the Lemonade video in its entirety?