Lemonade is the Beyoncé album that tells a visual story through songs and short films released with it.
Released in 2016, Lemonade was accompanied by an hour-long film that premiered on HBO. The project combines music with poetry, imagery, and scenes drawing on Black history, family, identity, grief, betrayal, and resilience. Its structure moves through named emotional stages, including intuition, denial, anger, apathy, accountability, reform, forgiveness, hope, and redemption.
The album includes “Formation,” “Sorry,” “Hold Up,” and “Freedom,” featuring Kendrick Lamar. Lemonade received widespread critical acclaim and won the Grammy Award for Best Urban Contemporary Album. It is sometimes confused with Renaissance, Beyoncé's 2022 dance-focused album, which was also part of a larger planned trilogy but did not use the same album-length film format.