From its brilliant rollout to its dazzling artistic statement, Lemonade arrives not still-in-progress, but utterly flawless.
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.
Lemonade marks Beyoncé’s most accomplished work yet. It is the perfect combination of the sharp songwriting of 4 with the visual storytelling acumen of her self-titled record. Here, we see Beyoncé fully coming into her own: wise, accomplished, and in defense of herself.
For all the scorn and fireworks, LEMONADE is maybe most remarkable for its capacity for healing ... It’s a work that relishes in the movement of emotionality, the contradictory wrecking-ball feelings that spring from disappointed love, that could turn you to drought if turned from. And it never loses its focus.
Lemonade is fiery, insurgent, fiercely proud, sprawling and sharply focused in its dissatisfaction.
Lemonade is by far Beyoncé’s strongest album.
The songs, though, are not just prurient catnip, but actual dynamite – a dazzling series of edgy, but tuneful collaborations with a diverse array of guests.
This is Beyoncé’s best album yet and one of the most compelling cases ever made for the pop album as confessional art form.
All over Lemonade, Beyoncé is describing her own personal reality, on her terms and informed by her worldview. That the album simultaneously pushes mainstream music into smarter, deeper places is simply a reminder of why she remains pop’s queen.
Romantic conflict is nothing new for her, but there is a degree of concentration and specificity, and an apparent disregard for appealing to commercial radio that makes Lemonade a distinct addition to her catalog.
The result is an album in which millions will find their own struggles reflected back to them, as therapeutic as it is utterly dazzling. If you've ever been handed lemons, you need Lemonade.
With all matters of the heart explored in extremely intimate detail it sees Beyoncé back on top of the pop world ready to slay like only she can.
Lemonade is so much more than an album; it’s a deep immersion in black art ... Here, Beyoncé is laser-focused on delivering her potent message of empowerment, and she is unafraid.
Lemonade is a stunning album, one that sees her exploring sounds she never has before. It also voices a rarely seen concept, that of the album-length ode to infidelity.
Lemonade ... feels like a success, made by someone very much in control ... Beyonce sounds very much like a woman not to be messed with.
Lemonade is her most out-there album yet – both in the nakedness with which the notoriously private star is seemingly describing marital strife with husband Jay-Z, and in the huge scope of musical influences it encompasses, from wild and raw gospel and blues rock to precisely calibrated R&B.
Pain is claimed, womanhood is nurtured, blackness is celebrated and family is prioritized and used as weaponry within the textured, often times profane and deeply contextual offering.
‘Lemonade’'s first four tracks are a thrillingly honest sucker-punch from a famously guarded pop star.
You can argue about whether you’ll hear better pop albums this year and you may very well win that dispute, but Lemonade is that rare work where you will remember exactly where you were and exactly who you were with the first time you heard it. Few albums can lift themselves up to the level of “experiences”, but few albums could ever be considered as bold, complex, or resolute as Lemonade.
With Lemonade, Beyoncé has caused as much conversation as any single artist possibly could, and provided a one-of-a-kind look into her personal life without sacrificing any of her regality, something only she could do.
Whatever the degree of fictionality of the plot ... Lemonade arrives as a cohesive, masterfully crafted project that resists the ephemerality and disposability of the pop song format.
With its wealth of sonic adventure, its thoughtful merger of the personal and the political, and its four choice guest spots (Jack White; Kendrick Lamar; James Blake; Abel Makkonen Tesfaye AKA The Weeknd), Lemonade is a dazzling example of pooled talent coalescing around an iconic doyenne. There can be little doubt on whose head Prince’s crown should now sit.
Lemonade, is her most lyrically and thematically coherent effort to date, taking a concept—the breakup album—as old as the LP itself, and reinventing it in both presentation and narrative.
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