Blonde by Frank Ocean

Songs in the Key of Life

Stevie Wonder

The most ambitious, adventurous soul album ever made.

In 1974, Stevie Wonder was the most critically revered pop star in the world; he was also considering leaving the music industry altogether. So when Songs in the Key of Life was released two years later, demand was so high that it became, at the time, the fastest-selling album in history. All was forgiven.

Wonder positioned himself as the benevolent overlord of a vast self-drawn cosmos, one with a remarkable cache of songs: Songs in the Key of Life, which runs nearly 90 minutes, is effortlessly melodic, broad in scope, deeply personal—and often just plain weird. In the era of the overblown rock epic, Wonder had created the most searching and sprawling soul album ever released.

Start with the brassy, hook-filled, and positively effusive chart-topping singles “Sir Duke” and “I Wish,” both of which have soundtracked countless barbecues and wedding receptions for decades. At the other end of the spectrum: the stark reality-soul of “Village Ghetto Land” and “Pastime Paradise,” on which Wonder leaves the bandstand for the op-ed pages to decry the abandonment of the civil rights dream. Then Wonder’s daughter Aisha shows up in the sugary Girl Dad anthem “Isn’t She Lovely.”

As Songs in the Key of Life nears its conclusion, Wonder clears the dance floor for 15 minutes of sumptuous gospel-disco in “As” and “Another Star.” But the album’s defining moment might come on a bonus track, one originally issued as an extra 45 with the album’s vinyl release. It starts in deep space with the Afrofuturist fantasia “Saturn,” but as its last synthesizer chords fade out, Wonder zooms light-years to an urban playground where we can hear the sound of Black children skipping Double Dutch. Sonically, culturally, and emotionally, Songs in the Key of Life is much more than a gigantic collection of songs—it forms an entire worldview.

Blonde

Frank Ocean

Sprawling and minimalist, direct and oblique—the definitive statement by a generational artist.

In the four years between Frank Ocean’s debut album channel ORANGE and his second, blond, he had revealed some of his private life—he published a post on social media about having been in love with a man—but still remained as mysterious and skeptical towards fame as ever, teasing new music sporadically and then disappearing like a wisp on the wind. Behind great innovation, however, is a massive amount of work, and so when blond was released one day after a 24-hour streaming performance art piece (Endless) and alongside a limited-edition magazine entitled Boys Don’t Cry, his slipperiness felt more like part of a carefully considered mystique. Even the apparent indecision over the album title’s official spelling can be seen in hindsight as being characteristically mischievous.

Endless featured the mundane beauty of Ocean woodworking in a studio, soundtracked by abstract and meandering ambient music. blond built on those ideas and imbued them with more form, taking a left-field, often minimalist approach to his breezy harmonies and ever-present narrative lyricism. His confidence was crucial to the risk of creating a big multimedia project for a sophomore album, but it also extended to his songwriting—his voice surer of itself (“Solo”), his willingness to excavate his weird impulses more prominent (“Good Guy” and “Pretty Sweet,” among others).

Though blond packs 17 tracks into one quick hour, it’s a sprawling palette of ideas, a testament to the intelligence of flying one’s own artistic freak flag and trusting that audiences will meet you where you’re at. They did. And Ocean established himself as a generational artist uniquely suited to the complexities and convulsive changes of the second decade of the 21st century.

“I always tell him I like [Blonde] way better than channel ORANGE—and don’t like comparing. But the looseness of structure and the chords and s**t on Blonde speaks to me more.”

Tyler, The Creator

Apple Music 100 Best Albums

Songs in the Key of Life

Blonde