Solange’s “Cranes in the Sky” Makes Loneliness Sound Elegant
It’s easy to feel alone, especially in a world that moves so quickly. It’s a devastating feeling, one that you can’t assuage with drugs or material things. Isolation is something you need to tackle head-on, to embrace the despair and figure out its cause. On “Cranes in the Sky,” one of several standouts from Solange’s new album, A Seat at the Table, it seems she’s working out those issues, running through a litany of solutions that didn’t work for her in the long run. “I tried to drink it away,” Solange sings at the top of the track. “I tried to run it away,” she muses later.
“Cranes in the Sky,” positioned near the LP’s beginning, is an early bump on the singer’s road to self-empowerment, depicting her personal evolution while helping us sort through our own. In the song’s video, we see Solange alone and with fellow black women in grand, gorgeous spaces; the background’s scenic beauty is a vital component of the song’s perseverant message. With Raphael Saadiq on bass, the beat is remarkably spacious, giving Solange plenty of room to detail her truth. A truth rooted in real struggle and exasperation, of which she eventually shakes free.
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