It has that horrible characterless implication to it. Channel Orange is a complete work and a nice listen, but ‘nice,’ as we all know, can be a death knell of a first impression. The competition may not be fierce, but in this modern age, Channel Orange could well be the finest album of its kind.Īndré and Andrew are right to admire what they do about Channel Orange, but I’d be lying if I said the album and I ever really hit it off. As finely made as Frank Ocean’s work is, my praise for it seldom escapes the afterthought ‘for pop.’ Reflective, for pop. It’s infinitely listenable, as every good pop R&B album should be. ‘I could never make him love me.’Ĭhannel Orange is powerful, meaningful, and utterly affecting, but best of all is that it’s a joy to listen to.
Towards the end of the record sits “Bad Religion”, a harrowing song that makes the most direct reference to Ocean’s newly outed sexuality: ‘this unrequited love, to me it’s nothing but a one-man cult,’ he sings.
The mid-album centrepiece of “Pyramids” acts as one of the lone instances of Ocean actually twisting with the conventions of pop, as he develops what would be a club-suitable banger into a 10-minute epic that uses Cleopatra as a metaphor for the struggles of black women throughout U.S. Highlights run through the entire album, from the soulful lure of “Thinkin Bout You”, to the Stevie Wonder breeziness of “Sweet Life”, to the insightful groove of “Super Rich Kids”. The music seeps through him organically, through sheer emotive power, acting almost as an antithesis to the common pop-fodder we’ve become so adjusted to in the 21st century.
As one of the most gifted singer-songwriters of his generation, Ocean knows exactly which boxes to tick without it feeling formulaic or predictable. He doesn’t so much veer away from the conventions of pop as much as he does embrace the major qualities of it, and Channel Orange benefits hugely from such focus.
He swings through a multitude of styles whilst managing to retain all of their best attributes, forging a sound completely of his own. The album smoothly shifts from ’90s R&B to psychedelic funk, and pretty much everything else on the way as Ocean displays great skill and confidence as a songwriter. Channel Orange represents personal freedom, and it’s a liberation that Ocean experiences as an artist as well as a man. More importantly, it provided critical context to an album made up of tragic laments of unrequited love. Upon the release of his first official album, Frank Ocean revealed that his first love had been a man, which naturally got people talking about his sexuality.
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