"Formation" is a song by American singer and songwriter Beyoncé from her sixth studio album, Lemonade (2016). Beyoncé wrote and produced the song with Mike Will Made It, with Swae Lee and Pluss as co-writers. Pluss formulated the song's original beat while Swae Lee freestyled the hook, after which Beyoncé's wrote its verses. The song was surprise-released on February 6, 2016, through Parkwood Entertainment. It is a trap and bounce song in which Beyoncé celebrates her culture, identity, and success as a black woman from the Southern United States.
The song received widespread acclaim upon release, with music critics praising it as a personal and political ode to black Southern identity. It was voted critics' top song of 2016 in The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop poll and named one of the best songs of the 2010s decade by numerous publications. In 2021, Rolling Stone placed the song at number 73 on its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. "Formation" won all six of its nominations at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards and received three nominations at the 59th Annual Grammy Awards: Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Music Video, winning the lattermost award. In the United States, the song debuted at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was certified three-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. It also charted within the top 40 in Australia, Canada, France, Hungary, Scotland, Spain, and the United Kingdom, and the song was certified diamond in Brazil, double platinum in Australia, and platinum in Canada and New Zealand.
The song's music video premiered on the same day as the song itself as an unlisted video on YouTube. Directed by Melina Matsoukas, the New Orleans-set video portrays black pride and resilience through diverse depictions of black Southern culture. The video received critical acclaim, with Rolling Stone placing it at number one on its 100 Greatest Music Videos of All Time list in 2021. Beyoncé performed the song during her guest appearance at the Super Bowl 50 halftime show the day after its release, and it has featured on the setlists of her subsequent tours.
Upon release, "Formation" ignited discussions on the topics of culture, racism, and politics. The song also triggered controversy, with conservative figures claiming that Beyoncé was spreading anti-police and anti-American messages, and law enforcement officers protested at her concerts. It became known as a protest song and was adopted as an anthem by the Black Lives Matter movement and the 2017 Women's March. The song has also been the subject of study at schools, colleges, and universities.
Writing and production "Formation" was written by Beyoncé, Mike Will Made It, Swae Lee and Pluss, and produced by Beyoncé and Mike Will. Pluss formulated the original beat for the song in Atlanta, Georgia, implementing a synthesizer effect found in the Virtual Studio Technology plug-in on FL Studio. In April 2014, Mike Will and the members of Rae Sremmund were driving to Coachella and freestyling to beats in the car. For the beat that Pluss made, Swae Lee said: "Okay ladies, now let's get in formation." Will loved the concept and thought it would be suited to Beyoncé, who had recently asked him to send new music ideas. Will believed it could be a huge female empowerment anthem in the same vein as Beyoncé's 2008 song "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)", with the track being about women getting in line with the men they are in relationships with. They recorded the line on a voice note and later played it back when in a recording studio in Los Angeles. Lee recorded a simple reference track, freestyling over the beat. Mike Will sent it to Beyoncé, together with five or six other reference tracks. A few months later, Mike Will was at a party after a basketball game. Beyoncé appeared at the party and told him she really liked the "Formation" idea, and left it at that.
Beyoncé then wrote all of the verses of the song in New York, while keeping the central hook about ladies getting in formation. Beyoncé's verses took the song in a different direction from what Will intended and broadened its scope to turn it into an anthem about her identity, heritage, and culture. Jon Platt of Warner Chappell Music told Mike Will: "Yo, this shit's crazy, you got to hear this." Will went to New York and spent a week with Beyoncé in Quad Recording Studios to complete the recording and production. They added heavy, distorted 808 beats with saturated upper harmonics to the track to make it "palatable to the culture", according to mixing engineer Jaycen Joshua. Beyoncé thought it could be a song that marching bands would play and asked for horns to be added to the track to evoke the sounds of New Orleans. Will explained that Beyoncé "took this one little idea we came up with on the way to Coachella, put it in a pot, stirred it up, and came with this smash. She takes ideas and puts them with her own ideas, and makes this masterpiece."
Composition and lyrics "Formation" is a Houston trap and New Orleans bounce song. The song is written in the key of F minor in common time with a tempo of 123 beats per minute. It has a minimalistic beat containing rubbery synths and a heavy bass line, which transforms into a horn-infused stomp reminiscent of marching bands and military tattoos. In The Oxford Handbook of Social Media and Music Learning, Joseph Michael Abramo wrote that Beyoncé's implementation of electronic production, brass elements, and vocal fry in "Formation" acts as a tribute to the signifiers of black music, while also forming a critique of institutional racism together with the lyrics. The song has an unconventional structure that deviates from the norm of pop music. American singer-songwriter Mike Errico called the songwriting "practically Dylanesque", with no single clear chorus on the track, but instead a chorus followed by a "super-chorus" that "blows what we thought was the chorus out of the water".
Beyoncé's vocals span from D3 to A4 in the song. Beyoncé employs multiple delivery styles on the track, with the introduction being delivered in a hoarse, whispered tone that switches into a half-rapped, half-sung cadence as the song progresses. Lauren Chanel Allen of Teen Vogue commented that Beyoncé used "a lazy trap flow" instead of "her superhuman vocal range", which acts as a refusal to code-switch and an embracing of blackness. The Guardian Alex Macpherson characterized Beyoncé's delivery as playful and carefree, noting the "amused drawl" of the opening line and the "sudden giddy exclamation as she lands on the word 'chaser' in the chorus". Sheldon Pearce of Pitchfork described how Beyoncé raps on the track, implementing enunciated syllables, "hard-cracking consonant sounds and precisely-measured alliteration" that make the lyrics satisfying to recite.
Lyrically, "Formation" is a celebration of Beyoncé's culture, identity, and success as a black woman from the Southern United States. Focusing on the theme of black pride, Beyoncé extols her Texan, Alabamian, and Louisianan roots and notes how she has remained closely connected to her heritage throughout her mainstream success. She reclaims offensive terms for black people ("negro" and "Bama") and applauds her and her family's physical features ("I like my baby heir with baby hair and afros" and "I like my Negro nose with Jackson 5 nostrils"). Beyoncé also references her global recognition on the track, dismissing a conspiracy theory that attributes her success to the Illuminati and celebrating self-made black businesswomen.
Release and commercial performance "Formation" was released on February 6, 2016, accompanied by its official music video. It was a surprise release, having no prior announcement in a similar manner to Beyoncé's 2013 self-titled studio album. Writers such as Dream Hampton suggested that the release date was intentionally selected, as it was the start of Black History Month, during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the day after Trayvon Martin's birthday, and the day before Sandra Bland's birthday. The release was accompanied by new merchandise on Beyoncé's website, with items and clothing citing lyrics from the song. The release "broke the internet", according to Rolling Stone, receivingx widespread praise and discourse on social media. It was Google's most searched song of 2016.
"Formation" was not an official single, according to music industry trade publication Hits Daily Double. The song was exclusively available as a free download via the subscription-based music streaming service Tidal. It was not available for purchase or for streaming on other platforms, and Tidal did not report the song's streams to Nielsen, the source of Billboard's sales figures. The song was also not promoted to radio stations; however several stations still added it to their rotations. Reggie Rouse, program director at Atlanta station V-103, said: "If you were a mainstream urban station that didn't play 'Formation,' you were left out in the cold. When Beyoncé releases a record or a song, it's an event — everyone listens. If someone else did that, it wouldn't have the same effect." The song debuted at number 11 on the U.S. Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay with 16.3 million audience impressions, marking Beyoncé's highest career debut on the chart. Based on the airplay alone, the song debuted at number nine on the U.S. Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100.
"Formation" featured as the final track on Beyoncé's sixth studio album, Lemonade, which was surprise-released on April 23, 2016. The song also plays over the credits of the accompanying film of the same name. The track set new peak positions on the charts following the release of the album, as it became available for streaming exclusively on Tidal, as well as for purchase on iTunes two days later. The song debuted at number 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number three on the Digital Songs chart (with 174,000 downloads) on the chart dating May 14, 2016. In 2022, the song was certified three-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America in the U.S. Following the album's release, the song also debuted in the top 40 of several international singles charts, including the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Spain, Hungary, and Sweden. It reached number one on the ARIA Urban Singles chart, while the singer's own "Hold Up" was at number two.
Critical response Reviews "Formation" was met with widespread critical acclaim upon release. Pitchfork named the song "Best New Track", with Britt Julious describing it as one of Beyoncé's "most instrumentally-dense and trend-forward productions" which is made specifically for black women, "an audience that might not receive the sort of mainstream, visually and sonically-enticing wisdom that Bey has perfected". In a review for the New Statesman, Anna Leszkiewicz praised the experimental nature of the track and wrote that Beyoncé presented "radical" sociopolitical concepts in a familial context, adding: "The more mainstream Beyoncé becomes, the more she functions as a marginal artist." Similarly, Q's Shad characterized the song's lyrics as "deeply personal and political", and praised Beyoncé for celebrating her black Southern roots on a global stage. Writing for The Guardian, Daphne A Brooks described the "brilliance of the single's sonic arc", with the tension from Beyoncé's "restrained, raspy" vocals exploding in a "euphoric release" as she expresses her pride in black identity and culture.