Image via Complex Original
Much fuss has been made interpreting Beyonce's Emmy-nominated LEMONADE since it dropped in April. Initially the conversation was limited to reconciling the lyrics on Bey's concept album about women scorned against tabloid gossip about the Carters. But seeing the Formation tour adds a new level of complexity and intrigue. Or, rather, you gain a deeper understanding and respect for the ways LEMONADE reconfigures and makes plain subtle elements in Beyoncé's previous work.
The tour's set list is a cunning, successful exercise in spinning an even larger narrative than the album does, and the ways in which old songs—staples in her career at this point—take on new meaning when refracted through the LEMONADE lens still has our minds spinning. The "Formation" tour is currently enjoying its European leg, but now that the U.S. run has wrapped up, we rounded up everyone on staff who witnessed the greatness to talk about which Beyoncé classics play differently in the aftermath.
"Ring the Alarm"
"Ring the Alarm" is the most obvious choice for this experiment, but also the biggest case for skepticism. When it dropped back in '06, the streets ran with gossip that it was a direct shot at Jay Z. The rumors said it was the result of red flag over-interest in a new Def Jam ingénue by the name of Rihanna, rumors that grew louder and louder only to fizzle into...nothing.
When Bey trots it out during Formation, with the "Takeover" beat mixed in, is she flashing a not-so-subtle signal at the audience? Is she dissing Jay over his own classic diss track? Does this retroactively make the Rihanna rumors true? Has Jay Z been acting up for years now? Or... maybe just that head-thumping Kanye West/Doors beat matches the defiant tone of "Alarm" and sounds really good live. Not to mention that Beyonce's been known to mine her husband's catalog when she sees fit (see the sprinkling of Magna Carta's "Crown" throughout "Flawless," for example).
Look, Jay lent credence to the autobiographical elements of LEMONADE with his crass acknowledgement of the rumor mill on the "All the Way Up" remix. But it's important to remember that we truly don't know shit about the Carter-Knowles marriage beyond the fact that Beyoncé made the best album of the year (so far) and is our greatest living performer. Some of the best pop songs serve as diary entries. And sometimes a song is just a song, a set list is just a set list. And rosebud is just a sled. —Frazier Tharpe
"Jealous"
When I first heard “Jealous,” it didn't seem to be a contender for favorite song on Beyoncé’s 2013 self-titled surprise album, but after thousands upon thousands of listens, “Jealous” is in my constant rotation. Listening to it before LEMONADE, the song felt like self-doubt, the singer questioning her own jealously. It felt apologetic, despite her acknowledgement that “I'm just jealous/I'm just human/Don't judge me.”
Though it doesn't appear on the tour, listening to "Jealous" in a post-LEMONADE world is a different experience. Now, she’s reveling in her jealousy, using it to her advantage. Hell, all of the second verse, where Bey’s crooning about pulling on her #TBT freakum dress to go to the club feels incredibly reminiscent of “Sorry,” her new IDGAF anthem. Her confidence in her jealousy here feels like a natural progression to “Hold Up,” where she’d rather be crazy. But no matter what, the end of “Jealous” still has an inevitable feeling of forgiveness, a direct parallel to LEMONADE's overall arc. Beyonce won't lets us forget that we’ve all fucked up more than a time or two and still deserve our peace. —Kerensa Cadenas
"Mine"
C'mon, admit it: your ears can't help but start twitching upon hearing, "Been having conversations bout separations/I'm not feeling like myself since the baby/Are we gonna make it?" on "Mine." That line has stood out since its release on her self-titled album in 2013, but post-LEMONADE it's even more curious, especially when considered alongside Jay's "Jay Z Blue," released five months earlier. (For those critics who can't recall MCHG album cuts, it's a tense track fraught with paranoia that finds Jay apologizing in advance to his daughter should his marriage fail, thus perpetuating his family's tradition of errant fathers.)
Couple that song with the opening of "Mine" and you have a scary picture of marital uncertainty in the fading light of a newborn baby. It makes me wonder if the elevator has us tripped out and whatever storm the Carter-Knowles marriage weathered actually occurred during the making of these 2013 projects. (Consider Solange lashing out at Jay that night not as a suspected philanderer, but as a man already on probation and still behaving a little too loosely.) It's quite possible Bey gave us pieces of the story early on before feeling comfortable to run with a whole concept album built around the experience. —Frazier Tharpe
"Me, Myself, and I"
The first time I heard “Me, Myself, and I,” I was 12 years old, and the song didn’t mean much to me. All I knew was that, after watching the music video, I wanted a bob haircut. These feelings changed my senior year of high school, when my boyfriend broke up with me. “Me, Myself, and I”—a song about loving yourself—became therapeutic.
Beyoncé hasn’t included “Me, Myself, and I” in her set list for years, so it's significant that she elected to perform it on the Formation tour. In a way, “Me, Myself, and I” feels more autobiographical this time around. But it's not just that. LEMONADE celebrates women, black women, and “making lemonade outta lemons” (word to Hattie). She sings “Me, Myself, and I” from a place of unshakeable confidence on the tour. She said it best during her her stop in Philadelphia. Just before she broke into song, she told the crowd: “This next song talks about the most important relationship in your life, and it’s the relationship you have with yourself. Every other relationship is a bonus and I want my ladies to know that if you’re a woman, if you’re a girl, if you’re a female, you are strong. We are born strong.” Then, right on cue, she transitioned into a gospel-esque arrangement of “Me, Myself, and I.” —Karizza Sanchez
"Kitty Kat"
This is really just an appreciation post for the highly underrated "Kitty Kat" (Tyler, The Creator feels me) and quietly one of the most impressive moments in the Formation tour. Artists touring a new album can easily overlook old songs and "Kitty Kat" is already buried deep within the catalog; the fact that Bey unearthed parts of this slinky, kiss-off to accent her full-on "dust to fuccbois" anthem is so genius and welcome, it put a big smile on my face. It's also a potent reminder that, while she's grown artistically and revealed more of herself with each album, the sentiments, attitude, and themes we're all championing now have been there since the beginning. —Frazier Tharpe
"Countdown"
Seeing the tour in my native Pittsburgh (which failed to sell out Heinz Field—embarrassing), my jaw dropped when Bey transitioned from "Hold Up" into "Countdown." That she would break the spell of the clearly crowd-pleasing "Hold Up" was shock enough. That she moved into "Countdown," a song that, on the surface, seems to have nothing to do with the bat-swinging rage contained by the LEMONADE stand-out, made the experience even more baffling. And then she sings "If you leave me you outta your mind" and it clicks. She's not the crazy one. —Ross Scarano
"Love on Top"
With its massive key changes that send the song spinning higher and higher, "Love on Top" seems to have nothing in common with the more hair-raising moments on LEMONADE. But in the context of the tour, one lyric in particular jumps out and jams up the careful listener. "You're the one I can always call/When I need you, make everything stop/Finally, you put my love on top." See it? "FINALLY, you put my love on top." Who is this man making Beyonce wait to have her love privileged, placed front and center? That dude is wildly, wildly incorrect. —Ross Scarano
"Survivor"
In the final minutes of the Formation tour, as Beyoncé strides through ankle-deep water after delivering "Freedom," she prefaces the next song by asking the crowd, "Do we have any survivors in the house tonight?" It's hard not to feel overcome by the question. The seminal 2001 Destiny's Child hit was originally penned about the bad blood between the group and its former members LaTavia Roberson and LeToya Luckett, but after 15 years Beyoncé's revival of "Survivor" embodies much more. Bey asks each listener to celebrate their own survival. Whether it's overcoming a damaged relationship, a damaged spirit, damaged safety, or a damaged will to continue living in a world that discourages your very existence, Beyoncé recognizes and reminds us to take pride in waking up each day having survived something. —Ariel LeBeau
"Grown Woman/End of Time"
In addition to being a glorious sonic decision, the mash-up of "End of Time" and "Grown Woman" that Beyoncé incorporates during the closing segment of her set feels like a choice that speaks to the nuances of womanhood. By lacing the joyfully magnanimous lyrics of the former ("I'll be your baby/I promise not to let you go") with the self-asserting words of the latter ("I'm a grown woman/I can do whatever I want") Beyoncé continues to create space in her music for women to be both independent and devoted. In fact, each way of being tends to enhance the other, as they do sonically here.
It's also just as easy to interpret the combined lyrics as a love letter to a prominent subject of Bey's: me, myself, and I. When Bey sings "I'll be your friend/I will love you so deeply" before launching into the jubilant choreography from the "Grown Woman" video, she shows us—as she has so many times before—what it looks like when a woman loves herself like her own best friend. —Ariel LeBeau