Beyoncé released her album Lemonade in 2016 without any promotion. It was accompanied by a film showing the progression of songs. The album addresses themes of infidelity and black heritage. Music videos for "Formation" and "Sorry" had little promotion but garnered attention. Beyoncé toured to promote Lemonade, and her website focuses on her music, tour, and merchandise. Through controversial topics and dark visuals, Beyoncé created intrigue around Lemonade without traditional promotion.

1. Cross Media Case Study:
BEYONCE: LEMONADE
By Tyrell Bibbiani

2. BACKGROUND INFORMARTION:
Beyonce Knowles-Carter is a female singer
raised in Houston, Texas. As a child, she
performed on a variety of singing and dancing
competition shows. Towards the late 90’s,
Beyonce rose to fame when the band
‘Destiny’s Child’ was formed and managed by
her father. The group went on to become the
biggest and best-selling girl group of all time.

3. Solo Career:
After a hiatus, it was announced that Beyonce would
then become a solo artist, following with her debut
release of 2003’s ‘Dangerously In Love’. She then
followed this release in 2006 with ‘B’Day’. In 2008,
her third studio album named ‘I Am… Sasha Fierce’
saw her earn her sixth Grammy award. After her
marriage and pregnancy, the singer went on a 3 year
hiatus and released her fourth studio album titled
‘4’. The singer then released her self titled album
‘BEYONCE’ in 2013 with little to no promotion and
charted no.1 across the world.

5. LEMONADE:
2016’s ‘LEMONADE’ is Beyonce’s latest album release. This
album had no promotion and was released as a surprise. The
album was accompanied by a short film (essentially a
continuing music video for each song) and a worldwide
stadium tour followed shorty after. The album had its lead
single ‘FORMATION’ and its second single ‘SORRY’ with no
promotion included. Beyonce performed Formation on TV for
the first time at the 2016 Superbowl but no other
performances followed to help promote the album. On April
23rd, the album was made exclusive to be only streamed on
the app ‘TIDAL’ (created by her husband: Jay-Z) or to be
bought on iTunes/CD. There’s currently still no other way to
listen, stream or purchase the album. Allegedly, the story
behind the album is the theme of infidelity with Jay-Z
presumably cheating on Beyonce.

6. LEMONADE ALBUM COVER:
The album cover for Beyonce’s ‘LEMONADE’ is very simplistic. It features the singer
but with her face covered. Her name is not present but only the title of the album is,
suggesting that she is already well-established and people automatically know the
album is hers. The track titles on the back of the album cover reveals the singers face
with the title of the tracks. It is clear that the album cover is taken as a still shot from
her LEMONADE visual.

7. ALBUM PROMOTION
Despite the album, the music videos and the singles
being released as a surprise with nobody knowing,
interestingly, Beyonce and her team has had little to
no intentions of promoting the album. However, the
album and its singles has still managed to be
predominantly popular, earning the no.1 spot for a
total of 9 weeks and winning countless amounts of
awards. The singer has embarked on a stadium world
tour in order to promote the album, along with a 15
minute long performance of the album on the MTV
VMA awards.

8. The Formation World Tour
The Formation World Tour
is Beyonce’s seventh
concert tour. This tour is
the singers first stadium-
driven tour and has
managed to currently be
sold out on every show she
has performed so far.
When pre-sold tickets were
released onto the singers
website, it temporarily
crashed with some tickets
selling out after 12 minutes
of release.

10. Music video analysis: FORMATION
The ‘Formation’ music video was the debut
single/music video from Beyonce’s LEMONADE
album. The video was exclusively released and
premiered onto the singers streaming service of
‘TIDAL’ 2 days prior to America’s 2016 Super bowl.
The song and music video had little to no publicity or
attempts of promotion by Beyonce apart from the
televised Superbowl performance, on her Formation
World Tour and a performance during the 2016’s
VMA awards.

11. The video opens with an establishing shot of the
star sitting on top of a flooded New Orleans town
along with a drowned police car. Immediately, we
are shown the singer within the first few opening
shots in order for the audience to familiarise with
the fact that this is a music video for Beyonce’s
new single.
As the video progresses, there’re a variety of
symbolism used within the video after numerous
dance numbers. It is clear that within this video,
the singer is going back to her original roots of
history and black-American heritage within the
South.
The single also tackles the
controversial and current topic
of police brutality with
symbolism of the police being
unjustly with their power,
sparking further controversy to
the video.

12. The televised performance of ‘FORMATION’
premiered during the Half-Time show during
2016’s Superbowl. This was a tactic used by
Beyonce and her record label in order to
promote the song and the music video as
millions of people would be watching the show.

14. Music Video Analysis: SORRY
‘Sorry’ is the second music video to be released by
Beyonce from her album ‘LEMONADE’. The music
video for the song was released a month after the
album visual of LEMONADE had been released. The
song has had no promotion apart from the
performance of it on her world tour and the
performance of the song during her MTV VMA
‘LEMONADE’ medley. The song is based around the
potential infidelity of her husband (Jay-Z) and his
actions.

15. The ‘SORRY’ music video uses
celebrity endorsement as a technique
to appeal to the mass audience with
the inclusion of the celebrity star
tennis player: Serena Williams.
In contrast to the singers first single from
LEMONADE – FORMATION – SORRY uses
very low-key lighting along with being
completely unsaturated with no colour and
being in black and white.
Towards the final half of the
video, we are shown a
vulnerable Beyonce with
unusual and disorientating
editing.

16. ‘SORRY’ has only been performed on Beyonce’s
world tour. However, it was also performed as
part of the special LEMONADE performance at
2016’s VMA awards show.

17. GOODWIN ANALYSIS
Both the ‘FORMATION’ and ‘SORRY’ music videos applies to
Andrew Goodwin’s Music Video Analysis theory. This is
because the music videos both demonstrates the genre of the
narrative, with both involving numerous stage performance
from the singer in terms of dance routines. Both music videos
conveys relations to the lyrics in which Beyonce is singing. In
Formation, this is evident with the narrative involving
Beyonce’s black heritage and linking to her lyrics of her origin.
In Sorry, Beyonce is performing in a non-caring manner and
putting her middle fingers up, linking to the lyrics within the
song. There are also a variety of close-up shots used to
showcase Beyonce and, the majority of shots used within the
music videos consist primarily of her.

18. WEBSITE

19. The official website ‘beyonce.com’ works as
any other musicians website, including tabs
in which people can access what they want
in particular. This includes the latest music
videos/singles, details on booking tickets
for her current tour and her ‘IVY PARK’
fashion collection
The typography used within
the website is a simple and
bold sans-serif font.
The colours used
throughout the website is
very black and white
colours, along with also
being quite dull.

20. The website for Beyonce is very self-indulged. It predominantly consist
of promoting the artist and her latest on going adventures. The website
ranges from the singers latest videos and music, to the world tour, to a
picture gallery dedicated to the singers latest adventures along with a
shopping section promoting the singers latest merchandise.

21. CROSS-MEIDA: CONCLUSION
In conclusion, Beyonce has used her music videos and
promotional strategy to create hype and controversy. It
also portrays the singer to be very dark and sinister in
terms of the tone of her music videos and lyrical
contents. This theme is consistent through the singers
tour, her website and her promotion overall with
performances. It could be argued that this image created
by Beyonce shows her also tackling many social issues,
along with the idea of infidelity, which appeals and is
intriguing towards the majority of the audience. It is
clear to see that Beyonce has taken a different approach
towards her stance in the music industry compared to
her previous work as she has gone about promoting her
latest piece of work in a different way.