Lemonade is the 2016 Beyoncé album structured as a visual album about identity, betrayal, and healing.
Beyoncé released Lemonade on April 23, 2016, after premiering its accompanying hour-long film on HBO. The project combines music with poetry, imagery, and themes connected to Black womanhood, family, ancestry, marriage, and emotional recovery. Its chapters move through states including intuition, denial, anger, apathy, accountability, reform, forgiveness, hope, and redemption.
The album drew on multiple styles, including R&B, rock, country, blues, soul, and hip-hop. Its songs include “Formation,” “Sorry,” “Hold Up,” and “Daddy Lessons.” The visual presentation made Lemonade more than a conventional collection of tracks and helped make the phrase “visual album” central to discussions of Beyoncé’s work.
Lemonade received widespread critical acclaim and earned a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year. It is distinct from Beyoncé’s self-titled 2013 visual album and Renaissance, released in 2022.