Beyoncé Knowles released her sixth album, Lemonade, on April 23, 2016. Featuring The Weeknd, Jack White, James Blake and Kendrick Lamar, Knowles managed to capture her past and current relationship with Jay Z and the effect it has had on herself and her career. In order to truly define how she felt, Knowles created an hour long visual to go along with the album, playing each song as they went along. Every song represented something different in terms of the journey she’s taken with Jay Z.

Beginning with the first song, Pray That You Catch Me, Knowles touches on her insecurities that she feels with her husband but also the unrealistic hopes she holds for their relationship. Just like an emotional rollercoaster, Knowles moves from this sadder song to a happier one, Hold Up. Through this song, she feigns happiness and pretends that everything is okay when in reality, it isn’t. In the visual album, she wears a bright yellow dress that flows in the wind, and Knowles smiles and laughs as she breaks car windows with a baseball bat. Going back down to a more raw and angry song, Knowles follows up with Don’t Hurt Yourself, a song that portrays her disbelief that her husband could do this to her. Emotionally charged, Knowles spends the time, singing about how her husband had betrayed her. Continuing this trend of a rollercoaster of emotions, Knowles speaks mostly about her husband but also about herself as a black woman. Through the song Freedom, she talks about the struggle she faces as a woman of color and touches on civil rights leaders such as Malcolm X.

From the start of the release of her album, Knowles has received a lot of positive energy and kind criticism and it can be seen through the sky-rocketed sales of her album. Overall, it created a perfect balance between her creativity and her emotions, making it a success financially and creatively.