Crucial Track for January 11, 2026

"Novacane" by Frank Ocean

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#365songs (11 / 365)

The song that got me interested in Frank Ocean as not remotely an R&B listener; far and away the best on his debut mixtape Nostalgia, Ultra. I don't know if Ocean uses Auto-Tune on this track for real, but the singing is smooth enough to imply it, and right off the bat I love the fourth-wall-breaking line "Every single record, Auto-Tuning / Zero emotion, muted emotion / Pitch-corrected, computed emotion" with its emotionally-muted two-note melody and the half-hearted "aa-ah" that tries and fails to break out of it just after. The beat, for that matter, also feels like it's stuck in a holding pattern. Everything just works in service of the central theme of being numbed out in the aftermath of a relationship that (presumably) didn't work out. Shout out, also, to the line "sink full of dishes / pacing in the kitchen / cocaine for breakfast / yikes." More songs should contain the word "yikes," at least if this one hadn't already deployed it so perfectly.