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I’ll Mean Something To You

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I was reflecting recently that, push come to shove, Nikes by Frank Ocean is (perhaps predictably) my favourite track of the last ten years.

I’ve banged on before about why it’s so great, so I won’t do so at length again here. It’s just sort of stayed with me – I listen to it all the time, and it always brings me this weird serenity, like it’s mine from way back. The segment where all the auto tune falls away and Ocean’s voice rises out of the haze to deliver some of the most fabulous lyrics I ever hope to hear, the switch from singing to rapping… it’s just so lovely, and inspiring and of the moment. It gives me so much hope for what music could do.

Anyway, what prompted this post is that footage has emerged this week of Ocean rehearsing the track.

His voice is just utterly gorgeous. I enjoyed it. You might too, particularly if you struggled to get past the auto tune on the main version.

Any other shouts for your favourite track of the last decade?

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Comments

      • I wasn’t sure about it first time round either. It really is a grower.

        Incidentally, without the pitch-shifted vocals the lyrics work better. A third of the way through the song he moves from his own perspective to that of his cousin’s girlfriend.

        In the above video, it becomes clear that Ocean sings the first third in his own voice and then switches up higher and softer for the next bit. Adds an extra poignancy.

        “He don’t care for me
        But he cares for me
        And that’s good enough
        We don’t talk much or nothin’
        But when we talkin’ about something
        We have good discussion
        I met his friends last week, feels like they’re up to something
        That’s good for us”

  2. I’m going to ignore all the rules with reckless abandon, for my favourite track of the last decade comes from 2005. But I probably didn’t hear it until 2008. Maybe. Anyway, your words “I listen to it all the time, and it always brings me this weird serenity, like it’s mine from way back” really resonated with me as they say exactly how I feel about John Wayne Gacy Jr by Sufjan Stevens. Since first hearing, rarely, if ever, has a week gone by without my playing it. And the line “They were boys, with their cars, summer jobs… oh my God” gets me every time. That juxtaposition of normality and anguish, and the way he sings it. And the menacing ambiguity of the last verse is so delicately unnerving.

    And the video is brilliant too.

  3. I probably love The National the most. I love a lot of bands but The National are the keepers, the happy ever afters.

    And this is my favourite song by them. I often listen to it. Probably 2 or 3 times a week and have done for 3 or 4 years. I never, ever get bored of it and I never stop it before it finishes.

    It may well be perfect.

  4. I play this at least once a week, and every day a line or two from the lyrics runs through my head. I have to thanks Rosbif, late of this parish , for introducing me to Gemma Hayes, who is now one of my favourites. Most-played track from the last 10 years (check out Bones + Longing).

    • I have a Gemma t-shirt she signed for me when she was supporting Counting Crows a hundred years ago. I was sprinting (possibly the wrong word) through the vineyards one day when a vigneron looked up from his pruning and waved – “Gemma, she is good, no?” If I wasn’t slightly (possibly the wrong word) out of breath I would have replied “Yes, she is good”

    • That is lovely.

      I bought a couple of her early albums. Never really gave then the time I should I suspect. Rosbif’s love for all things Gemma should have made me listen more. I will certainly do that now.

        • Is there a challenge for female artists who are just good but don’t play the costume change/image change game? I’m struggling to think of one female artist that has had significant success without having a seriously developed image whereas male artists seem to be able to do so.

          I’m glad you like The National btw. I seriously never get tired of them which is rare indeed.

            • Adele has an image. I thought about whether she was the exception but she definitely has a strong image. The other two are not very recent and I was thinking last 15 – 20 years. A few will have hits but then settle into a lower level of fame.

              • Who are the male pop stars who don’t have an image of any description, by that definition?

                I don’t think you can realistically describe Adele as “playing the costume change/image change game” or having a “seriously developed image”, and she’s the biggest pop star on the planet. She would have been no matter what she looked like.

                The music industry is rife with sexism, but plenty of talented women have had stellar careers without relying on their appearances. Talent can and does get you there, if in sufficient abundance.

                  • In what sense does Adele have an image, but those acts don’t?

                    Two of them are also not very big. If they count then how about Warpaint? Or Haim? Or Kenickie?

                    The National’s image is super clear. Unconventionally sexy English professor who will shortly be booted out for propositioning a student and his four teaching assistants. If they dressed like Insane Clown Posse I doubt they’d have the same following.

                    • Which two are not big? Don’t say WOD? They sold out Ally Pally last year!
                      They’re huge in my house.

                      Adele has an image – a kind of concentrated everygirl – ball gowns and trainers type. And she is growing up in public. I suspect she has PR and image consultants working in her team.

                      Anyway, I find it harder to think of female acts that don’t have a strong, cultivated image. Maybe it’s just me and my musical tastes.

                    • That’s because you’re a massive sexist who thinks successful women in music only achieve what they do because of their looks*.

                      *I’m joking.

                      Seriously though, I think this is nonsense. Adele has “an image” in the sense that every public figure on the planet has an image (even and especially Ed Sheeran).

                      She’s in no way image-lead, and her success isn’t even vaguely related to how she looks. It’s her pipes and her songs.

                      Obviously, the music industry sends out fecking awful gender messages on the regs, but it’s clearly not the case that Gemma Hayes (who also has an image) is somehow being prevented from megastardom because she’s not in hot pants (or because she fails to dress like Adele).

                    • Incidentally, was it on here that we concluded that if Slipknot looked like Coldplay, and Coldplay looked like Slipknot then both bands would be improved.

                    • You may be on to something with the massive sexist line.

                      I will not be dissuaded that Adele doesn’t have a strong image (but it also very true that she is some singer and knocks out great songs regularly). I honestly haven’t thought about it beyond my original comment and then trying to defend myself whilst not really thinking it through any more.

  5. Funnily enough I was thinking of posting this with a thread of favourite tracks from last year, but I’ll do it here. I absolutely adore this final track from Randy Newman’s last album. It’s short, simple, and understated and it took me a while to pay attention to it. But then I did, and it’s the most beautiful, affecting song, as a father recalls his lost son who is somewhere out in the world, he knows not where.

    I hope he’s warm and I hope he’s dry
    And that a strangers eye is a friendly eye
    And I hope he has someone close by his side
    And I hope that he’ll come home
    Where is my wandering boy tonight?

    It’s every parents nightmare, and sung in Newman’s cracked weary voice, and with its spare piano accompaniment, it’s heartbreaking.

  6. Sorry to spoil the relaxed, almost soulful vibe, but may favourite track of the last decade (it just sneaks in, honest), is a brilliant slab of Mod/Garage-inspired noise from the Kent/Medway Delta.

    Len Price 3 – Rentacrowd

  8. Well, this is going to look like shameless pandering, but my two favourite songs of the last ten years (and I’m discounting ones less than a couple of years old on the grounds they haven’t bedded in properly yet) would be…

    A More Perfect Union by Titus Andronicus

    It’s preposterously overblown punk rock with one foot in grotty basement shows and one in Springsteenesque stadium rock and it is magnificent. Every lyric is quotable, every riff and breakdown is epic, every single sprawling second is unmissable. The one and only time I’ve seen TA, in the tiny Cooler in Bristol, they opened with it, the three person guitar frontline rushing the mics in unison like The Clash doing Clampdown at the Lewisham Odeon, and it was everything a rock show should be.

    and also…

    Come Back by Deafheaven

    A sublime collision of noise and beauty. The opening fury of blastbeats, jagged guitars and inhuman shrieks resolves into a lengthy coda of such elliptical grace and blissed out wonder that whenever it comes on I have to stop whatever else I’m doing and listen to it all the way through. It is transcendent. For those of you have read The Passage by Justin Cronin, remember the sequence where the viewpoint character is dying, knocked flat on his back and through dimming vision he sees the luminous virals dropping from the trees and thinks that they are falling stars? That’s what the last five minutes of this sound like.

  9. I don’t think in terms of tracks any more. I think in terms of albums, whole albums, a suite of songs to listen to in one sitting. Coincidentally, I was thinking of starting a thread on masterpieces of the Teenies. Naturally, I have a short list that I listen to frequently (in no particular order).

    Blackstar (key track Lazarus)
    To Pimp A Butterfly (The Blacker The Berry)
    Flying Lotus – You’re Dead (how can you pick one when they are all so diverse, generally less than two minutes long & blend together?)
    A Moon Shaped Pool (Present Tense)
    My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Runaway)
    Tamikrest – Chatma (Imanin bas zihoun)
    Matthew Halsall – Fletcher Moss Park
    Breadwinners – Dubs Unlimited
    Agnes Obel – Aventine (Fuel To Fire)
    Deadbeat & Paul St. Hilaire – The Infinity Dub Sessions (Peace And Love)
    The Haxan Cloak – Excavation (The Drop)
    Grace Jones – Hurricane Dub (Cannibal Dub)
    Harrison Birtwistle – Night’s Black Bird
    Chris Lightcap’s Bigmouth – Deluxe
    Beyoncé – Lemonade (Don’t Hurt Yourself)
    Vin Gordon & The Real Rock Band – Heavenless (title track)
    Frazey Ford – Indian Ocean (Done)
    Melody Gardot – Currency Of Man (Artist’s Cut) (I was wrong, this is magnificent, key track Once I Was Loved)
    Zara McFarlane – Arise (Fussin & Fightin)

    Best of all is Melanie De Biasio’s No Deal. It is a bewitching rumination on love that seems to suspend time. It lasts only 34 minutes and consists of seven tracks that bleed into each other. Picking out single tracks defeats the object. Listen to the whole album.

  10. Cracking thread, Bingo!

    Really enjoyed the Frank Ocean and Gemma Hayes tracks and now it is wandering off in
    all manner of interesting directions. Randy Newman, The National, the Len Price 3, Deafhaven…

    Last ten years?

    This is one of mine..

    This is why I keep coming back. So much passion! So many artists I have never heard of!

  12. Top 5
    Green Light – Lorde
    From The Night – Stars
    Let The Good Times be Never ending – Charlatans
    Summertime Sadness – Lana Del Ray vs Cedric Gervais

    but head and shoulders above all else…this. When the drums come in about 3 mins in. Goosebumps. Joy through repetition.

  14. Artists new to me in the last 10 years or so and liked:

    Tamikrest
    Nils Frahm
    Xenia Pestova
    Kamasi Washington
    Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings
    GoGo Penguin
    Melanie DeBiasio
    Calexico
    Angéle David-Guillou
    Poppy Ackroyd
    Liane Carroll
    The Radiophonic Workshop
    Snarky Puppy
    The Leaf Library
    Tonbruket
    Gillian Welch & David Rawlings
    Sarah Angliss
    Matthew Bourne
    Haiku Salut
    Fatoumata Diawara
    Anna Meredith
    The Necks
    The Unthanks
    Olafur Arnalds
    Stick In The Wheel
    Lankum
    Deerful
    Neil Campbell

    …and more

      • I’m not a player but I would rate Neil Campbell in John Renbourn or Davy Graham’s class as a guitarist. Not afraid to mix and match between classical, folk and very modern styles.

        (Delay Tactics)

        Also: Someone I forgot about until just now: Alabaster De Plume

        (Be Nice To People)

  17. I love the simple directness of the lyrics of this song and the fragility of his voice over a wondrous and uplifting melody that truly soars on a near hymnal reverence. It’s a song you could easily convince yourself is out of place in a jaded post-modern world when it’s actually the kind of song that reminds you the world is of your own making. It’s a song that can speak to everyone willing to listen but once heard feels like it’s been written only for you and for no one else. It’s a song that found me rather than the other way round at a point in my life when I needed it. It’s the closest thing this man without a religion can openly embrace as a spiritual blessing.

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