“Blonde” is Frank Ocean’s second studio album after “Channel Orange”. It is labeled as the fifth best album of all time according to Apple Music. This album discusses Ocean’s struggle with masculinity and emotions through his romantic relationships, heartbreaks, loss, duality and trauma.
- “Nights”
“Nights” is a very unique song. For starters, it’s five full minutes of pure beauty. The track begins with rap, a fuzzy bell-like synth, and an indistinct guitar. A new synth is introduced around the middle of the song, bringing it to a climax. Ocean enters with beautifully layered vocals saying, “All my night, been ready for you, been waiting on you all my night.” Another new synth is introduced, overlaid with guitar, and a new beat emerges out of nowhere. Ocean has dramatically altered the tone of the album. When the new beat comes in, it comes in exactly at the thirty-minute mark of the hour-long album. Splitting the record in half at the exact second creates a day-and-night effect. This is one of Ocean’s most popular songs of all time.”Nights” makes it simple to feel like the main character, as you struggle through your greatest and worst nights, even after a half-decade on loop. However, it is more than just a high-energy theme song for one of the most emotionally healing albums in recent memory, it’s the most multifaceted. Beyond feeling almost like two completely separate songs, “Nights” divides the album into two ideal halves, proving to be Blonde’s unbreakable backbone.
10- “Solo (Reprise)”
André 3000 of Outkast adds a new flow to the record with “Solo (Reprise).” The tune is barely one minute and nineteen seconds long, but the piano in the background seems to be struggling to keep up with him. Ocean is not featured on this single, but he uses André 3000 to represent what they both have in common: success and recognition in the music industry.
11- “Pretty Sweet”
“Pretty Sweet” pulls you into chaos right away; it is the album’s most abrupt moment. The lyrics lack a clear structure which is what Ocean is aiming for. Everything, including the drums, changes speed abruptly and alarmingly.
12- “Facebook Story”
“Facebook Story” is an interlude featuring a French producer named Sebastien. Sebastien relates a story about a girl he dated long-term. She friend-requested him on Facebook, but Sebastien declined since it was only an app on his phone and he didn’t feel the need to. The girl breaks up with him and accuses him of cheating, ending a three-year relationship simply because he refused to friend her on Facebook, something completely virtual destroying something so real.
13- “Close to You”
This track begins with a chopped-up sample of Stevie Wonder’s live rendition of “Close to You.” The song references a previous relationship in Ocean’s life and how he believes there will always be some sort of connection to that person, whether through memories or a physical connection. It’s another brief song, but it lives its life well and expresses a unique mood and idea.
.
14- “White Ferrari”
“White Ferrari” is a devastating song, yet Ocean shows how beautiful it is in the first thirty seconds. We’ve become very familiar with “White Ferrari,” but that doesn’t mean Frank’s atmospheric vocal harmonies and pleas of “tattooed eyelids on a facelift” (referring to how some memories are permanently etched in our minds like tattoos and how facelifts are procedures to erase age and time, similar to the malleability of memory) don’t still have the same sway over us. Frank’s backup vocal runs, probably more than anything else on this record, make his suffering feel devastating.
15-“Seigfried”
“Seigfried” is a lovely, scattered mix of ideas. This song lacks a clear structure, and the instrumentals feel scattered. Ocean employs random timing to begin his verses, but it works well. Ocean speaks about another broken relationship before moving on to his difficulties with the ‘American Dream’. The background vocals get more powerful and play on a loop. This is a moment in the record where Ocean feels stuck. He has been thinking so much about the past that he feels unable to escape it. The song concludes with Ocean singing, “I’d do anything for you in the dark.” He repeats this on a loop. This song’s instrumental is almost as strange as the lyrics, but it all feels connected and sounds great. Ocean’s musical skill amazes many with this track.
16-“Godspeed”
“Godspeed” bids farewell to a former sweetheart in a beautifully polite manner. The song begins, “I will always love you how I do, let go of a prayer for you.” Frank wishes his ex-lover well, with voice textures that touch your soul. It’s almost as if he Googled “What does moving on feel like deep inside?” and then translated that emotion into a sound.
- “Futura Free”
“Futura Free” is a look into Ocean’s life, told almost as if he is reflecting on it after his death. This song is sung in a way that feels as though he is rambling, going from topic to topic. The song appears to have finished with about fifty seconds of silence before cutting to an audio recording of Ryan Breaux, Ocean’s younger brother (now deceased). Breaux is conducting interviews with members of a skateboarding group during the lengthy audio clip. The questions do not appear to have any purpose or theme, but they might make fans think about certain things they may have never thought about before.
According to my ‘Stats.fm’ account, I’ve spent a total of around 12,000 minutes listening to Blonde! That is the same as 8 days of listening to the album in a row. This album is a forever favorite of mine and many others, it is cemented as one of the greatest albums of all time.
