1.
Image via Flickr
July is over, and hearts are broken. We’ve been waiting for Frank Ocean’s album with bated breath, clinging to his half-promise of a July arrival like it’s the impending downpour that will finally end a summer drought. In reality, however, there’s no such musical dry spell happening in 2015—we’ve been gifted with great albums throughout the year, most recently with quality releases by Future, Tame Impala, and Lianne La Havas.
But Frank’s silence is inescapable. He knows something we don’t. Part of the reason why it’s so maddening is the sheer lack of information surrounding the 27-year-old’s channel ORANGE follow-up. There have been no press releases, no lead singles, no album art, no tracklists, nothing.
The scraps he’s tossed out to—the album will come in conjunction with a magazine, which will may feature a Lil B interview—have been dissected and passed around until they’re unrecognizable. But for what?
For Frank Ocean, this quiet is imperative. The mystery surrounding his third album is a vital part of his character and branding—Ocean’s music is meant to stand alone, unobstructed by the industry’s roll-out clutter of hashtags, online marketing strategies, and press releases. Frank has forced us to use our imaginations, and that’s a good thing, even when it results in wild speculation.
Frank is not alone—of all the albums rumored to drop in 2015, four of the most anticipated (those from Ocean, Adele, Grimes, Kanye West) have constructed sky-high barriers to entry, opting instead for radio silence.
These kinds of mysteries were usually relegated to introductory ploys: in the early ‘10s, emerging artists like The Weeknd branded themselves through obscurity, encouraging fans to follow the breadcrumbs by dropping new music unexpectedly. Not knowing when another piece of the puzzle would drop created an inclusive, familial community between Abel Tesfaye and his fans, binding them together through their own efforts to understand him. To post-internet music fans, this was a very foreign idea. We’re so used to following artists’ every move that our imaginations are often unnecessary and stagnant.
Then Beyoncé dropped her surprise album—she wasn’t the first, but she made the biggest splash—and top-tier artists started considering the merits of a cymbal crash versus the traditional steady crescendo.
Independents and label heads alike have started finding ways to create events rather than promotions. Kanye did it in 2013 with Yeezus, simultaneously reinventing guerrilla marketing and the single premiere. Kendrick Lamar’s performance on The Colbert Report featured a song that didn’t make it on the album—or anywhere else. The Social Experiment’s Surf arrived unannounced, in the middle of the night. The idea of creating a splash and moving forward from there—rather than building momentum leading up to a release—has proved to be an effective strategy when the fans are engaged.
Then Beyoncé dropped her surprise album—she wasn’t the first, but she made the biggest splash—and top-tier artists started considering the merits of a cymbal crash versus the traditional steady crescendo.
In 2015, Frank, Adele, Grimes, and Kanye are plotting their next moves while maintaining their distance. The level of mystery surrounding these releases verges on diabolical—but maybe that’s a good thing. For one, they can preserve control instead of letting media dictate the direction of their stories. When Grimes made the mistake of saying two loaded words (“diss tracks”) next to one another in a feature for The FADER, the media latched onto this as a key part of her next chapter and Grimes was, understandably, frustrated to the point that she had to clear the air.
Without the standard rollout of singles and album art, we’re left to our own devices. Our imaginations become an artist’s PR team, and the mystery becomes a hype machine all its own. Will Frank Ocean unleash a rap album? How will grime’s emerging influence factor into Kanye’s album? Will Adele’s new music still resonate now that she’s part of a happy family and no longer heartbroken? Will Grimes return to the experimentation of Visions or the addictive stylings of “Go”? In the age of overstimulation, deprivation can be more powerful than information.
5.
Image via Vevo
These questions make the silence all the more alluring, and humanizes our music heroes in the process. I’d like to think that Kanye and Frank are holding on to their albums until they get everything just right. I like to picture them at a massive round table, label heads pleading for marketing campaigns and release dates and getting nothing but stone-cold stares in return.
But the reverse could also be true—Frank might be the one banging on the table, desperate to release an album that’s being held back so that it won’t distract from a competing artist’s schedule. The fact that we don’t know either way is an increasingly rare occurrence in a smartphone culture, and we should celebrate that.
Naturally, not every artist can afford to stay silent for a year and still expect their music to hit. Frank, Kanye, Grimes, and Adele all have legions of invested followers. They’re artists at the top of their games, and they know that with each release, there’s a lot at stake. But the mystery trend is doing good things for music: it’s downplaying materialism, revitalizing the popularity of a full album, and forcing us to focus on the music. So Frank: no rush.
7.
Image via Vevo
