When Life Gives You Lemonade, Make Clickbait
In case you didn’t notice, “Queen Bey” has released a new album. I’ve noticed, because I’ve been bombarded by reviews, press releases, critical analysis and socially conscious thinkpieces for the past few days. This article proves we’ve already come full-circle in the story’s lifecycle: a meta article about articles about Beyonce’s Lemonade.
Before I go in I’ll put my cards on the table: I don’t listen to Beyonce, I don’t follow her career, and this isn’t about the artistic quality of anything she’s done. This is about the content marketing hype machine gone mad.
Since Lemonade’s release, I’ve been monitoring the Facebook pages of three content channels: VICE, Dazed, and Complex. Between the album’s release on the 24th April and 5pm GMT on the 26th there have been 3 posts on VICE, 6 on Dazed and an eye-watering 11 on Complex.
These numbers are already inaccurate because it’s still going on. Each day these outlets find a new angle or element to write a few hundred words about. Beyonce’s marketing team appear to be DDoSing the collective consciousness until we give in. Here’s a screenshot timeline of the Beyonce Pandemic:
Phase 1 — Video drops
Patient zero. The world first encounters the album, and outlets waste no time in telling the world where to find it. These posts contain little of note because nobody’s actually seen the video yet.
The worst would be yet to come…
Phase 2 — The Gushing
Enough people have seen Lemonade to write about it. The Gushing begins, and it comes in 3 flavours…
Beyonce as Saviour
The release of Lemonade has changed society irrevocably. An hour-long visual accompaniment to a pop album has finally given the marginalised people of the world the power to throw off the shackles of cultural oppression. Future civilisations will record this as the Post-Beyonce era.
The Nominations Are In
At this point the album hasn’t even been with the world a full 24 hours. Complex wastes no time in praising Queen Bey’s latest release as Grammy winner and AOTY in the most stereotypically millennial, hyperbolic way possible.
Fame by Association
The Beyonce praise gets too much and now the other people involved get their piece of the pie. Interestingly, both Dazed and Complex decide to focus on Winnie Harlow out of a cast of thousands. Are they working from the same marketing strategy or looking at each other’s content?
Phase 3 — The Pathogen Spreads
On the flipside of fame by association, other figures are now being drawn into the story through obscure possible mentions in the lyrics, or for simply being nearby when Lemonade came out. Take this for instance…
Checking out the full article, apparently Kim Kardashian “threw shade on Beyonce’s Lemonade moment” by…posting pictures from a night out on Instagram in numerical order while it was premiering on HBO?
Both Dazed and Complex couldn’t get enough of the Azalea/Azealia duo in the rush to pick apart every element and manufacture industry “beef” for clicks. The latest fad is the witch hunt for the enigmatic “Becky with the good hair” mentioned in one of the songs, which has numerous celebrities doing their best reverse Spartacus impression.
The image above shows the late stages of the Becky hysteria. After throwing fuel on the internet’s attempts to identify Beyonce’s mysterious, possibly imagined transgressor, the collective media organism is now urging everybody to come to their senses.
The lifespan of the LEMONADE story is symptomatic of the short-lived nature of clickbait journalism; within 3 days the content machine has constantly changed and sometimes contradicted its own narrative from one of hype and appreciation, to manufactured conflict, and finally to self-reflection.
Working in the same sector as these content producers, I understand the nature of the beast and the drive to produce sponsored and trending content that keeps publishing profitable in a post-AdBlock world, but there has to be a better way than this short-lived over-saturation.
To VICE and Dazed’s credit, they at least published a significant volume of interesting, unique, non-Bey related content to lessen the impact (in comparison to Complex, who are a pure brand hype machine).
Last week it was about Prince, next week it’ll be Drake, and then whatever popular musician does something influential like releasing an album on Tidal or dying. In their rush to capitalise on a trending topic, the internet’s major content mills have already turned me off from ever seeking out the product they’re promoting.