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“Blond(e)” also references the distance between the past and the present, social media and in-person living, publicity and privacy, nostalgia and reality, youth and adulthood, freedom and constraint, the individual and society, as well as the space between who people are and what they want or hope to be.
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The title's change to "Blond" or "Blonde" pushes the conceit even further because it forces audiences to see the opposite poles of an outdated gender binary and the shrinking distance between those poles, or conversely, the infinite expansion of those poles.
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Ocean’s original title for the album was "Boys Don’t Cry," which also invokes gender stereotypes, assumptions and expectations. The purposeful play between "Blond" and "Blonde" marks the masculine and feminine denotations of the words. In this sense, "Blond(e)" is not all that different from Michel Foucault’s "History of Sexuality." Ocean’s work is best when it teeters between binary poles and definitions because it shows that those binaries and definitions are fictional and imposed on people to begin with.
FRANK OCEAN BLONDE ALBUM MEANING SERIES
The new album"Blond(e)" uses specific references to “pussy,” “wet dreams” and “gay bars” to communicate a vulnerable innocence - a longing for a past when sex was a series of acts that people engaged in and not an internalized definition of who they were because those definitions can box people in and be used to control them. He further confounds the public’s notions of what gendered and sexual labels mean in 2016, continuing much of the work that Prince did throughout his entire career in rock 'n' roll. He has, however, openly expressed having had deep affective and romantic relationships with both men and women while simultaneously eschewing the labels that society puts on those dynamics. Ocean does not explicitly identify as gay, straight or bisexual. To listen to "Blond(e)" is to move through Ocean’s conceptualization of queer space.įrank Ocean’s new album is queer as fuck but never through explicit identification - rather through the rejection of the very notion of identity. The basic dictionary definition of “queer” is “strange or odd,” and the power of Ocean’s "Blond(e)" lies in the ways it affirms being strange or odd since any degree of strangeness or oddness is defined only through limiting, normative rubrics to begin with. It’s about not being contained, like light traveling through space. "Blond(e)" is about not fitting in and trying to be oneself anyway, going against the grain. That distance has particular resonance for LGBTQ+ communities because distance is what we have felt, being different in a world that doesn’t accept - much less celebrate - difference. "Blond(e)" is about the distance of a light year and attempting to shrink that distance, and it’s about the distance between individuals.
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Short version: It’s super complicated, just like Frank Ocean’s new album and the version of queerness it presents, unattached to identity but solidly grounded in experience and the concept of unknowability.įrank Ocean has referred to this album as both "Blond" and as "Blonde" and I’m using the title Blond(e) here to denote a significant distinction between the cover art that references "Blond" and the online marketing and iTunes categorization for "Blonde." But it speaks volumes about the entire album's concept in its simplicity.Ī light year is a vast unit of measure - almost impossible to conceptualize - where time, distance, speed and dimension collapse upon one another. The minimalist project is jampacked with detail, something very few artists can pull off, and it serves as a reminder of Frank Ocean's ability to craft a masterpiece.The last lyrics of Frank Ocean’s new highly anticipated and masterful "Blond" are “how far is a light year?” The answer, nearly 6 trillion miles, comes directly after some old spliced-together interview audio plays over art-school noise. Social statements are echoed and amplified, with Frank speaking on topics such as drugs, life, philosophy, and sadness, making the listener think twice about every line, meaning and entendre while mellowing out or crying to the dreamy yet eerie background. Frank seems to hold complete control of everything throughout the album and it appears that he completely shaped "Blonde" into what he wanted. Frank's soft-spoken harmonic voice is beyond soothing, and pairs extravagantly with the soft piano and imperturbable guitar. "Blonde" is Frank Oceans second album, and it is an exceptional piece of art with an emotional, heavy-hitting tracklist, one of self-finding "Blonde" is Frank Oceans second album, and it is an exceptional piece of art with an emotional, heavy-hitting tracklist, one of self-finding and Frank's struggles with anxiety.