I also thought Beyonce was clearly a good dancer and singer, but made pop music for the radio - most of her music didn't really speak to me or make me want to do anything except dance. I put her in the same category of like, Janet Jackson or Madonna - a superstar, but a pop superstar. And then she released "Formation", performed at the Superbowl, and released Lemonade. My opinion of Beyonce changed very quickly - now I think of her more like Lauryn Hill and Eryka Badu. And the more I learned about her, the more impressed I got. Here are just a few facts that made me respect Beyonce more than just being a pop star:
1) she has an all-female band at her concerts - http://vitaminw.co/culture/beyonces-all-female-band-challenges-music-industry-stereotypes
2) She opened a cosmetology training center for women who are recovering from addiction to drugs, that way they learn a job and get real training while they are recovering from addiction - http://www.mtv.com/news/1633329/beyonce-very-proud-to-open-cosmetology-center-in-brooklyn/
3) She and Jay-Z have given millions of dollars to the Black Lives Matter movement, both in donations to the organization and also paying the bail money for protesters who have been arrested - https://www.good.is/articles/jay-z-beyonce-black-lives-matter-funds
4) She has sold 131 million albums as a solo artist during her solo career and 60 million albums as part of Destiny's Child. Jay-Z has sold 55 million albums in his career.
And Jay-Z is where this album began. He cheated on her (repeatedly) while he was married to Beyonce. Now personally, I don't really care if a guy or girl wants to have sex with lots of people - that's their life choice. But why get married? Why be in a relationship if you don't actually want that? I just don't understand people who cheat - you can just break up with the person you're with and go have sex with another person, you don't need to stay in a relationship and they lie and betray someone. When Beyonce found out, she felt many different emotions, and that is what Lemonade is about - a journey through all the emotions she felt from discovering the adultery to eventually repairing her relationship with Jay-Z. Between the lyrics and the visuals and the music, I can't think of anything like this. Maybe Pink Floyd's The Wall comes close to it (a concept album about one idea that was turned into a film), but Lemonade is next level.
Some students might be thinking "Why do we need to spend so much time on Beyonce?" or "I don't like Beyonce, why should I have to do this?". But Lemonade is about more than just one woman - it's about trust issues in relationships, not just between men and women, but between anyone who has love for another person (friends, family, and yes, romantic relationships). It's also about how America doesn't value people of color, it's about divisions between rich and poor, it's about dealing with your emotions in healthy and unhealthy ways. It's about feeling loss and betrayal and learning how to re-create yourself after something horrible happening.
If you can't find meaning from these songs, you're not thinking hard enough about them. You need to open yourself up to the music, the words, the images, and be able to find meaning in art, no matter what the subject is. That's the point of the second 3 weeks of class - to explore how artists make meaning through art and how YOU, as an individual, find meaning through art.
This can be a very rewarding process if you allow yourself to be a part of it. Be brave, be open-minded, and give the next 8 days (16 hours of class) all your effort, and I promise you won't feel worse at the end of it.