On April 23, 2016, Beyoncé shook the world with the surprise drop of her sixth studio album, Lemonade. But the virality of the 12-track LP had to do with more than the release tactic. This wasn’t the first time the superstar unleashed an album with no announcement. No, what mattered the most was the content. Conceived as multimedia project, with a full film accompanying the songs, Beyoncé bared it all in Lemonade — a juicier, updated version of what Usher did 16 years prior with Confessions. Lemonade wasn’t just a confessional record, though. It was a healing album, leading a new wave of honest but repairing tell-all work from the likes of Ariana Grande and Cardi B. Lemonade was praised by critics, considered highly influential to the culture at large, and became the biggest 2016 album worldwide. With all of that in its favor, many expected this incredible moment to be Beyoncé’s ticket to her first Album of the Year win. Until it wasn’t.
To understand Lemonade, you first need to understand what Beyoncé’s public persona was in 2016. The artist preferred to keep things mysterious, rarely sharing details of her personal life beyond her lyrics. Perhaps what was most scrutinized about Beyoncé was her marriage to rapper Jay-Z. To many, Bey and Jay were the standard — two extremely successful, Black artists and visionaries, whose legacy had long been cemented. So, when instantly viral elevator footage out of Solange Knowles attacking Jay leaked online, accusations erupted of a possible cheating scandal. Many largely dismissed such talk as gossip, but then, just a few months later, Lemonade dropped, seemingly confirming an infidelity with the “Becky with the good hair” line from the track “Sorry.” Suddenly it became more than a cheating scandal; it was the first true crack in Beyoncé’s armor, shattering the image of an idealized life fans had envisioned.
This humanity was what made Lemonade so refreshing. Beyoncé had never been someone to spill personal details, let alone on a record, so immortalizing the experience in such a beautiful, yet very public and honest way, was surprising to say the least. Critics immediately hailed the album’s accessibility, in a way that surpassed any other of her records.
The album’s cultural impact was so profound that it was nominated for four Emmys and even won the prestigious Peabody Award, a rare feat for any music artist. Lemonade was also a massive moment commercially too, being the first time a female artist landed 12 or more songs on Billboard‘s Hot 100 upon its debut. It was, in all ways, a very clearly deserving front-runner for Album of the Year.
Sure enough, when nominations were announced for the 59th Grammy Awards, Beyoncé and Lemonade led all comers with nine total nominations, including Album of the Year and both Record and Song of the Year for “Formation.” The closest competitor was Adele‘s 25, which managed five nods. Queen Bey seem poised for a coronation.
Industry watchers and oddmakers, including Gold Derby, predicted that Beyoncé would win several Grammys, including the one that had eluded her thus far: Album of the Year. Then the unthinkable happened. Over the course of the February 2017 ceremony, Beyoncé won two early awards, Best Urban Contemporary Album and Best Music Video, but then Lemonade began losing in categories it was favored, like Best Music Film and Best Rap/Sung Performance. As predicted, Adele won Song and Record of the Year for “Hello,” leaving only Album of the Year to be decided.
And Lemonade lost.
Taking the stage to accept the award for 25, Adele was visibly gobsmacked and dedicated her statuette to Beyoncé. “The artist of my life is Beyoncé,” said the British singer, who swept all five categories she was nominated in. “The Lemonade album is just so monumental.”
“My personal opinion is that Beyoncé definitely should have won,” Adele told Vogue years later, revealing that she went backstage to Beyoncé’s dressing room and told her, “the way that the Grammys works, and the people who control it at the very, very top — they don’t know what a visual album is. They don’t want to support the way that [you are] moving things forward.”
What transpired that night, however, only elevated Lemonade’s iconic status. Like Purple Rain, Daydream, and Kid A before it, the album’s snub became a conversation in itself. It was too ahead of its time. It was too cool for the Grammys to get. Beyoncé’s Album of the Year snub fueled the narrative that, despite winning more Grammys than any other artist, she was long overdue and unfairly overlooked in the top category — a storyline not rectified until her win for Cowboy Carter in 2024.
Ten years on, Lemonade‘s cachet has only grown. Rolling Stone named it the No. 1 album of the 21st century. Novel at its time, her visual album format and cathartic, confessional approach to songwriting has since influenced artists as varied as Frank Ocean, Thom Yorke, Sabrina Carpenter, Shania Twain, and Lonely Island. It spawned lasting fashion and style trends, including Lemonade braids. Lemonade has been parodied on The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live and been the subject of academic research and college courses at the University of Texas, Louisiana State University, and Tulane, among others.
Beyoncé remains someone who lets her music do the talking, and has shied away from discussing the legacy of Lemonade. So we’ll go to a lyric from “Formation” that neatly sums up the culturally shifting success of the project: “I dream it, I work hard, I grind till I own it.”
