Lemonade includes “Formation” and premiered as a film on HBO.
Beyoncé released Lemonade on April 23, 2016, after an HBO broadcast of an hour-long film with the same title. The album is a visual project that combines music, poetry, spoken passages, and imagery. Its songs move through themes commonly described as intuition, denial, anger, apathy, emptiness, accountability, hope, and redemption.
“Formation,” released before the album, became one of the project’s defining songs. Its lyrics and video address Black identity, Southern heritage, policing, and cultural pride. The album also includes “Sorry,” “Hold Up,” “Daddy Lessons,” and “All Night.”
Lemonade debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and received widespread critical acclaim. It won the Grammy for Best Urban Contemporary Album in 2017. The HBO premiere is a useful identifying detail because Beyoncé, the 2013 project, was released directly as an audio-and-video album without that same television event.