Frank Ocean’s album is just OK, and that’s fine.
The meme-ification of music and the suppressive effect of exclusively positive criticism
Vince Staples made a couple of strong points recently:
“We’ve gotten to the point where we feel like we have to be a certain type of way. You should be able to have an opinion and say certain things but most people don’t because everybody’s scared somebody is gonna say something.”
and:
“Nobody really cares about the shit they pretend to care about.”
I’m going to say what I feel and not pretend I care about this, and I hope some of you can relate to it, even if only in the abstract: Frank Ocean’s new album is just OK. And that’s fine.
I’m not trying to get into the merits and flaws of Blonde — it has plenty of both — but I will say this: Blonde is an experimental and adventurous album, and given how many big swings it takes, there’s no way everybody who’s heard it is going to react positively. Yet, almost every review of the record I’ve come across has been overwhelmingly positive; The least flattering critical assessment I could find was a 3.5-star write-up from AllMusic (who I’ve long felt has the most consistently unbiased ratings of any site I’ve frequented).
Why? Staples said it: Nobody really cares about the shit they pretend to care about. Not everybody really feels passionately about it, but it can be scary to say what you actually think. This isn’t even really about Blonde, but about hype as a broader phenomenon.
People crave shared experiences with each other, and as the media landscape splinters further and further, and as our options become more vast, what experience we should be sharing isn’t as obvious as it used to be. There are more contenders for what is the best thing, and if we don’t get the best thing, we feel robbed.
“Life is good, and we want it to be better,” Louis C.K. said on an episode of Louie. “So we try to perfect everything in our lives, and it’s like a job. Being a consumer is like a job. You have to make sure you get the best one.”
So what happens when we have so many options that it’s not obvious what’s the best? That’s what critics and writers like myself try to help sort through. To paraphrase Malcolm Gladwell from his recent appearance on the WTF With Marc Maron podcast (or his appearance on Bill Simmons’ podcast, I forget which one it was), a luxury of being a writer is being afforded time to think deeply about topics people don’t get to spend as much time on. Therefore, our opinions are trusted, because they’re usually more carefully considered.
But there have been plenty of instances when the critical consensus on an artistic work has been “wrong,” or subject to significant reconsideration later on. Albums that were ignored in their day have since been considered classics, and the inverse also happens, but since writers and critics control the conversation, readers tend to go with it to avoid seeming like an outcast, like they don’t “get it.” Even if we think the critics are wrong, we want so badly to experience the great thing that everybody else is enjoying and to be part of something — anything — that we succumb to hype.
Like Staples put it, “You should be able to have an opinion and say certain things but most people don’t because everybody’s scared somebody is gonna say something.” As a critic, it’s much easier to go with the already-existing narrative readers will gravitate towards, because they’re comfortable with and unchallenged by it. But we give in to the superlatives and every few months, call the new album of the moment “the best,” “important,” or “essential” until the next bit of audio for us to talk about comes along and we forget about the other thing.
Music has become part of a content cycle, another meme to click on and share with friends and followers. Memes start in their original, untouched form before being propagated by those who want to get in on the ground floor of an emerging phenomenon. As it spreads, it takes on new meanings by those who interpret it in eye-catching ways until it has taken on a life different from what it initially was. We attach superlatives to it, because saying an album is “pretty good” doesn’t make us seem as interesting as taking a stance like calling it “the best” and having nuanced reasons why does. A non-superlative take is also a non-clickable one.
The life of Blonde as a meme started long before its release, from when Ocean first posted the photo of the Boys Don’t Cry magazine on his tumblr. Since then, the release has been building hype until Ocean was positioned as one of the most important artists of our generation (despite having just one “important” album in Channel Orange). Then there were the missed release dates, then Endless, then by the time Endless came around, there was no way we would allow Blonde to be anything but an excellent album (unless it was truly horrendous, which it isn’t). Frank Ocean is somebody we (both the media and consumers) like. We talk positively about him. We say he’s the best. Everybody agrees he is good. He’s a good guy. He’s important. Therefore, this album is good.
This was going to happen even if we had to convince ourselves that was the case, listening to it again and again until we got something out of it. That’s not something we should have time or desire for: There’s plenty of music for us to listen to because of what it actually is, not because of what it could have been or what we wish it was.
Because of Blonde’s context, it’s next to impossible to know how good of an album it truly is, although that could be argued about any album with a degree of media attention. It will be a few years before we know how good David Bowie’s Blackstar really was (if anybody feels like talking about it at that point), because what critic was going to risk the anger that would have come with giving that album anything but praise in the wake of its creator’s death? When everybody is calling Blonde transcendent, who wants to exile themselves by saying anything otherwise?
It’s scary to disagree, but don’t forget that it’s allowed. It’s possible that I’m wrong and Blonde is undisputedly great, but it also might not be.
