Day 347: Frank Ocean – Blonde
Today, I’m doing another album that’s been on my list for so long, but that I just haven’t gotten around to – it’s always on the lists of best albums of all time, so I had to listen to it on a day when I can take the time to just listen and focus on it for an hour. Luckily I have lots of time today, so it’s time to finally listen to Frank Ocean’s Blonde.
Album cover courtesy of Boys Don't Cry
Frank Ocean is a alternative R&B and avant-soul singer/songwriter who was born in Long Beach, California but grew up in New Orleans. He moved to Los Angeles in 2005 to pursue a career in music when Hurricane Katrina destroyed his home and his recording equipment, and he started off his career as a ghostwriter, and found success writing songs for major artists.
During this time, he wrote Beyonce’s “I Miss You”, Justin Bieber’s “Bigger”, John Legend’s “Quickly” and several songs for Brandy, among others. But he decided that writing for other people anonymously isn’t the reason why he left his life in New Orleans to pursue a career in music. In 2010, he became a part of Odd Future, the hip hop collective headed by Tyler, the Creator.
He’d been signed to Def Jam Records as a solo artist but he was unhappy with how he was treated. He was contracted to release two albums, so he released his debut album Channel Orange in 2012. Then, after a four-year hiatus, he fulfilled his contractual obligations with a visual album called Endless. Unbeknownst to Def Jam, he’d also been working on another album on the side, and he released Blonde a day after releasing Endless, on his own record label called Boys Don’t Cry.
I love an underdog story, and pulling off Blonde as an upset to a label that he felt like was mistreating him is obviously right up my street, that’s the sort of antics I can very much get behind. And when he has full creative control over his work, it’s clearly only ever a good thing: Pitchfork named Blonde the best album of the 2010s, and Apple Music said it’s the fifth best album of all time. Rolling Stone also had it as number 79 in their list of 500 greatest albums.
Right from the opening track “Nikes”, you know that the album will absolutely be worth the hype. The instrumentation is minimalistic and soft, with a distinct lack of percussion in some songs. The resulting album is slightly hazy and dreamy but clean-sounding background, with his beautiful vocals and writing taking centre stage. It’s an album about love, loss, relationships and identity, with his writing and his voice making it very clear why he’s lauded as one of his generation’s best singer-songwriters.
And the list of people who worked on this album is stacked: I’ve heard “Pink + White” many times, but I’ve never realised that the background vocals in the song are provided by none other than Beyoncé. There’s also a poem read by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, also uncredited. Andre 3000 has a verse on the album, and it was produced by Frank Ocean with a number of talented people, including Pharrell Williams, James Blake and Jon Brion.
This is one of the most impressive albums I’ve listened to during this project. It’s one of those where you can tell it’ll open up in different ways when you listen to it more than once, which I’m sure I will do – no joke, I felt like I was levitating at times. It’s definitely an album to listen to when you want to remember why you love music. I even cried a few times, which happens very rarely from just hearing something I love. Blonde is easily worth all the hype, listen to it when you have time to turn the lights off and lay down. It’s a 10/10.