If a picture’s worth a thousand words, then a video must speak volumes. Take the MTV Video Music Awards – Beyoncé’s most recent onstage performance of Lemonade was nothing short of spectacular. The 15-minute visual display dazzled TV screens worldwide with studded costumes, neon lights, gorgeous high-definition close-ups, and, best of all, a larger-than-life-sized Venus symbol.
The overwhelming amount of hype surrounding Beyoncé’s VMA performance says a lot about the way we look at music. It’s safe to say that music is becoming more and more visual. Thanks to the accessibility of video sharing platforms like YouTube, the music video that accompanies a song release is always just as – if not more – important than the song itself.
Beyoncé’s Lemonade takes this notion to new heights. Lemonade is described as a visual album, meaning that the cinematic component of the album warrants the most attention. The music serves as the soundtrack to a full-length, 60-minute motion picture, divvied up into 11 chapters and bursting with Oscar-worthy visuals. The film is also chock-full of poetry, prose, and feminist dialogue.
Lemonade is Beyoncé’s second visual album – her first, Beyoncé, practically broke the Internet with sheer ingenuity alone. Major music artists had experimented with the visualization of music before; Michael Jackson released a 13-minute short film alongside hit single “Thriller” way back in the 1980s, and Kanye West made a 34-minute short film to pair with his album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
But nobody had done it quite like Beyoncé. Both Beyoncé and Lemonade have impressed audiences and critics across the board; the two visual albums are, unquestionably, cinematic masterpieces.
And since the release of these two visual albums, other artists have begun to follow in her footsteps. Frank Ocean, for example, very recently made major waves with the release of his much-anticipated album, Endless, in August. Endless is Frank Ocean’s first visual album. Running a full 45 minutes, it’s already been coined a daring yet innovative artistic feat.
The visualization of music is a cultural trend that’s quickly gaining more and more ground. Visual albums are increasing in popularity by the minute; soon enough, artists from every end of the musical spectrum will be creating feature films to accompany the songs that they write.
However, the rise of the visual album poses an important question: are visual albums changing the way we consume music? In other words, are we putting too much emphasis on the visual aspect of a song release? Some might argue that we’re forgetting what music is all about – the music. The vocals and instrumentation should come first and foremost; everything else is purely superfluous.
However, one could argue that visual albums are actually heightening our generation’s appreciation of music. Through video, artists can exercise extreme creativity and encourage their audiences to look at their music through a deliberately specific, unique lens.
So, as of right now, the visual album is the next big thing. And with Queen Bey leading the pack, we couldn’t be happier.