The Evolution of Beyonce

With the recent release of her album “Lemonade,” Beyonce shows a side of herself she has chosen not to show before. She gets very personal which is something she constantly attempted to hide from the public, but with her self-titled album “Beyonce” and “Lemonade,” she has broken those barriers. She chooses to represent someone open and vulnerable for the sake of women at large but particularly black women. She wants to emphasize the importance of the vulnerability of women in our society. She especially wants to give humanity to black women because showing how relevant and important that is has become a mission for Beyonce.

Before these two albums, much of Beyonce’s work consisted of love songs and empowering black women to be sexual in a way that they always had been to American society. Not to say that Beyonce didn’t do it differently, because she did, but she didn’t always make women as vulnerable as she does in “Beyonce” and “Lemonade.”

In her album “Beyonce” she confronts what it means to be a married woman who is “Drunk in Love” while her album “Lemonade” serves as the hangover of that drunkenness. In her album “Beyonce” she shows a woman deeply and passionately in love and faithful to her man in a way she had never been before. She is sexual and loving to show how devoted she is to her marriage. In songs like “Partition” and “Rocket” she shows the world the absolute sexuality that must exist in order for a marriage to last. In songs like “XO” and “Drunk in Love,” she shows the love that it takes for that marriage to last even if the sex does too. She begins, however, to show herself in the light of her new album “Lemonade” in songs like “Jealous,” “Pretty Hurts,” and “Blue” where she becomes a vulnerable Beyonce like we’ve never seen her. In these songs she shows herself, the super power perfection we all believe her to be, as jealous, torn up, and self-conscious. The woman that so many of us women aspire to look like and be has problems of her own beyond that of a boy who doesn’t like her, which artists like Taylor Swift like to portray about themselves.

In her newest album “Lemonade,” she builds off of these three songs to create a feminist, womanist album that transcends any of her work thus far. She shows the woman all woman have been or may be at some point. She’s insecure, jealous, and lost in a relationship that used to give her direction.

The evolution of Beyonce has been quick throughout her career and she is still so young. I can only imagine where she will be in her next album with an evolution like this and how she will continue to be an idol for women both white and black for years to come. She brings her blackness to the forefront of her music followed by her womanhood and southernness to add something unique and very powerful to the music scene.