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Can a Beyoncé fan explain this to me?
Feb. 23rd, 2017 10:15 pmI know Beyonce's visual album Lemonade has been out for a while, so there's probably already an obvious answer to this, but could somebody explain something to me about it?
It seems to be universally accepted that based on the content of the album, that she is singing about an incident of Jay-Z cheating on her in real life-- that the incident of infidelity she is singing about is something that actually happened to her with her actual husband.
Can somebody explain to me WHY everyone is so sure that she's singing about her own true experiences? I mean, LITERALLY EVERYBODY seems to accept this as truth; I've never seen a single person question that. But how do we know? What is the reason why we believe that?
It can't just be because she sang about it, right? She's an artist! Not everything an artist says in their art or puts into it is necessarily autobiographical. Just because she's the one singing the song and performing in the video doesn't mean that she isn't playing a character or speaking in the voice of a person other than herself. I'm reminded of how everybody thought that Better Than Ezra's "Beautiful Mistake" meant that guy actually had a dad who walked out on his family, when it reality it was just a story made up for the song. Also, Jay-Z was pretty instrumental in promoting Lemonade and releasing it, so it seems a little odd that he'd have such a chill attitude about it if the piece was all about telling the world he was a cheating jackass. And not that I follow them that closely, but the couple doesn't seem to have much in the way of strife between them, if one of them supposedly betrayed the other.
So... why does no one question that Beyoncé's song is supposed to be about her own life? Is it something in the visual album? Full disclosure: I have not actually watched Lemonade, though it's such a cultural phenomenon I know I should. But I'm so fascinated by this universal agreement on how it's a window in their actual real lives. Can somebody explain it to me?
It seems to be universally accepted that based on the content of the album, that she is singing about an incident of Jay-Z cheating on her in real life-- that the incident of infidelity she is singing about is something that actually happened to her with her actual husband.
Can somebody explain to me WHY everyone is so sure that she's singing about her own true experiences? I mean, LITERALLY EVERYBODY seems to accept this as truth; I've never seen a single person question that. But how do we know? What is the reason why we believe that?
It can't just be because she sang about it, right? She's an artist! Not everything an artist says in their art or puts into it is necessarily autobiographical. Just because she's the one singing the song and performing in the video doesn't mean that she isn't playing a character or speaking in the voice of a person other than herself. I'm reminded of how everybody thought that Better Than Ezra's "Beautiful Mistake" meant that guy actually had a dad who walked out on his family, when it reality it was just a story made up for the song. Also, Jay-Z was pretty instrumental in promoting Lemonade and releasing it, so it seems a little odd that he'd have such a chill attitude about it if the piece was all about telling the world he was a cheating jackass. And not that I follow them that closely, but the couple doesn't seem to have much in the way of strife between them, if one of them supposedly betrayed the other.
So... why does no one question that Beyoncé's song is supposed to be about her own life? Is it something in the visual album? Full disclosure: I have not actually watched Lemonade, though it's such a cultural phenomenon I know I should. But I'm so fascinated by this universal agreement on how it's a window in their actual real lives. Can somebody explain it to me?
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