cross media case study beyonce
TRANSCRIPT
Cross Media Case Study:BEYONCE: LEMONADE
By Tyrell Bibbiani
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Formation World TourThe 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.
Music video analysis: FORMATIONThe ‘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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
‘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.
GOODWIN ANALYSISBoth 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.
WEBSITE
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.
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.
CROSS-MEIDA: CONCLUSIONIn 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.