After listening to “Blonde” on repeat for 235,408 times during this quarantine, we no longer have to sing-scream “Ivy,” “In My Room” and “DHL” anymore. Our favorite transcendent artist, the beloved Frank Ocean, has come to treat our severe case of depression during this isolation by giving us two singles: “Dear April” and “Cayendo.” Unlike his previous two singles released in 2019, “Dear April” and “Cayendo” slow the tempo down to empower us to feel his testimonial words of heartbreak and let them resonate within our souls. 

Fans have waited for five months too long for some new Frank Ocean to fill our ears and allow us to transcend into an alternate universe filled with clouds, rolling hills covered in sunflowers and a peace of mind. Though many, many fans were becoming frustrated with our favorite stress-relieving artist, we never lost faith, and clearly he came to save us from our boredom of being isolated and stuck in the world of COVID-19. 

Ocean continues feeding into the prominent theme of his career–falling in love–by gracing us with “Cayendo,” a ballad. “Cayendo,” a Spanish participle, translates to “falling” in English, and that’s exactly what he makes us feel like we’re doing. By shifting between English and Spanish throughout this song, Ocean makes us fall into the depths of the song by showing the softness and intimacy of him falling for someone who doesn’t love him back. This 3-minute, 22-second song sums up the inevitable plague of feelings and rejection that everyone experiences. Instead of denying those feelings, Ocean makes you drown in them, something he has been doing since the beginning of his career. 

My favorite of the two,“Dear April,” is a ballad (in letter form) written to April to express how time has changed the dynamic of the relationship between Ocean and his significant other. Over the course of the song, he describes to April–who symbolizes time–the love and adoration that he shares for his partner, and he appreciates time for bringing them together and closer which transformed their love into something even more powerful than before. Something changed over time, and Ocean believes “what they had can’t be the same now.” He knows time will continue to change and affect him, but he is certain that the relationship that he had will no longer be what it was. He closes the song asking, “Dear April, are you watching him dance?” He allows himself to come to peace with the dead relationship while wishing happiness for his significant other. From Ocean’s vocals fading in and out of the forefront of the track and his powerful words of relatable heartbreak, this song speaks to the depths of the soul during this time of reflective isolation. So if you’re heartbroken and need a song to put you in the feels and promote peace, maybe “Dear April” will be exactly what you need to let that hurt and toxicity go. 

These two songs exemplify what Ocean does best: make you take a ride on the “feelings train” to go to a new world, and maybe that’s what we need during this time. With the world being controlled by the news of the pandemic, sanitizing, social distancing and quarantining, all of us strive to find some sense of normalcy of the life we knew before this all happened. Ocean’s latest singles not only restores some sense of normalcy by evoking feelings within us that we’ve submerged but also providing means of passage to go to another world that brings peace. 

Ocean came just on time with these two singles, but it’s only a matter of time before fans like myself become hungry for more. Looking back on the years of his album releases, he drops a gem every four years. The beloved “Blonde” graced the masses in 2016, so an album is expected very soon. In the meantime, we have these two singles and our “old-faithfuls” “Blonde” and “Channel Orange” to shuffle and place on repeat as we wait.