I'm a day late but august 20 marks the anniversary of the release of my favorite album of all time. Here are some words if anyone's interested.
One year ago I received a text from my friend Dan Valdés that read simply "it's out". No further explanation was needed. I was biking around providence at that moment, alone, in the dark, dodging cars downtown on the bicycle i'd just finished building into my own personal brakeless supercar. It was not a Mclaren F1, like in the music video for Nikes that was still fresh on my mind, but skidding around corners and hurtling down hills it felt pretty damn close. I don't know where my mind was in that moment, but I know the previous several days had been a blur of pedaling around, staying up late, and constantly checking an online stream of a man building a spiraled staircase in black and white with occasional ambient-sounding music in the background. A day prior, on August 19, we'd gotten that music, in the form of a strange, sprawling 'visual album' that drifted across vignettes of songs and ambient moods that seemed to capture the confused wandering mind i'd always imagined their creator possessed. At the time, none of us knew if that was the album, if the years of waiting culminated in Endless, but I remember it being hard to even come up with an opinion on the project; it was too abstract, too spacey to nail down a verdict, and everyone was worried to say their four years of waiting for the next channel Orange had culminated in disappointment. But we never had to make the comparison - just the next day, Blonde (or was it "Blond"?), was released, and for me, and many others, it changed everything.
I won’t go track by track because there’s far too much to say. It would be unfair anyway - Blonde is an experience that lives and grows throughout its one hour running time, each song thriving in context as Frank’s music and lyrics weave together a three-dimensional portrait of young people’s experience in twenty-first century America. It is more than growing up, more than coming of age, more than succumbing to capitalism, more than falling in love; in one cohesive album, Blonde captures the human experience, channeled through the eyes of romantic, introverted teenage insecurity that could not feel more genuine. But somehow, despite being so personal, it never feels self-absorbed; starting with the pulsating instrumental of "Nikes," Frank weaves pop culture and materialism together with uncertainty and lust, lyrically illustrating the scared, wandering, yet spiritedly optimistic mindset of his and my generation.
For several weeks I listened to Blonde every day in full. I don’t think i’ve gone more than a week since without hitting play on its iconic white-framed cover. The grainy screaming that concludes "Ivy" still brings shivers down my spine. The beat switch in "Nights" still causes me to shake my head in awe. "Futura Free" brings tears to my eyes to this day. I’m not sure there’s another body of music out there that can be at times so emotional and devastating but leave the listener so optimistic and uplifted. Everyone who has truly lived with Blonde has a line in the final “skit” that, as my friend Amman Woldegebriel once put it, makes them feel like they can fly, like they can truly be free. Blonde takes the depression, anxiety, and troubles of a generation and laments them with care, but reassures the listener, showing them that they are not alone, promising the possibility of weightlessness and relief.
If you haven’t heard Frank Ocean’s Blonde, or haven’t in a while, I’d encourage you to put it on sometime, close your eyes, and just listen. It really is quite good.
- frb
originally published on facebook.