He believes that love will always prevail, and that to be in love with someone, one must have a deep and sound connection with them intellectually and put aside physical beauty. His view has a deeper meaning, debating if the money, sex, drugs, and fame are worth it. In 2018, the common themes in music are money, sex, drugs, and fame, which Frank Ocean approaches differently in his music. Jon Caramanica of The New York Times found Channel Orange to be “rife with the sting of unrequited love, both on the receiving and inflicting ends” with “lovers who tantalize but remain at arm’s length.” Sasha Frere-Jones believes Channel Orange is “a combination of decadence and spiritual ache similar to Prince’s.” The album also delves into “decadence, being trapped in economic inequality, drug dependency, and the struggle between secularity and spirituality, a prevalent theme in R&B.” Ocean alludes to his own personal experiences with these themes in tracks from Channel Orange such as “Bad Religion” and “Forrest Gump.” Channel Orange is loved all over the world and interpreted in many different ways. Orange is the color that Ocean claims to have associated with the summer he first fell in love.Īs previously mentioned, Channel Orange contains themes of unrequited love, sex, psychedelics, and existential longing. This fact makes perfect sense due to the reasoning behind the title of Channel Orange. Grapheme-color synesthesia is known to be “involuntary, consistent, and memorable,” meaning that if an individual experiences this phenomenon, they cannot control it and they will be able to remember what color they associate with which person, number, or letter.
This phenomenon is a form of synesthesia in which an individual’s perception of numbers and letters are associated with different colors. The album title Channel Orange is a reference to a neurological phenomenon known as grapheme-color synesthesia. Most of contemporary R&B has a theme or message, but does not discuss a specific story in chronological order. This is what makes Channel Orange different from other R&B albums.
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Each song is structured similarly to an episode of a TV show, and it is in chronological order. Each song from the “Start,” being the first track, to the “End,” being the last track, is a story it is not called Channel Orange for nothing. This has been a controversial topic since the release in 2012, and to this day, Ocean has kept quiet about his personal life regarding the topic of sexuality and only wants the listeners of Channel Orange and the rest of his music to focus on the story rather than the technicalities. Danez Smith wrote, “He writes with a poet’s eye, blends the colloquial with the fantastic with the gospel in almost masterful ways that create something lush.”īesides already challenging the social norm of masculinity by producing songs with vulnerable lyrics through the genre of contemporary R&B, Ocean also challenges this norm in Channel Orange by singing in a higher-pitched voice, opposed to a deeper tone or rapping, as well as alluding in Channel Orange that he has fallen in love with a man. Channel Orange opens your eyes to both the triumphs and the strifes of life, and describes much more than sex, money, and fame, but also the meaning of life and true emotion, and Ocean achieves this through the somber lyrics but upbeat melodies and rhythms. Contemporary R&B’s narrative displays the perspective of “how the artist can relate to some of the problems revolving around love that most of their audiences might encounter or the love narrative makes the audience want to look for or find love.” R&B music and music videos are mostly sexual, such as Chris Brown’s music, but Frank Ocean’s music does not entirely follow that convention, especially Channel Orange.
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