Beyoncé’s 2016 visual album centered on themes of race, marriage, and identity is Lemonade.
Released on April 23, 2016, Lemonade combined a twelve-track album with a one-hour film broadcast on HBO. Its music moves through R&B, rock, country, blues, reggae, and hip-hop, making it one of Beyoncé’s most stylistically varied projects.
The visual work is organized around emotional and symbolic chapters, including intuition, denial, anger, apathy, hope, and redemption. It also incorporates poetry by Warsan Shire and imagery connected to Black women’s history and culture. Songs such as “Formation,” “Sorry,” and “Hold Up” became especially prominent.
Lemonade is sometimes described only as an album, but its defining format is visual: the music and film were released as a connected artistic statement.