Frank Ocean Blonde 10th Anniversary — Why His Silence Is His Greatest Statement

August 20, 2016. A national holiday to many. “He made an album better than ‘Channel Orange’” — when I first heard this, it seemed unfathomable, but I sit here 10 years later knowing every word was true. As much as I love the initial offering, the second is just in another stratosphere. We watched a livestream for 30 days of silence and occasional sightings of a man building furniture, and then nothing, and then…. sound bloomed from the speakers in the wee hours of the night. It was not for nought. Then an album comes out of nowhere the next day — the album we didn’t know was the main album, after a visual album we thought was the album. That’s a lot of albums. ‘Blonde’ is the reason we don’t have exclusives anymore, no one album tied to a distributor for a week or weeks before everyone else gets it. Guess we should say thank you.

Thoughts remembered: leaving New York City after officially falling in love with it, making connections between Baldwin and Endless songs. Leaving — hearing Endless and Blond(e) during the golden hour — felt like the city was saying goodbye in the most cinematic way possible. Driving to the Northeast from Georgia and hearing ‘White Ferrari’ come on at the end of a journal entry.

“You cut your hair / but you used to live a blonded life”

Hearing unfinished versions on loop of songs like ‘Ivy’ and ‘Siegfried’ before they went by their proper name and ended up in their final form is something I’ll never forget. To the geniuses of this world: keep creating, take your time, but don’t stop creating — even if it’s just a grocery list, we’d be indebted.

We’ll always live a blonded life. Thanks, Frank.

–WV

I recorded a full episode on this for Space & Time. Listen to the episode.