Beyoncé’s “Formation”: Where the past, the present, and the future meet and merge
Accompanied by a 65-minute short film, Beyoncé’s sixth studio album Lemonade was introduced as “a conceptual project based on every woman’s journey of self-knowledge and healing” (Pinkard, 2016). The visual album shows two intertwining narratives: one discusses her personal circumstances including her marriage and identity, while the other focuses on community. The first single off the album, “Formation,” mediates both narratives by connecting the singer’s experience to that of the black community, highlighting their struggles while also empowering them. Furthermore, the multimedia work is a means for her to interlink the past, the present, and the future: she combines elements of feminist afrofuturism in the visuals and references the past to evoke pride in her identity. In the singer’s words: “The past and the future merge to meet us here.” (Knowles, & Joesehp, 2016, 3:07–3:12)
In his review of the visual album, Corey Miles (2017) writes:
Lemonade is structured around 11-chapter titles narrating the relationship between black women and black men…. The first half of Lemonade largely discusses the ways in which her father and husband have failed her due to infidelity…. In the second half of the visual album, we see a transformation in the affective nature of the chapter titles, highlighting the love black women have for society, which gives them the ability to offer grace and forgiveness.
However, if using this approach, “Formation” sits outside of this narrative. As Maura Johnston (2016) noted, the instrumental of “Formation” is played over the credits and its music video “serves as a sort of end-credits sendoff.” However, the placement of “Formation” at the end of the album and the accompanying film makes sense when we look at the tracklist of Lemonade. In Lemonade, Beyoncé faces two conflicts: the dissension between the black man and the black woman, and the racial tension addressed through her identity. However, out of the 11 tracks that come before “Formation,” only 3 tracks discuss her identity as a black woman. and the rest is spent solving the internal tension between the two genders in the community. Hence, as the internal conflict is finally resolved in the penultimate track “All Night,” “Formation” opens up the conversation about the black community and the concurring racial tensions so that the talk continues after the album ends.
The lyrics of the song serve two purposes: embracing Beyoncé’s black roots, and flipping various power dynamics. In the first verse, she proudly declares her origins, which coincidentally match that of the Black Panther Party leader Huey P. Newton, who wrote in his autobiography Revolutionary Suicide: “Both of my parents were born in the Deep South, my father in Alabama and my mother in Louisiana.” (2009 [1973], p.11) The singer continues by pointing out the black features she shares with her daughter, before claiming that despite her status and net worth, she still embraces her origins. The defiant line “I got hot sauce in my bag, swag” shares a theme with previous works discussing the black identity, notably Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. In chapter 13 of the novel, the protagonist buys three baked yams to eat, which overwhelm him with freedom and power, so much that he imagines a scene where he confronts and humiliates Dr. Bledsoe, who duped the protagonist to maintain his status and power (Ellison, 2014 [1952], p.262–265). In “Formation,” the placement of the “hot sauce” line before the pre-chorus signifies that her heritage, symbolized by the food, drives her to work hard. Additionally, in the music video for “Hold Up,” it is revealed that her baseball bat is named “Hot Sauce:” her heritage is her weapon. To mirror the conflict between the narrator and Dr. Bledsoe, in the pre-chorus Beyoncé uses the metaphor of two animals. Nicknamed Queen Bee by the media and taking pride in her skintone (“yellow-bone”), she refers to herself as “yellow hornet” paralleling “albino alligators” — a jab at her white objectors.
When addressing her roots, the singer confidently claims to be a “bama,” which was first used to “put down recent arrivals to D.C.’s black neighborhoods from southern states — especially Alabama,” and is now used to refer to fools in general (Smith, 2010). By embracing her origins, the singer also resists classism and racism directed at the black community. In the second verse, she reverses the gender roles in hip-hop tropes, most notably in the line “When he fuck [sic] me good, I take his ass to Red Lobster.” This line was changed by Beyoncé from “If she fuck [sic] me good I’ll take her ass to Margiela” in the demo (Red Bull Music Academy, 2016, 1:45:21–1:45:32), giving control to the woman in the relationship. In the following lines, she addresses how hip-hop artists flaunt their wealth: if her partner pleases her, she may take him on her helicopter and lets him go on a shopping spree. Lastly, she uses epiphora, repeating a line twice but changing the pronoun: “You just might be a black Bill Gates in the making. I just might be a black Bill Gates in the making.” Here, the singer opens up the possibility of having the same wealth and influence as Bill Gates to her community, and bemuses herself with the idea that she — a black woman, can reach the same status as a prominent white man. On top of that, “you” comes before “I,” hence placing the community ahead of Beyoncé, whose net worth totals 350 million dollars (Greenburg, 2017), as if they had a better chance of becoming a multi-billionaire. This implies that the community has more potential than they may acknowledge.
Working in tandem with the empowering theme of the lyrics, the music exudes power and defiance. The song still follows the typical verse-chorus song structure, but it breaks away from the predefined formula, substituting differentiable compartments with short snippets, partitioned by exclamations and addition or subtraction of instruments. Written in the key of F minor, the song starts rather ominously with a minimalistic trap beat. In these first few lines, she sings in the lowest part of her vocal range, creating a dark, husky sound. We can hear nothing but the beat, her voice, and its echoes. Here, Beyoncé is in control, like a panther crouching to prey, which is in line with the lyrics where she addresses how her “haters” try to discredit her success with conspiracy theories that she is involved in the Illuminati. These lines are half-sung, half-rapped, with a monotonous melody consisting of almost entirely E-flats, except for a note on the second line where she makes a seventh leap. The repeated E-flats create a dissonant minor seventh with the tonic F, further accentuating the discord between Beyoncé and her naysayers.
In the next snippet, the pitch goes up a major fifth as the topic of the lyrics shift to her origin, resolving the dissonance in the previous lines since the B-flats create a perfect fourth with the tonic F. Synthesizers are added to the instrumental, and there is a “yeah” in the backup vocals after every line as if to cheer the singer as she exalts her roots. Next, the drum beats set in when the singer picks out the stereotypical “black” features that she loves. The melody is now an octave higher than the first few lines and alternates between F and E-flat. Moreover, the vocals are more melismatic, and the F notes accented by the beats, forming a perfect eighth witht the tonic F. The build-up in the instrumentals and the perfect intervals in the melody emanate pride and confidence as Beyoncé embraces her identity. All instruments drop momentarily for the singer to declare her heritage loud and clear with the “hot sauce” line, before coming back in with a full marching band, with the trumpets playing lines of the melody to celebrate the black heritage and the power it gives the singer. This particular section has the densest instrumentals in the song, since the lyrics find Beyoncé at the peak of her power.
While this section is set up how a normal chorus would be, it is not the actual chorus, which does not start until half a minute after the end of this “marching band” section. It is also decidedly sparing compared to the pre-chorus: the trumpet and and synthesizer embellishments are dropped, and its transition is much less ear-catching than that of any other section. Following the logic that the layers of instruments correspond to the levels of power portrayed, the chorus is lower in power since Beyoncé is calling for action: “Okay ladies now let’s get in formation.” However powerful she is, she is still weak without the community standing together.
Regarding its unusual song structure, Mike Errico remarks that “Formation” is the result of a process called “toplining”, where “instead of tossing [several sections they love] out in order to preserve preconceived notions of song form, [the writing team] will line them up and make multiple hook-laden sections out of each” (Ifeanyi, 2016). In the same article, to demonstrate the elaborate but effective structure of the song, he compares techniques used in each section to those used by Bob Dylan, Nirvana, or Max Martin and Dr. Luke. However, what he misses out is that “Formation” does not have such complex structure, but simply two long cycles of verse-chorus and an outro, as listed in the singer’s official page (Lemonade, n.d.). Just like how Beyoncé inverts the social constructs in the lyrics, the writing team behind “Formation” defies the typical arrangement of a song by setting up its sections differently, reversing the dynamics in the song.
To support the lyrics, the song’s music video draws elements of feminist afrofuturism and makes references to the past to illustrate the two overarching themes of “black” pride and resistance against social constructs.
“Afrofuturism” is a cultural aesthetic in response to the lack of racial diversity in science fiction, imagining the position of the black community in a futuristic society. Even though the term was coined by Mark Dery in his essay “Black to the Future” (2012 [1994]), the movement dates back to the 30s with the experimental jazz artist Sun Ra (Veen, 2013). A central question of Afrofuturism, as posed by Dery (2012 [1994], p.180), is “can a community, whose past has been deliberately rubbed out…. imagine possible future?” As proved by the longevity of the movement of almost eight decades, the answer to that question is yes. A more appropriate question would be “how?” With Lemonade, Beyoncé’s answer seems not to lie in the future itself but in the past: to imagine the future, first we need to reclaim our past.
In Lemonade, traces of afrofuturism are subtle, only notable in the ambiguity of time and dream-like state of the sequences. Many details in the film feel anachronistic: Carol Vernallis (2016) points out the plethora of mysterious figures of Southern women in Victorian, gothic dresses featured throughout the film. In contrast, in another article with Perrott and Rogers (2016) she noted the surrealist elements in the opening scenes of “Hold Up,” where “Beyoncé moves from a suffocating underwater bedroom to a Kubrickian opening of city hall doors and floodgate of waters.” Vernallis (2016) concludes: “Lemonade shimmers: history and current events remain co-present.”
Similarly, time is a blurry notion in “Formation.” There are heavy references to Hurricane Katrina and its effects on the black community, but the same Victorian mansion setting appears prominently, while there are also scenes grappling with racial violence, which was receiving plenty of media attention at the time. These settings certainly do not belong to the same time period. With the video, Beyoncé goes to further lengths to embrace her roots, raising concerns about the community she loves and allows them to have an input in the discussion. Of those voices, the most notable is that of Messy Mya — a YouTube personality who was murdered in 2010, whose voice is sampled at the beginning of the video. His posts mostly discussed the violence that permeated the area where he lived, but his most popular video addressed the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina (Syfret, 2016). The diverse community is also represented in the variety of hairstyles and fashion. Different black hairstyles are depicted in the video, mostly the afros emblazoned in the lyrics, but also the cornrows or the less traditional extensions and bright-dyed. Similarly, Givenchy, jean-jackets, Victorian umbrellas and dresses coexist in this alternate reality. As Kevin Ball (2016) argues in his paper:
By drawing our attention to these styles, Beyoncé calls for a horizontal sense of togetherness in “the absence of an organized direction of black political discourse” where “the logic of style manifest[s] across cultural surfaces in everyday life [to] reinforce the terms of shared experience.” As such, the portrayal of black culture in “Formation” is not only driven by a message of pride; rather, we see the circuitry of a black “cosmic” everyday — both fraught and blasé, aristocratic and grassroots — as the precondition for reframing the contemporary milieu of black political action.
Still, the clearest element of Afrofuturism in “Formation” is in how dancing is portrayed as a source of power. This connection between dance and Afrofuturism is extensively explored by Janelle Monáe, most prominently in the music video for her 2010 single “Tightrope.” The title card for its video reads: “Dancing has long been forbidden for its subversive effects on the residents and its tendency to lead to illegal magical practices” (janellemonaeVEVO, 2010, 0:01) In the music video, dancing grants Monáe the power to walk through walls, hence the possibility to escape from the asylum where she is held captive. “Formation” uses the same element to illustrate the reversal of social dynamics. In the video, the majority of men are motionless, while women perform complex, choreographed movements. This juxtaposition is further emphasized by depth and organization within a frame. In every frame where Beyoncé appears along men, the frame is symmetrical with the singer in the center. On top of that, these frames are organized according to different levels of energy in the music: when there are few layers of instruments, they have similar depth (beyonceVEVO, 2016, 1:12, 1:59), but when the instrumentals are dense, Beyoncé is placed in front and the focus is on her, while the men stay behind and are blurred out (beyonceVEVO, 2016, 3:00, 3:18). In contrast, when she is surrounded by women, she is part of the group, the “formation,” wearing similar outfits, performing the same dance moves, sharing the same depth and focus throughout. Dance is also used in response to controversy surrounding police shootings of black people at the time: near the end of the video, a black child disarms the police with his dance moves (beyonceVEVO, 2016, 4:20). The juxtaposition between the defenseless black boy and the fully armed line of white police is an act of defiance absent in the lyrics and music.
However, just like how the music recedes at the end, the video ends with the grim reality. The song ends with an alternate version of the chorus, returning to the biphonic form similar to the beginning. Beyoncé snaps out of her powerful, assertive moments, delivering the lyrics calmly: “always stay gracious, best revenge is your paper.” To match this change in power, the disarmament is directly followed by a panning of a graffiti that reads “stop shooting us,” and the ending scene finds Beyoncé laying on top of the police car, rapidly submerging in water. We can interpret this as explicit responses to racial violence and a nod to the Black Lives Matter movement (Garza, 2016).
While the themes in “Formation” closely tie with those of the album, as the lead single, released over two months before its parent album, the song’s impact differs from that of Lemonade. Since the majority of the album discusses the singer’s marriage, the buzz generated by the album largely focused on the alleged infidelity of her husband. Most of the talks surrounding “Formation,” on the other hand, are about racial conflicts in the US. The discussion was ignited by Beyoncé’s performance of the song at the Super Bowl 50 halftime show, where she and her backup dancers were dressed in black leather jackets and black berets inspired by the Black Panther outfits (Zaru, 2017). Opinions are divided: while many extol the singer for embracing her race and standing up against police shootings, others are infuriated, arguing that the music video and her performance is anti-law enforcement given the Blank Panther’s history of tensions with authorities (France, 2016).
The way “Formation” was released also contributed to its far-reaching impact. While it is not uncommon to premiere a song through its music video, “Formation” was first released as an unlisted video on the singer’s personal Youtube channel. Beyoncé is no stranger to surprise releases: her 2013 self-titled album arrived without prior announcement or promotion, with 14 songs and 17 music videos, all done under strict secrecy. With the surprise release of “Formation,” she created a false sense of exclusivity: while the video was not open to public, the public closely followed any activities of the singer, hence her new music, however exclusive it may be, did not escape media attention. We can argue that it generated even more hype: the sense of exclusivity encouraged people to seek it out.
However, this is also its limitation. Despite its early release in February and the attention it received, the song never made it to the Billboard Hot 100 until after the release of the album because it remained exclusive on the streaming platform Tidal, owned by Beyoncé’s husband. The music video itself was not released on her VEVO account until December 2016, limiting its dissemination. Moreover, her performance at the Super Bowl halftime show, though politically charged, is dampened by its commercial aspect: the singer announced a new world tour right after her performance. Still, we need to acknowledge that this reinforces her power in the industry. Writing for the New York Times, Jon Caramanica (2016) opines: “In so doing, she was arguing, in essence, that the halftime show was there to serve her, not the other way around.” Nevertheless, how Beyoncé traded influence for profit illustrates a sad truth: artists still need to prioritize materialistic values over social impact. Almost a year after the release of the song, another harsh reality is exposed: despite its social impact, commercial and immense critical success, Lemonade and “Formation” lost in all the main categories at the Grammys to Adele’s 25 and its single “Hello.” This harkens back to the speech Beyoncé sampled in her 2013 song “***Flawless:” “We say to girls: ‘You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful, but not too successful, otherwise, you will threaten the man.’” (Knowles et. al., 2013) Or to quote Janelle Monáe: “Whether you’re high or low, you gotta tip on the tightrope.” (Irvin, N. III, Joseph, C. II, Patton, A., & Robinson J.M., 2010) When you are successful, especially as a black artist, prepare for people to bring you down.
Despite the conflict they address, many of anthems for the Black Lives Matter movement are assured, powerful, and hopeful. Janelle Monáe’s “Hell You Talmbout” is a defiant tribute to the African-American people who have died in racial violence, demanding for acknowledgement of the deceased. Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” and its five-syllable refrain is a “future-tense assertion of delivery to a better, more peaceful place” (Schnipper, 2015). Beyoncé’s “Formation” is both: it reminds the black community of the culture they should be proud of and need to protect, while empowering them, especially females, to fight for a better future. Just like New Orleans, they are still submerged, but they are thriving, and will thrive, resiliently.
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