The one record Zoë Kravitz could listen to forever: “That was the album of my summer”
It can’t be an easy thing to emerge triumphant from the shadows of a famous parent. We’ve seen the likes of Kate Hudson and Ben Stiller do it very successfully, Julian Lennon and Sean Lennon doing it to a lesser degree, and Chet Hanks not really doing it at all. When it comes to Zoë Kravitz, though, daughter of rock legend Lenny and actor Lisa Bonet, there’s no arguing that she’s managed it and then some.
Not only is she an established and award-winning actor, appearing in huge movie franchises including X-Men and Fantastic Beasts and TV shows like the star-studded Big Little Lies, she’s also released two albums of her music, co-written and directed a movie, released a jewellery line and a champagne brand and named one of Time’s 100 most influential people. It’s fair to say she’s standing on her own two feet.
Looking at her father, Lenny Kravitz, and the fact that she’s a songwriter in her own right, you would expect her to have excellent taste in music, and so it proves. In terms of the greats, she cites some of the finest female artists of all time, saying, “When I’m going to bed, I’ll put on Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, or Joni Mitchell’s Blue album to fall asleep”.
And Kravitz also works with some big modern-day stars, including the current queen of pretty much everything, Taylor Swift. She co-wrote ‘Lavender Haze’, a song on Swift’s 2022 album Midnights, also contributing backing vocals to the tune. The pair are long-term buddies and were stuck in the UK together during the Covid-19 pandemic. Kravitz relayed to GQ: “She was my pod. She was a very important part of being in London, just having a friend that I could see and that would make me home-cooked meals and dinner on my birthday.”
And when it comes to a single album that might provide a soundtrack to her life, Kravitz goes with a 21st century classic that features plenty of collaboration, revealing, “Maybe Frank Ocean’s Blonde? That was the album of my summer last year; it was all I listened to”.
Blonde is a 2016 concept album, the follow-up to Ocean’s 2013 smash Channel Orange and features guest spots from the likes of André 3000 and Beyoncé. Influenced by artists as diverse as The Beach Boys, Tame Impala, Stevie Wonder and The Beatles, it features lush orchestration, pitch-shifted vocals, epic beat switches and a multitude of different genres of music including indie, R&B, psychedelia and electronica.
Speaking about the record on its release, Ocean said, “There’s no fantasy, it’s all for better, for worse, where it’s autobiographical, my experience, and you know, the foundation of what’s made me who I am today. Making this project, I haven’t shied away from expectations. I really try to use it as fuel. Because people have a positive association of what I do and what I make, and they expect something that’s good, so, how do you convert that into a better moment, a better song, a better album.”
It certainly paid off, with Time naming it their ‘Album of the Year’, and it currently sits at 76 in the Rolling Stone ‘Top 500’ of all time.
Kravitz, meanwhile, will next be seen alongside Austin Butler in Darren Aronofsky’s latest, Caught Stealing, a crime thriller about a former baseball star caught up in New York’s criminal underworld.
