An emotional guide to the 17 videos on Beyonce's new album.

I was asked to provide a guide to the 17 videos on Beyonce’s new album, BEYONCE.

Queen Bey released all the videos as part of her new ‘visual album’ and basically broke the Internet’s brain. She’s pretty much figured out how to get people to buy entire albums again – all the videos need to be watched together for ultimate artistic and epic emotional impact.

It works.

I had an experience. I went through some stuff, and now I’m emotionally exhausted and can’t write anymore.

So here it is, from start to finish.

Perfection.

1. Pretty Hurts

Bey is backstage at a beauty pageant. She’s fighting with someone over a hairdryer and I’m already crying.

The very first thing she chooses to sing on her new album is this. She walks out onto a stage and:

“Pretty hurts. We shine the light on whatever’s worst. Perfection is a disease of a nation. Pretty hurts. We shine the light on whatever’s worst. Try to fix something but you ain’t fix what you can’t see. It’s the soul that needs the surgery.”

OMG, it’s all about body image and how perfection is futile and SHE IS MY SOUL MATE AND I CAN’T EVEN DEAL.

She’s puking in the toilet and being told she’s too fat and Harvey Keitel is the pageant host because this is Beyonce so why freaking not.

Now she’s smashing all her pageant trophies and it’s all so profound and my heart hurts because she just understands me.

EMOTIONS. SO MANY EMOTIONS.

The song is over. They cut to old footage of her winning a singing prize when she was 6 or 7 and it’s already obvious that she is a queen.

And I just died. I’m actually dead.

2. Ghost

Okay. This is basically just Bey standing in front of a wind machine with a sexy black sheet blowing around her body. And when it gets stuck on her face she just lets it sit there cos she’s an epic queen.

3. Haunted

Beyonce arrives at a haunted hotel and every room is filled with bizarro beautiful freaks who look like extras in a Vogue fashion shoot. It’s all very scary in a grotesque cinema kind of way. She does a whole bunch of sexy bed choreography while looking into into the camera, repeating words like “Slap” and “Kiss” over and over and ends up in black lingerie, with a giant black crown on her head, because even when she’s hanging out with beautiful freaky sex ghosts she is the surpreme being.

4. Drunk in Love

Okay so this song is basically about being drunk and having really hot sexy-times with Jay Z. OMG there’s the back of his head! And now he’s rapping. And he’s rapping while holding a glass of red wine because CLASSY AS SHIT. Wow. I think they’re both actually drunk. Yet somehow they get away with it. For whatever reason, when two beautiful people get drunk and roll around on a beach singing about their sexy times, I’m kind of into it. And now they’re just giggling and looking into each eyes. Classic Bey Z.

5. Blow

Beyonce. Tiger print coat. 70’s roller rink. Solange is there. That’s all you need to know.

6. No Angel

OMG BEYONCE IS IN FRONT OF THAT HOUSE IN MELBOURNE DOING BEYONCE THINGS. It’s made to look like a house in a US neighbourhood, but we know. We know. #BeyWUZHere4Eva.

7. Yonce

Beyonce introduces us to her new nickname, which is obviously intended to be used when talking about her sexy-gangsta side. Supermodels Chanel Iman, Joan Smalls and Jourdan Dunn jump around while Yonce just kind of stands there, licking a lollipop, out-sexing them all. She’s twerking and I think I remember someone called Millie or Mallie or something who tried to do that once but it did not look as good as this.

Oh. Holy. Jesus. One of them just licked her boob and Bey’s face was all just “Yeah. I don’t blame you. I’m Bey.”

Can’t even deal.

8. Partition

She’s sitting at a lush breakfast table in a Downton Abbey-esq mansion. I think she has put the ‘Be’ back in front of ‘Yonce’ because she’s not twerking anymore. She drops a napkin just so her white maid can scurry over and pick it up because she is FIERCE.

She makes out with Jay Z in the back of a limo and then cage dances for him and it is H.O.T. Also artistic. Because this is Beyonce, and Beyonce is an artist.

9. Jealous

Bey cooks dinner for a man. He doesn’t show. She goes to find him because she is epic and won’t put up with that shit. YES. I’ve been there Bey. Sing it sister.

10. Rocket

Beyonce rolls around in bed looking sexy. Beyonce stands in the shower looking sexy. Beyonce is in a bath looking sexy. Beyonce runs her fingers all over her sexy body. Lots of objects get pushed into other objects which I think is meant to be a WINK WINK to sexy-times. Beyonce is so sexy that she gets tired by her own sexiness and falls asleep.

11. Mine

Starts with Bey as an actual queen mother other-worldly-type goddess, which is exactly what she is so I don’t know why I’m crying tears of joy onto my keyboard. Drake turns up, but its like “no offence but whatever Drake”. They superimpose an image of her over the top of him because someone in the editing suite understood that too long without Bey hurts people’s souls.

12. XO

Bey runs around Coney Island going on rides and being glorious. She also wears a light-up Hello Kitty bow and I need to sit down because it’s like two of my heroes have had lunch and I wasn’t there.

13. ***Flawless

This opens with a clip of Girl’s Tyme, a group Beyonce was in as a kid, on Star Search. Then we cut to Bey telling us to “Bow Down Bitches” while writer and feminist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reads this epic piece of perfection:

We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller

We say to girls: “You can have ambition, but not too much

You should aim to be successful, but not too successful

Otherwise, you will threaten the man”

Because I am female, I am expected to aspire to marriage

I am expected to make my life choices always keeping in mind that marriage is most important

Now, marriage can be a source of joy and love and mutual support

But why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same?

We raise girls to see each other as competitors

Not for jobs or for accomplishments, which I think can be a good thing

But for the attention of men

We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings in the way that boys are

Feminist: a person who believes in the social

Political, and economic equality of the sexes.

Beyonce is bearing her teeth and being all bad-ass and OMG IT’S PERFECTION. I’m having an actual feminist meltdown. It ends with footage of Girl’s Tyme losing Star Search to some crappy group of guys and you just think what the actual fuck? Beyonce LOST something once? For SHAME, universe. For shame.

14. Superpower

This one is set in a Thunderdome-ish dystopian future. Bey is leading some kind of awesome rebellion against riot police who are clearly evil and twisted because they don’t accept that Bey’s is the one true leader of earth. I don’t know what the war is about but she has green streaks in her hair so you know it’s serious.

O.M.F.G. Kelly is there. And Michelle. IT’S AN ACTUAL DESTINY’S CHILD REUNION WHAT IS HAPPENING I CAN’T TAKE IT. Frank Ocean and Pharell are there too, but whatevs DESTINY’S CHILD.

15. Heaven

This is a sad slow clip about someone who has died and to be honest I’m kind of glad for the emotinal break because this has all been too mu – WAIT. Beyonce is just crying and singing, because she is just so moved by her own music and brilliance. Now I’m crying again. Shit.

16. Blue

Okay. This is the big one. I’m going to lose my shit. Blue Ivy is coming. We’re in the backstreets of Rio cos Bey likes to keep it real. Okay lots of shots of beaches and hous – THERE’S BLUE OMG THERE’S FREAKING BLUE.

She and Bey are dancing and hugging and being perfect together. Blue’s being all cute and running away like she doesn’t get that her mum is fucking BEYONCE. I’m losing it. They cut to a shot of her playing with a truck. Not a Barbie or a tiara but a freaking TRUCK. I love you Beyonce.

OH HOLY SHIT BALLS BLUE JUST SPOKE AND MY HEART WILL NEVER BE THE SAME.

She sings you guys. Blue sings.

17. Grown Woman (Bonus emotional come-down track)

Bey understood that we would be emotional wrecks after seeing her holy spawn so she spares us in the final video. It’s just filled with lots of shots of her growing up being an epic goddess. You know, NO BIGGIE.

Like Mamamia Rogue on Facebook

Rogue is Mamamia’s space for fun, viral and random content, with everything from feminism to pop culture. We scour the internet so you don’t have to, and bring all the best bits back.