Was Beyonce’s ‘Lemonade’ a terrible mistake?

EXTREMELY famous people do things differently to the rest of us.
They are human, so they still laugh, love, cry, get their hearts broken, cheat, get cheated on, get ill and even die (as hard as that is to process). But they live in the spotlight, under constant scrutiny, so the way these experiences are played out are very different to our own.
I’ve been watching the fallout from Beyonce’s new album Lemonade with fascination. For those who have been hiding under a rock the last couple of days, the entire album is an account of Jay Z’s extramarital affair, detailing her shock, her rage, her eventual acceptance, and her insistence on better behaviour in the future.

As someone who has been divorced, and had other painful relationships, I know a little about heartbreak. And I’m a writer, so I have a creative outlet with which to share my experiences to an audience.
And there was a period of time towards the end of my marriage when I would have found it intensely cathartic to write about my problems. I would have loved to unleash to my readers, share my pain, enjoy their sympathy, and cultivate their disdain for my husband (not that my ex deserves disdain, but that’s pretty much what you invite when you bitch about someone in public).
But I never did that, not because I am a paragon of virtue, but because dirty laundry publicly aired can never, ever be withdrawn.
Feelings change, but columns, books, videos and songs do not. They last forever, leaving a permanent reminder in your own and the public’s psyche about a transitory period in one’s life.
They hurt people. They ruin reputations. And they are accessible to absolutely everyone, most significantly your children. And which child thrives from seeing their parents’ personal business discussed and analysed by complete strangers?
Beyonce is one of the great artists of our time. The Destiny’s Child song Survivor inspired me in a hundred ways. And, even though I’m not Christian, I loved these particular lyrics so much:
“I’m not gon blast you on the radio
(I’m better than that)
I’m not gon lie on you and your family
(I’m better than that)
I’m not gon hate on you in the magazines
(I’m better than that)
I’m not gon compromise my Christianity
(I’m better than that)
You know I’m not gon diss you on the internet
Cause my mama taught me better than that”
This was the battle cry of a woman who dealt with her pain with dignity, which only added to her strength.
But Lemonade changes all that, quite dramatically.
“I smell that fragrance on your Louie V boy
Just give my fat ass a big kiss boy
Tonight I’m f**king up all your s**t boy”
“This is your final warning
You know I give you life
If you try this s**t again
You gon’ lose your wife ...”
It is being hailed as a show of strength, a powerful anthem in which Jay Z’s role is to grovel before her mutely in a video.
But essentially, Beyonce has made an album bitching about her husband, the father of her young daughter, Blue Ivy.
She has all but confirmed his affair with Rachel Roy (aka “Becky with the good hair”), thus inviting a rain of abuse on Roy. She didn’t “hate on them in the magazines” but she certainly did “blast them on the radio”, in no uncertain terms. Whether that compromises her Christianity or not, I can’t say, but it is a huge turnaround.
I understand Beyonce’s anger and pain. Who wouldn’t be enraged at being cheated on, and who wouldn’t feel angry at the woman who slept with your husband? And I also understand her desire as an artist to express her anger and pain through her music. That is her medium, and that is her truth, and that is her creative process.
But she has chosen to stay with Jay Z, and he is her husband, and she has torn him down in the public eye. How a marriage can survive under those circumstances is beyond me. And she has shared his infidelity with the world, and, as a consequence, with her daughter and everyone her child will ever know. How that will impact on Blue Ivy once she is old enough to understand remains to be seen.
As a writer, I make decisions all the time about how much I share and how much I keep private. Everyone has to draw their own line in the sand. Plenty of writers tell all; plenty of singer songwriters maintain fierce privacy about their personal lives. But when a person with a worldwide audience shares intimate details of their marriage, the consequences are quite profound.
Then again, it may not bother them at all. After all, extremely famous people do things differently to the rest of us.