Blood Orange Got Me Through 2020
Our past year was clustered with death — COVID-19 victims, old friends, more black and brown people from the police, Kobe, and more recently, MF Doom. 2020 was a fever-dream set in a reality I couldn’t fathom. Like many avid, daily music consumers, we participate in an annual reflection and recollection of the music that’s gotten us through the muck of it all. This was a challenging year to get into anything new (even if there were undoubtedly great records that necessitated a listen). Given the difficulty that marked the start of a new decade, I sought comfort, relief, and reflection. I found this in Blood Orange, and above all others, reading about his life and listening to his music got me through 2020. His music serves as a reminder for calm, hope, and gentleness in times of great — pandemic and existential — stress.
Earlier into the pandemic, empty days of boredom and apprehension filled my time. In those days, I found myself returning to older music that I could always rely on to help me calm my anxiety. Typically, my ears would’ve directed me to ambient music — some classic Aphex Twin or Brian Eno maybe, or the elegant harp music of Mary Lattimore. Pop music, on the other hand, was never really on the table when the anxiety hit. In some timely way, Blood Orange, aka Dev Hynes, replaced that feeling of overwhelming dread and made me appreciate what other avenues of music could do for my emotional state. His experimental pop and r&b stand on their own in the broader popular music landscape, but the message he conveys carries as much weight as the beauty in his art. Through his music and other artistic lanes, he’ll whisper in my ear to reach out, talk to a friend and be vulnerable. Blood Orange’s music heals and uplifts. Most of it is diaristic, but simultaneously, it seeks to hold an intimate conversation with its listeners.
Throughout last summer, I rigorously dove deep into his discography and explored all the different sounds and themes of his music. Recurrent themes include the otherness of being black and queer, understanding identity, the loneliness that transpires from marginalization, and the love needed to overcome our suffering. His music continually exudes vulnerability — Whether he’s making a dance-pop track, an acoustic performance, or a piano-only classical ballad, there’s something to his music that would break down my walls and allow me to just feel whatever he’s bestowed. His knack for melody, texture, and the visual nature of his music always compelled me to return to him, but this year especially felt necessary after all the pain that I’ve been trying to swallow.
One of the tracks I’ve been turning to the most is Free Town Sound’s stunningly blissful “Augustine,” a song that explores black life in America. “See, Augustine / Late have I loved and chose to see,” Hynes sings. It feels as if I’m suddenly caught in a wave, ready to be taken by the heavenly synths during this breathtaking chorus. By the time he repeats “Nontetha,” I’m fully in a dream, not ready to wake up. The vocalization of this South African community leader who was thrown in jail in isolation for years feels like a rallying cry, a call to arms in this world of violence and hate.
As a ritual during the early pandemic days, I would put on an endless queue of Blood Orange music videos on YouTube to decorate my time. Scenes of black people always displayed pure joy inherent to being in a space of people who uplift one another. In the prelude to Negro Swan’s “Charcoal Baby,” trans rights activist Janet Mock elucidates this sheltered feeling:
“So, like, my favourite images are the ones where someone who isn’t supposed to be there. Who’s like in a space, a space where we were not ever welcomed in, where we were not invited. Yet we walk in, and we show all the way up. People try to put us down by saying, “She’s doing the most,” or “He’s way too much.” But, like, why would we want to do the least?”
This quote makes me think about my first few years as a new immigrant living in Canada. Especially as a high schooler migrating from the Philippines, a country that encouraged collectivism, I wanted to find my tribe. I wanted to find that safe space where I didn’t have to act outside of myself. Months into my first year in my new school, I eventually made friends, but there was still that feeling of being the “other” in the group.
Upon reading Dev Hynes’ interviews throughout last summer, I felt like I could identify myself with Hynes, even if we couldn’t be any more different as people. Growing up in the UK, he was bullied, spat on, and beaten up because he was considered to be different. I, for one, was never physically assaulted; regardless, I was picked on by friends, and people I thought were my friends, for behaving in certain situations that didn’t seem to fit their model of what “cool” meant. I was then relegated to becoming that quiet, passive kid who had to suppress his personality because of the fear of getting made fun of. It only occurred to me years later that these people wanted to express their hubris through these acts of putting people down. Like Hynes’ past tormentors, I realized that the pride that exuded off their toxic masculinity was something they needed to be assuaged. I now recall those days of restraint and subjugation as I listen to “Dark & Handsome”: “I’ve been known to hide within my own walls / Jewelry in my eyes so that I don’t fall / Onto higher prices, and escape with / All my ice intact, but who am I to kid?”
Deeper into last year’s shithole, I was delighted to hear that Hynes would be scoring Luca Gudanino’s We Are Who We Are. The TV series portrays two queer outsider teens who explore their own identities and obsess over Blood Orange, and I couldn’t relate to them anymore for that. The show provided another artistic avenue to engage with my musical prophet of 2020. The two dance and sing to the delight of “Time Will Tell” without a care in the world. You can witness the power of what good, empowering music can do to two people who just want to share something beautiful with one another.
Throughout the show, their quiet intimacy channels Blood Orange’s message of dealing with one’s pain through shared joy. As a proud supporter and uplifter of the LGBTQ+ community, Hynes’ voice resonates with those in the margins, especially people of colour. “Time will tell if you can figure this and work it out / No one’s waiting for you anyway, so don’t be stressed now,” Hynes sings on the track over a lush piano and reverb. There’s something comforting in the way that Hynes tells you that it’s going to be okay. The tension melts off as I’m reminded to slow down and be patient about what I’m trying to get through.
We’re now in 2021, still dealing with the despair that 2020 left behind. Listening to Blood Orange and searching for meaning behind my history — our history — still continues to draw meaning and peace with what I have in the present. Whenever I’d feel down, I’d put on “Benzo,” a track that illuminates feelings of spiralling thoughts of inadequacy. “I saw, oh I see / Nothing that is confident to me / Repeat and discreet / Feelings that are not supposed to be,” he sings over a hushed synth and horns. Yet what always seems to rise out of these feelings is hope. “Open the door, leave me with arms exposed / Outside, I saw where I belong,” he gestures. I can already see him with his arms stretched wide to give me a big hug.
