I felt an endless amount of disappointment after watching Frank Ocean’s concert Sunday.
After a six-year hiatus from performing live, Frank Ocean’s Coachella set was not worth the wait.
As a long time fan of Ocean’s music, I was looking forward to streaming his headlining show but was extremely let down after it was announced on YouTube’s Twitter that there would be no official stream.
Many fans, including myself, were left to only imagine what the stellar come-back performance could have been.
Currently, we don’t know the official reason why the stream was pulled, but allegedly Frank decided to pull the plug on it last minute, according to a Monday Twitter post by@TheFestiveOwl.
If this is true, then this is a slap in the face to all the fans who couldn’t afford the hefty $550 price tag that comes with attending the 3-day festival.
While I understand that not all artists live stream their performance at Coachella, fans had been waiting to see a performance by Ocean for so long that not broadcasting it to his large audience was a major disservice.
This ultimately led me, and many other fans, to resort to watching the show on other concert attendees’ Instagram and TikTok live streams.
Initially, Ocean was set to have an extravagant stage that included an ice rink accompanied by Loyola Marymount University hockey players, according to a Monday Rolling Stone article.
But Ocean allegedly didn’t want to use the rink at the last minute because of an ankle injury that occurred a week prior to the concert, according to the same Rolling Stone article.
“It was chaotic,” Ocean said in a statement to Billboard on Wednesday. “There is some beauty in chaos. It isn’t what I intended to show but I did enjoy being out there and I’ll see you soon.”
On the official Coachella website, Ocean was set to get on stage at 10:05 p.m. but did not grace the stage until shortly after 11 p.m.
Ocean would open with his first official single “Novacane,” and even watching it on a poor quality Instagram livestream, it still felt surreal to see and hear him live again.
Ocean spent most of the concert sitting down and would often walk out of frame after songs.
His vocal performance was stellar and his backing band sounded fantastic, especially the drums.
I appreciated the different mixes he did for songs such as “White Ferrari” and “Solo.” It’s cool to hear songs that I’ve listened to so frequently performed in a different way.
Although his singing at the concert sounded great, when he would give the stage to another act or play his songs without actually singing to them, it felt more like a listening party than a Coachella headlining event.
“Guys I’m being told it’s curfew so that’s the end of the show. Thank you so much,” Ocean said after the last song of the night.
Fans vocalized their displeasure as an audible gasp was heard as the lights signal them to go home.
Ocean would have DJ Crystallmess remix some of his most popular songs in the middle of his set, taking 12 minutes away from his performance.
If Ocean was aware of this curfew and still made the decision to give the DJ an ample amount of time instead of giving a full performance, it comes off as disrespectful to the fans who waited hours at the stage to see you.
This includes Morgan Lee, a fan who had streamed the concert on her Instragm to an audience over 130,000 viewers according to a Tuesday Pitchfork article.
After the DJ Crystallmess interlude, Ocean performed seven more songs but only sang four of them live.
Two of Ocean’s biggest songs, “Nikes” and “Nights”—a song that has over half a billion streams on Spotify— were played over the festival speakers while Ocean just awkwardly danced on stage on a supposedly “hurt ankle.”
I could only imagine the confusion and disappointment to fans who had spent time and money to see one of their favorite singers, just to have them stand there while some of their biggest hits play in the background with no live vocals.
The mentality that “Frank Ocean doesn’t owe you anything” is flawed when you’re spending money on what you expect to be a Frank Ocean concert – not Frank Ocean lip syncing his own songs.
I understand that fans can often be disappointed by setting up unreal expectations for these musicians, but you expect the performer to at least sing his own songs at his concert.
Ocean has now dropped out of the second week of Coachella and it’s clear that he isn’t ready to fully immerse himself back into the spotlight.
“On doctor’s advice, Frank is not able to perform weekend 2 due to two fractures and a sprain in his left leg,” a Frank Ocean rep said in a statement provided to Billboard on Wednesday.
No matter what, I’m going to listen to Ocean’s next album, and if he does tour again, I will try my hardest to make it to a show, but man what an overall let down his performance was.
