Lemonade (album)

Lemonade
Studio album by
ReleasedApril 23, 2016 (2016-04-23)
Recorded2014–2016
Studio
Genre
Length45:45
Label
Producer
Beyoncé chronology
Beyoncé
(2013)
Lemonade
(2016)
Everything Is Love
(2018)
Singles from Lemonade
  1. "Formation"
    Released: February 6, 2016
  2. "Sorry"
    Released: May 3, 2016
  3. "Hold Up"
    Released: May 27, 2016
  4. "Freedom"
    Released: September 9, 2016
  5. "All Night"
    Released: December 2, 2016

Lemonade is the sixth studio album by American singer-songwriter Beyoncé. It was released on April 23, 2016, by Parkwood Entertainment and Columbia Records, accompanied by a 65-minute film of the same name. It follows her self-titled fifth studio album (2013), and is a concept album with a song cycle that relates Beyoncé's emotional journey after her husband's infidelity in a generational and racial context. Primarily an R&B and art pop album, Lemonade encompasses a variety of genres, including reggae, blues, rock, hip hop, soul, funk, Americana, country, gospel, electronic, and trap. It features guest vocals from Jack White, the Weeknd, James Blake and Kendrick Lamar, and contains samples and interpolations of a number of hip hop and rock songs.

Lemonade was released to widespread acclaim from music critics and has since been considered to be one of the greatest albums of all time. The album was music critics' top album of 2016, and was named the greatest album of the 2010s by publications such as the Associated Press. The album was placed at number 10 on the Apple Music 100 Best Albums list and number 32 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. The album was nominated for nine Grammy Awards at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards (2017), including Album of the Year, Record of the Year and Song of the Year. It won Best Urban Contemporary Album and Best Music Video. The album's visuals received 11 nominations at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards, of which it won eight including Breakthrough Long Form Video and Video of the Year. The film also received four nominations at the 68th Primetime Emmy Awards. The album won a Peabody Award in Entertainment.

Lemonade topped the charts in various countries worldwide, including the US Billboard 200, where it earned 653,000 with additional album-equivalent units, including 485,000 copies in its first week of sales. It has since been certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). By the end of 2016, Lemonade had sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States, making it the third-best-selling album of the year in the US, and it was the best-selling album of 2016, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), with 2.5 million copies sold worldwide. The album was supported by five singles: "Formation", which was a top-ten hit on the US Billboard Hot 100, "Sorry", "Hold Up", "Freedom", and "All Night". Just four days after the album's release, Beyoncé embarked on The Formation World Tour to promote the album, an all-stadium tour visiting North America and Europe.

  1. ^ Wilson, Carl (April 25, 2016). "Beyoncé's "Lemonade" is incredible as a visual album. But how is it as just music?". Slate. Archived from the original on October 13, 2018. Retrieved October 2, 2016. ...contemporary R&B album
  2. ^ Hogan, Marc (March 20, 2017). "Exit Music: How Radiohead's OK Computer Destroyed the Art-Pop Album in Order to Save It". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on December 23, 2020. Retrieved May 9, 2020. There were still great art-pop albums, but, increasingly, they weren't necessarily rock albums. Across the last 20 years, monumental rap, R&B, and pop records like D'Angelo's Voodoo, Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and Beyoncé's Lemonade have filled the void of full-length statements with both artistic seriousness and mass appeal that was formerly largely occupied by guitar bands