Beyoncé didn’t just succeed in 2016 — she put her stamp on history. And in more ways than one. “Lemonade,” the what’s-it project that premiered shrouded in mystery on HBO early in the year, was immediately hailed as not just a great album, not just a great film, but an event and a harbinger of the future of music. It also spoke to themes of black American identity in ways that were both personal and broad, and especially trenchant in a year when identity and race could not be ignored on the national stage.
Replicated and memed and quoted ad nauseum, her “Formation” video and Super Bowl performance (Coldplay has never looked more like background decoration) either thrilled her millions of fans or rankled a section of the US that claimed her latest work was “anti-police.”
But as with Donald Trump, everyone had an opinion about Beyoncé in 2016 — and that has its own undeniable power.