"Ocean" is a song by English group Goldfrapp from their seventh studio album Silver Eye (2017). It was released as the album's first promotional single on 10 March 2017 through Mute Records. The song was written and produced by Alison Goldfrapp and William Owen Gregory, with additional production coming from The Haxan Cloak and John Congleton. An electronic and synth-rock song, "Ocean" marks the return of Goldfrapp's heavy use of synths in their music. Written in couplets, the lyrics were described as dark by several commentators. Critics also drew comparisons between "Ocean" and the works of other musicians and groups, such as Shirley Manson, Nine Inch Nails, and Depeche Mode.
The song generated positive feedback from music critics, with most of them acclaiming it for being emotional and dramatic. Others noted that "Ocean" served as a strong album closer to Silver Eye. A remix of "Ocean" was released on 21 May 2018 as the fourth single from Silver Eye and the first from the deluxe edition reissue of the album. It features guest vocals from Depeche Mode frontman Dave Gahan. A music video for this version of "Ocean" was also released and serves as a continuation to prior music videos created for Silver Eye.
Background and release
"Ocean" was the first of two promotional singles to be released from Silver Eye, with the other being "Moon in Your Mouth" which was released two weeks later; the song was distributed to digital retailers on 10 March 2017 through Mute Records following its initial debut on Billboards official website. It was written and produced by members Alison Goldfrapp and William Owen Gregory with The Haxan Cloak and John Congleton serving as additional producers. While creating material for Silver Eye, the duo had trouble writing songs that they actually enjoyed; Goldfrapp claimed that "it always takes about three months to write all the rubbish out of your system before you get something you like". Along with the announcement of "Ocean" as a promotional single, tickets for a promotional tour for Silver Eye were made available for purchase, with show legs in Europe and the United States.
Composition and lyrics
Speaking on behalf of its sound, Gary Graff from Billboard compared the electronic sound in "Ocean" to Goldfrapp's previous albums Black Cherry (2003) and Supernature (2005). Additionally, he felt that the track is unlike their previous release, Tales of Us (2013), in that it does not contain a "pastoral" sound. Instead, the track contains "heavy electronic beats" and an emphasis on "pulse-pounding synths". Both Goldfrapp and Gregory acknowledged the return to using synths in their music, with the former claiming that it created a "tougher sound" to the track overall. Categorizing the genre of the song as synth-rock, Alexa Camp from Slant Magazine claimed that she could picture Shirley Manson singing the lyrics to "Ocean". Referring to its sound as "dark" and "churning", Spins Anna Gaca noted the "pounding industrial core and [the] faintly sinister processing effect applied to [her] vocals". Labelling the track as a ballad, Sean T. Collins from Pitchfork declared it the cri de coeur on Silver Eye. He further explained that the lyrics contain imagery depicting nature and that the composition uses "big, echoey washes of sound" in order to produce an "enveloping, absorbing, and suffocating" sound.
In a series of couplets, Goldfrapp sings "I borrowed bones, I borrowed skin / To save me from the hell I'm in, your fantasy / And every time I think of you / I see the dark, I hear their hooves", which registers a theme of transformation, according to Chris White from musicOMH. Towards the song's end, she repeats "they're coming for you" in a "reedy and distorted" voice. The track's sound was compared to the works of Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails by David Chiu of Consequence of Sound. Furthermore, Chris Gerard, a writer for PopMatters, compared the production's sound to being intoxicated.