Credit: Far Out / András Ladocsi

Revisiting Frank Ocean’s 2016 playlist of his 50 favourite songs of all time a decade on

Tue 21 April 2026 16:13, UK

Back in 2016, Frank Ocean was busy cementing himself as the becalming voice of a generation. His music pulled a quilt over the worsening world and created a sepia-toned realm of pillow-propped reverie.

Despite emerging from the rather raucous Odd Future collective in 2010, from the very get-go, with the release of his debut EP, Nostalgia Ultra, the following year, he hinted at a mellowed demeanour. This was further crystallised with the top 40 hit, ‘Thinkin Bout You’, which was released as the lead single to his debut album in the spring of 2012.

At the time, Ocean was a prolific singer-songwriter, record producer and visual artist. Famed for his creativity and unique approach, Ocean reinvented the traditional way of framing R&B by blending the core tenets of jazz-funk, psychedelic rock, and soul music with elements of traditional pop music, and the Odd Future mainstay of hip hop. He had devised his own avant-garde manner. It made for an intoxicating cocktail.

“Some people focus more on sonics. Some people focus more on story. I focus on both sonics and story, but music sometimes, just music itself, can turn into more of a maths problem,” Ocean, who had cut his teeth as a ghostwriter before stepping into the spotlight, once said of his unique pathway to artistic heaven.

“I guess everything in life is a math problem, but it can be more about an empirical route to getting the symmetry that you want, and this vibe, sonically,” he added, offering a glimpse into the deeper workings of his relentlessly active mind. In the interim, perhaps his long decade absence since Blonde has been reflective of the inverse impact of once being so ‘relentless’ in his approach.

“In art, at a certain level, there is no ‘better than.’ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it,” he added. “Trusting that, just because of the way people are built and how interconnected we are, greatness will translate, and symmetry will be recognised”.

That sense of music’s posterity was evident in the songs that inspired him, too. Despite being in the backrooms of the industry before making it big, Ocean was never acutely caught up with the present and the dreaded influx of ‘trends’. He always admired a more timeless approach.

That much was self-evident in his own output. Much like Maggot Brain, a few decades before it, Channel Orange was somehow able to sequester the outside world, without thinking that bliss has to be ignorant. Much like Astral Weeks, Blonde seemed to recognise that seamless flow doesn’t have to be straightforward. (Ironically, nothing from either Funkadelic or Van Morrison features in his top 50 list, but you still sense he’s heard them).

Ocean’s view on artistic creation is one that never wavered. You catch a semblance of where he is coming from when he was asked by Genius to pick out his 50 favourite songs of all time. Like most things he does, the musician did so with meticulous accuracy. Amid the eclectic mix of genres, eras, major names and unknowns, there’s a pattern of complexity conveyed with great clarity.

That’s what was best about Ocean. You could drop an anvil into his work and never hear it hit the bottom, yet the mood and emotion he was trying to convey felt knowable in an instant, drenching the walls of you bedroom with atmosphere. That seems clearly reflected in his favourite Beatles song, for instance. ‘I am a Walrus’ is grable of nonsense by John Lennon’s own admission, but I’ll be damned if even my seven-year-old niece doesn’t instantly connect with its knowable sense of manic exultancy.

Similarly, Ocean has the canny knack of somehow making a foggy morning as pointedly clear as the desert sun. Or at least he had. While the odd single and Coachella appearance might have cropped up since his last LP in 2016, by and large, he has lingered in a much more figurative fog, refusing to make his position clear.

Where did Frank Ocean go?

He never really intended to be famous in the first place. As he told the New York Times around the same time that he made the playlist blow, “Sometimes I’m fascinated with how famous my work could be while I’m not so famous. [I’m] super-envious of the fact that Daft Punk can wear robot helmets and be one of the most famous bands in the world, while also understanding that will never be my situation. It’s too late.”

Therein lies the main reason behind a withdrawn decade: the lack of a helmet. “It’s hard to articulate how I think about myself as a public figure,” he added. “I’ve gotten used to being Frank Ocean. A lot of people stopped me on the street when I hadn’t put music out in a while, literally would yell out of an Uber, ‘Frank, where the album?’”

Ocean’s music and the music he loves prove that the power to be able to “articulate” those “hard to articulate” feelings is what he prided himself on. We could relate to that once. But trying to place in amber the ambivalence of fame is something few people can connect with, and for that reason, maybe it is for the best that he has held onto his muse rather than sinking down a commercial rabbit hole of diminishing returns, as so many have before him.

Somehow, his eclectic list hinted at that even back in 2016. Given his severe range of influences, Ocean’s collection is a varied and wide-ranging mix of sounds. Expect to see the likes of Jimi Hendrix, The Cure, Prince, The Beatles, Donna Summer, Mazzy Star and more.

Below, also find a full playlist of the songs included.