Beyonce in 2016 - 'Formation' and Lemonade

i can't really imagine hearing this album or watching the film and not being struck with the idea that i was witnessing an extremely empowered woman at the zenith of her artistry. expressing that power in a way that is specifically and particularly Black is in itself a feminist statement IMO

newsflash, feminists have relationships w/ men too

I'm wondering if Formation is meant to be taken as an epilogue, or a bonus track? Otherwise the narrative goes: Sandcastles (breakdown), Forward (which, of course, breaks down and doesn't go forward), Freedom (a real way forward: Politics) and then the sample about making Lemons from Lemonade? So Beyoncé realizes Jay-Z can't break her, nobody what he throws at her, she will only come out stronger. Hell, she just made a brilliant album out of his betrayal. So let's take him back. And make another master-song about that.

the dark horse of this album for me is "love drought". some of the things she does with her voice !!!!!!! and:

Nine times out of ten, I'm in my feelings
But ten times out of nine, I'm only human

and the barely concealed contempt when she sings:

Tell me, what did I do wrong?
Oh, already asked that, my bad

Formation is easily one of the best three tracks if not the best, but it feels sort of tacked on at the end, when it would have made a really incredible centrepiece. One of those examples of the narrative getting in the way of the musical flow.

the film ends with "all night," right? formation feels like a bonus track. i'm prob not well-versed enough yet to talk about where it could conceivably fit in.

the film does end with "all night" and the instrumental to "formation" is played over the credits. it definitely does feel like a victory lap in the way that "grown woman" did on the last album. still, though, it's a strange way to close it all out since the song sounds so much like it's going to introduce something else. like, okay, we're in formation now. now what?

...now you're ready to take on the world?

it just struck me that in "don't hurt yourself" there...is no guitar apart from a bass guitar? is this right? all the spaces you'd expect a guitar riff are taken up by that amazing vocal backing

The only place where Formatuon woul make narrative sense is at the beginning. More to the point though, the album doesn't need it; as good as it is, it's literally an appendix to the rest of the album, which INO is outstanding as a collective work and a stronger artistic statement than Beyoncé (even though I like isolated songs on Beyoncé more)

A friend wrote that Formation at the end of this makes it sounds like she's out partying looking for fresh men to have sex with. As much as I sympathize with his interpretation I don't really hear it myself though.

Still haven't gotten around to experiencing the movie/album, but aspects of this thread helped to inspire this anti-review: http://www.splicetoday.com/music/lemonade-a-recording-exists

Also - and it's been a long time since I've felt this way about anything in the pop culture realm - I almost don't want to experience "Lemonade" now, on general principle. (Not pointing a finger at this thread specifically, FB is a bigger culprit.)

I'm not completely sold on Daddy Lessons, but I read a rumour that it's getting airplay on country stations and pissing off racists, which is pretty great.

So i've listened to the album like 10 times and each time I get antsier and antsier about the 'visual' version. Does it really add to the experience? I don't know, I like my albums to be albums and my films to be films.

i think this is, next to the last album, my favourite beyonce album. her vocals on this are maybe the best ive ever heard her. ive never heard her sing with such versatility. and i dont mean the genres shes working in, just purely her vocals. tremendous. daddy lessons might be my favourite song so far. it seems the most 'complete' song so far, though ive not heard anything i didnt like. even the jack white collabo was much better than i expected it to be.

I like to imagine (and it's entirely plausible) that, notwithstanding its earlier release, Beyonce wrote "Formation" after the rest of the album, and it's placed at the end of the record as a signpost for where she wants to go next.

sure, but formation sounds like where she has already been, musically, if not lyrically. all the songs leading up to it sound like the future for her.

The album is pointing in like eight different directions at once so pinpointing "the future" feels largely futile.

and imo as a beyoncé song "formation" feels like an austere otherworld

the music is austere but shes weirdly buoyant and supple on it

her arsenal of voices has never been better highlighted than on this album IMO

the whole album sounds like a possibly brilliant future for her

its not an album i ever expected actually

The album is very much in line with formation, I'd say. It's all about bringing the past to light, getting information and then acting rationally and decisively (getting in formation) accordingly. That pretty much describes the arc of this album as well.

"All Night" feels connected to "XO" to me (and I have at least one friend apart from Lex who doesn't feel either). Both are love songs that feel exhausted and happy: a happiness that knows precisely the price at which it was bought, has that price etched into the skin of its lyrics, into the grain of Beyonce's vocals. Both subtly (albeit differently) call back to Caribbean music, I like to think because lover's rock remains the preeminent expression of workaday romance for lovers on the grind.

They're as close to the centre of the "message" of each album as are "Flawless" and "Sorry", IMO.

otm

the film and the album taken without the film feel pretty wholely different to me. and the film is one of the best things i've seen in a long time, full stop. if i try to ignore the film in the album it feels different and i think is much harder to read any of the big "thinkpiecey" stuff into, and i actually tend to agree in terms of the lyrics and themes it isn't vastly new (even if those themes, when well done, never get old), even though its really well executed and sonically is very wide-ranging and interesting.

Btw I'd say that this album is way closer to TPAB than it is to TLOP - the whole idea of a narrative arc that is also an existential crisis that ties in with her public persona runs pretty close to TPAB, whereas her last album was more like a series of sketches connected through her private and public personae.

killer post tim.

trollin trollin trollin...
http://www.factmag.com/2016/04/27/jay-z-beyonce-lemonade-rumors/

i already kind of figured that?

xp Re: the factmag article. I've been thinking about this angle (as I guess have most people). Does it matter whether the story is based in reality or a wholly constructed fiction? If so, why?

that feels like a retrofitted narrative to me. we saw the elevator video.

anyway she was working on this album over a year ago so you could (if you wanted to) buy that she wrote it in real time with there still being enough of a lag for a reconciliation that allowed jay to be active in the making of the video

xpost to Andrew: you don't feel like that "solution" will hollow out a bit of the empathy and passion her fans have been embracing this project with? It was all a ploy to get your attention and sell some more records har dee har har?

"jay z and beyonce are master entertainers! they planned the entire thing! a modern day opera! move over lin manuel miranda!" say insiders close to the pair

"the elevator incident was staged! Solange was in on it!"

it's not that but i do get the vibe that people want to take this album as autobiographical and true to a pretty strong extent

I'd say authenticity is just about the only thing Beyoncé can't afford to lose at this point. There are some weird details in the lyrics though, like the reference to her "dead" dad.

i also hear people arguing that its all a charade

neither side knows wtf they are talking about xp

otm

xpxpxp, longneck,

I generally assume that entertainers working at this level do things very deliberately, and that almost everything they do is an attempt to get attention and sell records. For huge celebrities, it is hard (impossible?) to disentangle the narrative that is created for them, that which they create for themselves, and the reality of their personal lives. To some extent, I don't think the "truth" matters at all, inasmuch as we can never really know it.

Assuming that Bey and Jay conceived of this project together, entirely as a fiction, would it somehow resonate less with the audience? The message is still the same. It still (apparently) talks about real issues that affect real people.

the idea that beyonce needs to manufacture drama to sell records seems... off to me

xp I guess the fans that went nuts on that poor woman (thinking she was Jay's side chick) would feel pretty foolish. But they should anyway.

i remember some old r|t|c post talking about someone as ILX's premier water torture arguer or something, anyone recall this?

anyway that's how i feel reading longneck

oh sod off.
The "it was all a dream" solution would simply make Beyoncé an old fashioned post-modernist, playing with semiotics. Her project since the self-titled album has been to claim some sort of truth, even when that truth resides somewhere between public perception and singular vision. She's more knausgaardian than anything. It's all about bringing what's hidden, repressed and forgotten to light.

that feels like a retrofitted narrative to me. we saw the elevator video.

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, April 27, 2016 11:13 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes and now we know all about the details of their relationship!!!!!!

the creative process necessarily involving fiction and fantasy as well as fact is not "manufacturing drama"

songs do not narrate events exactly as they happened, lemonade was a film not a documentary. beyoncé has been writing about being cheated on for her whole career and made an album with a narrative arc about marriage from struggle to joy half a decade ago. this is an album partly about cheating but whether jay-z cheated or who becky with the good hair is are things we don't actually know and nor do they matter

I'd say authenticity is just about the only thing Beyoncé can't afford to lose at this point. There are some weird details in the lyrics though, like the reference to her "dead" dad.

― human and working on getting beer (longneck), Wednesday, 27 April 2016 23:23 (Yesterday) Permalink

I'll be so angry if it turns out that Beyonce's father never actually handed her a gun and gave her free licence to shoot any man that crossed her.

Deej:

real heads will know that it's titchyschneider that is actually ilx's premier subliminal chinese water-torturer - geir is but childs play in comparison

Well the point is that there's always art and fiction involved. This is no confession, and even if was there's no direct recourse to reality. What we get is lemonade, a cultural and commercial product. These are basics. But if you try to sell me lemonade and it turns out there are no lemons in it, I'm not buying.

ahaha that's it!

is longneck titchyschneider? serious q

No. Are you an idiot? Serious question.