Beyonce fizzes like a woman scorned
FROM Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours to Adele’s 21, the heartache record has long been a pop staple: bitterness and hurt prompted Phil Collins to record Face Value and Amy Winehouse to write Back To Black.
The latest addition to the list is Beyonce’s sixth solo album, Lemonade, which shines a light on the apparent crumbling of her eight-year marriage to rapper Jay Z.
Pretentiously billed as ‘a conceptual project based on every woman’s journey of self-knowledge and healing’, it details her husband’s alleged philandering but ends on a note of forgiveness.
It is now available on iTunes and Amazon, with a physical release next month.
Most of the talk since the album arrived without warning last weekend has focused on its no-holds-barred lyrics, which simmer with the rage of a woman scorned. When Beyonce comes up with lines like ‘you can taste the dishonesty, it’s all over your breath’ and ‘you’re gonna lose your wife’ while suggesting her husband calls ‘Becky with the good hair’ the next time he needs a little bootylicious loving, it’s no surprise.
Just as remarkable, though, is the manner in which the former Destiny’s Child singer, whose roots are in R&B, has reinvented herself as a singersongwriter by looking to alternative pop, bluesy rock and even country.
Among her collaborators are former White Stripes guitarist Jack White, indie rocker Ezra Koenig (of Vampire Weekend) and the prizewinning electronic producer James Blake. There are references, too, to Led Zeppelin’s When The Levee Breaks (on Don’t Hurt Yourself) and Andy Williams’s Can’t Get Used To Losing You (on Hold Up). She returns to R&B on Freedom, featuring rapper Kendrick Lamar, and Sandcastles, a ballad suggesting she and Jay Z are patching things up.