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Beyoncé · S6 E6
Pretty Hurts
The opening track, the beauty industry, and a kind of self-criticism pop music rarely allows
The first image of Beyonce's visual album is a young woman adjusting a pageant sash that reads "Miss Third Ward," staring into a mirror. Before the album explores feminism, desire, and power, it starts with the simplest question: when did being beautiful stop being enough?
"Blue" (feat. Blue Ivy Carter) official music video, Beyonce (2013). The visual album's final statement: after fourteen tracks exploring feminism, sexuality, fear, and identity, the album ends with this intimate, home-movie-style video of Beyonce and her daughter.
BLUE (feat. Blue Ivy Carter)
"Blue" strips the production down to gentle acoustic guitar, soft piano, and Beyonce's voice at its most unguarded. Blue Ivy's voice appears on the track, captured from a home recording rather than a formal studio session. After an album of aggressive production and complex feminism, "Blue" arrives like a deep breath. It is the thesis statement hiding at the very end: everything else on this album exists because of this.
TAP TO REVEAL: What does "Miss Third Ward" mean?
The Bookend
The visual album opens with "Pretty Hurts," a song about a woman trying to meet impossible standards of beauty. It closes with "Blue," a lullaby to her daughter Blue Ivy. The answer to "what does beauty cost?" is not found in a mirror. It is found in her daughter's face. Sia co-wrote "Pretty Hurts" and has said she originally intended to record it herself.
Who co-wrote "Pretty Hurts" with Beyonce?
Mine (feat. Drake)
One of the quietest collaborations on the visual album. Drake and Beyonce trade verses about the anxiety of parenthood and the fear that love might not be enough to hold a family together. It connects directly to the themes in both "Pretty Hurts" and "Blue."
Pretty Hurts in Focus
The visual album did not just change how Beyonce released music. It changed how the entire industry thought about albums, videos, and the relationship between art and commerce. Next: the business of the visual album, and why December 13, 2013 broke the rules for good.
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