Elijah Ocean is a relatively new Nashville resident, and his new “Born Blue” music video captures some of his final days in Los Angeles, Calif. The clip was one of his final acts before making the cross-country move.
To make his “Born Blue” video — which is premiering exclusively on The Boot — Ocean and director Chell Stephen mounted a camera to the hood of a car and had “a fun little night out on the town,” the singer-songwriter says. They drove around Hollywood and through the hills; interspersed with that footage are clips of Ocean performing the song.
“This is one of those songs I can’t really remember writing. I do know it was a few years, ago on my couch in California,” Ocean says. “It’s basically about not being able to open up emotionally and how that can make it hard to sustain relationships, which leads to a constant state of moving on. It’s a ‘drivin’ and thinkin” song.”
“Born Blue” is the title track of, and one of 12 songs on, Ocean’s newest album, released in August. The project, Ocean’s sixth in a decade-plus-long career, hearkens back to the neotraditional movement within country music in the 1980s and ‘90s.
“I call it ‘second-wave neotraditional country & western music’ or ‘post-neotrad,'” Ocean says of the record’s sound. “We used a lot of guitar effects and drum machines from that era, while also incorporating modern techniques. I basically wanted to make a new sound while paying tribute to the history of the genre.”
Born and raised in Maine, Ocean moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., in 2009, then to L.A. in 2014. There, he began playing bass in dancehalls and honky-tonks, often covering songs by many of the neotraditionalist country artists who influenced Born Blue.
Fans can keep up with Ocean at ElijahOcean.com.
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