In late January of earlier this year, Beyoncé released Formation which immediately took liking to the black community. The song is a reminder to all of Beyoncé’s fans that even though she spent years producing all kinds of music, at the end of the day she’s still very black and proud. In late April, her album Lemonade dropped and the black girl magic is apparent in every song featured on the album. Originally the album dropped on TIDAL and Apple Music, but it didn’t take long before the album was exclusively on TIDAL (Beyoncé, we’re still waiting for it come back to Apple Music, though we’re grateful that Sorry and Lemonade are on YouTube).
While many people interpreted the album to be about Beyoncé’s and Jay-Z’s relationship to when he allegedly cheated on her with “Becky with the good hair” or fashion designer Rachel Roy, the album is actually about much more. Lemonade is definitely one of Beyoncé’s best albums and one of the only two where she is able to tell a story through music with the aid of visuals. If you were like me, and tried to listen to the album instead of watching it first, it just seemed like a bunch of good songs, but it you watched the entire visual album, everything tied together, especially ending with Formation.
Besides Formation, the other three songs that instantly gained popularity were Hold Up, Don’t Hurt Yourself and Sorry. In Hold Up, the second song on the album, Beyoncé is singing about the joys of loving someone unconditionally and that she would rather be crazy then unnecessarily be jealous over an irrelevant nobody. The bright yellow of Beyoncé’s dress conflicts her common action throughout the video to swing a bat but it sets the mellow mood of the song and being a care free black woman who will not waste a second on jealousy.
Don’t Hurt Yourself changes the mood to a woman who knows her worth and isn’t going to let an unfaithful man ruin it. Even though Beyoncé is as famous as she is, it’s clear the song was meant for black women who aren’t being treated right. I believe the message she is trying to get through in this song is that men shouldn’t hurt woman (in any way, but here more so emotionally) because in the process of hurting someone, whether it be by cheating, or paying more attention to other women, they end up hurting themselves the most in the end because they had something good and practically risked throwing it away for a moment of goodness.
Following that, is Sorry which visual features the beautiful Serena Williams with Beyoncé. There was something about this song that instantly caught on. It perfectly sums up how black woman shouldn’t be sorry for simply moving on and having a moment to treat themselves by going out with their friends and for one second, not thinking about the guy that has done them wrong. This was the perfect song to go after Don’t Hurt Yourself because through the visual, it’s definitely depicted as if the woman that Beyonce is singing as got hurt and finally decided to take a second to remember who they are, and that they shouldn’t be sorry, for anything.
