The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Tuesday, September 6, 2016 — 9A

ADAM 

THEISEN

MUSIC COLUMN

Our bodies, our 
‘Blonde’ selves

L

yrically, “Here, There and 
Everywhere,” off Revolver, 
is the most physically 

immediate and intimate song 
The Beatles ever recorded. Over 
quiet, calm-
ing guitar 
strums and 
girl-group 
backing 
vocals from 
his band-
mates, Paul 
McCartney 
sings lines 
like “to love 
her is to need 
her every-
where” and “watching her eyes 
and hoping I’m always there” in 
the calmest, sweetest voice. But 
as tranquil as he sounds, there’s 
almost unbearable pain in a 
desire that tangible and deep. On 
Frank Ocean’s latest album, the 
long-awaited Blonde, the young 
singer picks up and intensifies 
that unique kind of pain of being 
human, creating a record as 
purely honest as it is difficult to 
hear.

“Here, There and Every-

where,” which Ocean explicitly 
references on the song “White 
Ferrari,” is a moment that brings 
the old Beatles back for a few 
minutes — a very down to earth, 
physical human feeling on an 
album more often interested in 
altering consciousness and tran-
scending everyday life. While 
they had dipped their toes into 
the mind/body divide with their 
previous record Rubber Soul, 
Revolver is the first that really 
fractures The Beatles. It presents 
them as more than just a physical 
entity, using studio experimenta-
tion to add to the band’s mystique 
and make tangible their visions 

and hallucinations, as well as cre-
ating songs that would be physi-
cally impossible for a four-piece 
group to perform live.

Revolver is a good album to 

listen to when you hate the way 
you take up space in the world. 
It’s a stereotypical go-to for when 
you’re high, but more than that, 
it’s truly a reimagining of what 
music can be. It’s one of the first 
rock albums to break the rules 
of commercial music, to be a 
cohesive work of art more than a 
product or collection of would-be 
radio hits. And while that may 
sound boring, Revolver is actu-
ally playful 
and fun, filled 
with the thrill 
of newness 
and explora-
tion. Its sound 
makes you 
dream beyond 
and smile 
through your 
tangible self.

The 

sequencing 
of Revolver is wickedly smart, 
because as powerful as “Here, 
There and Everywhere” is, you 
get about four seconds of silence 
to process all its difficult mean-
ings and implications before 
Ringo Starr barges through the 
door of your mind without even 
knocking: In the towwwwwwn, 
where I was born … and suddenly 
it’s impossible to think, because 
Zooey Deschanel’s favorite Beatle 
is having a party 20,000 leagues 
under the sea.

Blonde, by contrast, doesn’t 

give that relief. It feels the same 
limitations but decides to linger 
on them rather than escape, and 
so it’s an album that is impos-
sible to enjoy when you hate your 

physical presence. Ocean mostly 
eschews drums, the most physi-
cal instrument, in favor of ethe-
real keyboards and not much else. 
Blonde seems to exist best at 3 or 
4 a.m., a time when even the best 
of us might not feel like the world 
as we know it is totally real. It is, 
depending on who you talk to, a 
mature, complex masterpiece or a 
scattered, incomplete work of art 
from an anxious genius.

Either way, I feel this impos-

sible to salve pain inside me when 
I try to listen to Blonde. The slow 
tempos, the ambient background 
synths, the fact that with only the 

subtlest rhythms 
it’s impossible 
to dance to, all 
force you to lis-
ten intently to 
each deliberate 
note. It’s beauti-
ful, but it’s too 
much. I listen to 
Blonde and my 
mouth feels dry, 
I can’t keep my 
hands steady, 

and I worry that my heart will 
stop beating any second.

In “Nikes,” the opening track, 

Ocean meditates in a high-
pitched inhuman voice on the 
tragic deaths of Pimp C, who died 
at 33 from syrup, and Trayvon 
Martin, a Black teenager who 
was murdered at 17. Knowing 
that he could die at any moment, 
knowing that he looked just like 
Trayvon, Ocean detaches from 
the materialistic world and drifts 
through a hook-up, singing “I’m 
not him, but I’ll mean something 
to you.”

There are occasional wry 

moments of humor on Blonde, like 
the end of “Nikes,” where he tells 
the hook-up “You got a room-

Arts

mate, he’ll hear what we do / It’s 
only awkward if you’re fucking 
him too.” But if you’re uncom-
fortable at all with your body or 
your physical existence, it’s an 
intense, unpleasant experience. 
There’s a debt owed to Revolver 
and The Beatles, which Ocean 
acknowledges, but where The 
Fab Four aspire to freedom and 
preach escape, Ocean’s stripped-
down music forces his listeners 
to confront themselves and their 
most personal feelings.

When Blonde 

surprise-
dropped a few 
weeks ago, it 
was a terrible 
time for me 
to hear it. I’ve 
been uncom-
fortable with 
my physical 
self for quite 
a while now, 
and last month 
was a particularly intense time 
for that feeling. I hated the way 
most people saw me, and it left 
me constantly exhausted, alone, 

scared and needing a change. 
I needed art that I could lose 
myself in — representations of 
others that I could disappear 
into, not minimalist music that 
invaded my mind and forced me 
to look inward. Blonde made me 
feel like I was drowning in my 
own anxieties.

Since then, I haven’t tried to 

tackle Blonde unless I’ve felt 100 
percent up to it, and I’ve instead 
tried to get the same, but slightly 
easier, experience out of The 

Beatles. Blonde 
is fascinating 
and important, 
but it hurts. 
Revolver, 
its spiritual 
ancestor, tack-
les its themes 
of bodies and 
the pain of the 
physical and 
the transcen-
dence of life in 

a more bearable, optimistic way.

It’s fitting that Blonde came 

out as the 2016 Summer Olympics 
closed, just as we were wrapping 

our minds around the seem-
ingly impossible physical tasks 
achieved by athletes like Katie 
Ledecky and Simone Biles. Blonde 
recognizes the beauty of life and 
humanity, but it’s also a counter-
point to the beauty of the games 
in Rio, because it knows that just 
having a body can be the most 
painful experience in the world. 
Whether it’s our race, gender or 
sexuality, or anything else, being 
uncomfortable or feeling alone 
because of your own body is a 
nightmare, and the stress of lust 
and loneliness and mortality take 
an awful toll on both the listener 
and Ocean over the course of 
Blonde. Ocean is forcing his fans 
to embrace their true selves, no 
matter how much it might hurt 
and scare us, and to properly 
listen to Blonde, you need to be 
ready to love yourself and feel it 
everywhere.

If Ringo Starr is also your 

favorite Beatle (or if you are 

Zooey Deschanel), invite 

Theisen on the Yellow Submarine 

at ajtheis@umich.edu.

DEF JAM

“That’s the last time I ever play tennis drunk.”

Ocean has 

created a record 
as honest as it is 
difficult to hear.

‘Blonde’ is 

fascinating and 
important, but it 

hurts.

