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That, accompanied by the fact that there were towers of speakers on all sides of the audience gave the sense that you were in a surround-sound movie theater no one felt the need to push or shove their way to the front, because every angle offered a unique perspective on the show, even if you were a supermodel slumming it with the GA. Cameramen led by Jonze followed Frank during the set, artfully rendering the experience onstage for anyone who wasn’t able to actually see the stage. “By myself,” is what Frank repeats a few times on “Solo,” and it felt heavier to hear him say that standing on a stage in front of a massive audience, his body projected onto three towering screens behind him. It’s an album about being adored by the masses and still feeling deeply alone. It’s about falling prey to the dark side of social media and failing to meet expectations and feeling out of control. It’s an insular work about celebrity and isolation and relationships starting and ending. He said something about the imaginary friends in his ears talking too loud.īlonde is an album that critics had some difficulty with. Frank slowly walked from the stage out onto the catwalk and launched into “Solo,” then “Chanel.” He paused after that one and looked out at the crowd, tapped his headphones and apologized. He’d dyed his hair blue for the occasion, and his white T-shirt read: “Why be racist, sexist, homophobic or transphobic when you could just be quiet?” The headphones served a purpose, sure, but seeing Frank Ocean surrounded by gear - a small synth onstage, a tapedeck, a tower of speakers - gave the audience a sense that we were in a bedroom studio, that we were witnessing an artist at work. He walked on to “Pretty Sweet” wearing headphones. Art is a process, and sometimes you need to see the labor that goes into a work in order to fully appreciate the product, that good art isn’t what’s perfect - it’s what challenges you.Īnd Frank owned the role of imperfect pop star last night. It was another aesthetic choice, one that reminded me of Frank’s Endless staircase.
You don’t usually witness a soundcheck for a performance of that scale. “Left mic check, right mic check,” the guy repeated, his voice emanating from towers of speakers interspersed throughout the crowd. Someone on Reddit later reported that Jonze went up to audience members and asked them to do certain things during the “shoot,” including asking a couple to kiss when Frank sang “Close To You.” The most curious part, though, was the tech who checked all of the mics onstage. A soundtrack played while director Spike Jonze and a crew of cameramen set up shots, and stagehands pulled protective tarps off of a towering tapedeck and other set pieces, including a disco ball atop what looked like a watchtower. Watching Frank Ocean’s team set up was an experience in itself. She told me that his crew had been working on this rig for hours, that Frank’s going to walk out onto a catwalk in the middle of the audience, and that if I wanted to see anything I should go right up to the soundbooth that hovered above the audience some 20 feet from the mainstage. (Among them were kids who had waited in line for hours to buy silkscreened Blonde merch before it sold out early in the afternoon.) I happened to be standing next to someone wearing a roadie badge for some other band. People hung their heads and tried to push closer to the stage, hoping to get a prime viewing spot for Frank. But for a performer like Frank Ocean - who is known for protecting his privacy, who is elusive by definition and wrote an album about it - that choice was an aesthetic one a means through which he could parse some of the many themes on Blonde for a live audience.Īfter Solange closed out her set (which gave me chills and was probably the most flawless festival performance I have ever seen), barely any of us in the crowd moved. A shutter flash can be distracting when you’re stalking a stage in front of thousands of people.
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This isn’t an uncommon practice a lot of pop stars arrange their own teams to shoot their events, a group of professionals who know how to do the job without getting in the way. Frank’s wearing a T-shirt with a pair of eyes on it, the kind of graphic that Mona Lisas you around a room, and he himself is staring straight into the camera and grinning, flipping off whoever’s behind it.įrank Ocean didn’t let any photographers into the pit last night during his Panorama headline set, and he didn’t let any into the pit at his FYF set last week, either. One of the best recent Getty Images of Frank Ocean is a paparazzi shot of him wandering around SoHo.
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