2020 Highlights: Dua Lipa, Niall Horan, Lil Baby
Pop goes the world! Proof that what's popular can also be some of the best stuff around.
Niall Horan - Heartbreak Weather
I swear there was something about One Direction. Something about their shouty melodies that could fall down the line of becoming simplistic or dumb, yet always found a way to reach the heart. Something about their production, especially throughout Midnight Memories and Four, big enough to crowd the entire mix but never to the point of compression, that captured a certain idealism that belongs only to the young, of wanting to eat the world alive and the world responding with a wide embrace. Something about 4 (5) voices that, separated, unfolded into the best versions of themselves, but together, became a choir for something beyond control or reason. As calculated and machinated as they were, to some extent, that was part of what made them so special-they were able to overcome their generic upbringing as a boy band and become something that couldn’t be held back by cynical, executive minds.
Heartbreak Weather is about the closest we’re gonna get to a new One Direction album-sure, Niall wasn’t a consistent songwriter, but Julian Bunetta, Jamie Scott and John Ryan, the main songwriters and producers on here, were, and they know exactly what they need to deliver. Now that they only need to handle 1 voice, Niall’s charismatic yet dorky presence, they can focus on developing their musical palette more than ever. This album combines 80s new wave aesthetics with modern, mainstream production in a way that both production aspects get to shine because of it; the guitar work shines and glimmers, the drums get to cover the empty spaces in the production without sounding overcrowded or processed, and the synths might be a tad cheesy in parts, but they mainly serve as accentuation, as underlining. The title track/opener is proof of that, the kind of introduction to a world of swagger and earned bravado that opens more doors than it probably can handle, like walking around an occupated street with the biggest grin imaginable. This also applies to ballads like “Bend the Rules”, with enough drama and seriousness to surpass its original intent as a One Direction throwback-like if the product was finding its way out of the plastic.
This does lead to some problems. For one, when the elements don’t fully connect, the songs suffer greatly-there needs to be enough balance in the sound for the dramatic bravado to come out and feel charming, and that doesn’t happen all the time. “Put a Little Love on Me” has some fine melody making, but Niall’s performance is too correct to truly soar, maybe because the instrumental is too vanilla to properly convey emotions beyond a rehash, like the idea of heartbreak instead of heartbreak. A similar thing happens with “San Francisco”, although it doesn’t help that that song flunts its melody like a Tik Tok dance in an alternate universe-it moves around too much to be anything but filler. The worst offender is “Cross Your Mind”, a song that doesn’t know whether it wants to be sarcastic and subdued or sincere and overt, with a stagnant melody that doesn’t even rise above possible, the worst kind of midtempo, and a confused performance from Niall who sounds like he can barely make out the words of what he’s saying.
But those are minor setbacks for an album that, for the most part, is incredibly consistent-maybe because, like his former bandmate Harry Styles, he’s learned to keep his songwriting pals close to his chest, so there’s a cohesive feel in the sound and the songwriting all throughout (a problem that plagued even the most talented former 1D, Louis Tomlinson). Niall’s got a really strong vision regarding the kinds of songs he wants to make, and he can very much get them done. He can play the player in a song like “Small Talk” that leans both into the dramatism and anxiety of a hookup, and the way to turn that anxiety into an advantage, an endorphin rush shared between 2 people whose eyes meet and run towards their desires. Even better is its immediate follow up, “Nice to Meet Ya”, a leather jacket-wearing monster on the loose charming everyone by sheer power of will, going out into the starlit night and not wanting to back home; a dork’s fantasy where he gets to score.
But his best assets rely on the go-for-broke emotional power ballads, and we have some of the best of the year here. “Black and White” is the best Ed Sheeran song in the past 5 years, a galloping ride in the middle of a misty-eyed road that seems to never end-interesting of percussion: for such a big song, not a single snare, all kicks and toms; never flashy, always riding, never stopping. “Arms of a Stranger” doesn’t even last 3 minutes, yet it might as well be a 7-minute long epic; a barricade of guitars with a hook longing for a conclusion, and a broken Niall trying to mantain a pop facade and failing. It’s overwhelming production, the kind that’s loud yet every element knows its place in the middle of the storm. It and “Everywhere” are the highlights of the album, and the latter might be even better; the galloping returns, but instead it’s running away from something instead of towards it, a lingering emotion that can’t seem to leave, as the shimmering guitars seem to catch up to Niall with every step. Heartbreak weather, indeed.
Sometimes all you need to do is what you know is right, and Niall and his team have been pros at this for almost the past decade, and now they just need to reap what they’ve been sowing. Niall has proven to be not one to keep his emotions close to his chest, and this is a dazzling spectacle of feeling and love for his craft. He’s learned to keep his head down, but within that humbleness, there’s a hurricane brewing.
Lil Baby - My Turn
On the opener, “Get Ugly”, Lil Baby goes, “Need my rims offset like Cardi B/This might be my hardest beat” like he’s struggling to come up with words on top of a beat that isn’t even that hard-more of a squelchy, flimsy hush with 808s. It’s magic. Throughout the entirety of My Turn, Lil Baby will take passable yet sonically shaky beats and slip into them with an equally shaky voice that seems to question every word that comes out, like a frightened snake on fetal position, so the moments where it gets decides to stand up for itself and attack come out even stronger. Baby sounds like he’s falling or tripping off the song, like greasy goo, and he needs to be supported by said 808s and melodies that would elevate most mainstream pop artists. Not to imply he’s dumb or unaware of what’s going on or even what he’s doing; he lays low in order to go into and around the beats to end up wrapping himself around them.
There are plenty of reasons to underestimate Lil Baby-looking into the surface of what I just described, he sounds like a rather slow and dull rapper and presence. But reading in between the lines, that musical intelligence comes out before you’d even notice. That voice of his-not to fetishize, but God that voice of his-gives itself to so many bendings and breakings and it sparkles (or during a lot of his best moments, vomits) a layer of melancholy and yearning to the ceremonials. A kid suddenly being surrounded by the greats, wondering how the hell it all happened. The lead single for this album was called “Woah”. In the middle of the singles and songs with big features, he has a solo cut that goes, “Don’t know how to feel, I got some feelings that I can’t explain”. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t celebrate, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t brag-he goes for it all, but always looking back and realizing all that had to happen and all he had to go through in order to be there. The thrill of conveying (most of) it through his voice, that’s a blessing.
Said melancholy creates some interesting dissonance on some of the more hyped up cuts like “No Sucker” with Moneybagg Yo, or especially the DJ Paul-produced cut “Signs”, the one musical misdirection on the album. But he never falls off, and he knows how to handle how and when to explode-”Woah” is like playing with a bow and arrow, calculating the trajectory of the throw with a slippery kind of accuracy, althewhile creating incredible melodies. You get his collaboration with Lil Uzi Vert, “Commercial”, in which Uzi plays his usual coy, funny character, while Baby tries to let go of the baby wheels and play a little bit further. For a more equal listen, you get “We Should” with his mentor Young Thug, as they both shoot excited yet cautious bars at each other for 3 minutes; or the more menacing “Grace” with Lil Baby’s protegee, 42 Dugg, a looser and threatening presence that fits so distressingly little with the more heavenly instrumental that it’s fascinating.
But like we established earlier, the top moments are where the snake lets its tongue out and finally decides to look at you in the eyes. He can come up with a pouty performance on “Forever”, so you beg for a tad more bite, and not only he provides just enough that you still want more, but he brings in an agitated Lil Wayne to make everyone move (but to where, that’s the point)-when they meet halfway in the final chorus, it’s like hearing introverted anxiety and extroverted anxiety clash and it’s scary. “Sum 2 Prove” is a moment where he wipes the surprise off his eyes and compresses all his feelings into 2 determined verses like 2 big balls of energy, and an arms-crossed hook where each line is its own manifesto. And of course, there’s “Emotionally Scarred”, a song that should be among the most acclaimed of the year, a tour de force of conflicted emotions where Baby questions his instincts as the more he goes up the ladder, the more looking back weighs on him. “I don’t see nobody but me-who I’m gon’ lose to?!”, and it’s not the brag it seems to be. It’s the instinct of not understanding your own choices and needing to justify them to yourself and everyone, trauma and second-guessing haunting every choice, and feeling like you can’t possibly free yourself of those demons, even if the whole world’s hearing your voice. “They say I’ll be great, I guess I’m waiting for it”. Godspeed Lil Baby.
Dua Lipa - Future Nostalgia
Before we talk about anything else, can we appreciate how blissfully short this is? 11 tracks, 37 minutes, that’s a beautiful kind of album length! Not to dismiss longer albums, many of which rank among the best of the year, but sometimes, especially for this kind of expensive, glossy pop music, it’s nice to keep it short and simple; get to the point and get out fast. That kind of attitude applies to just about all of the songs here too-they rarely ever seem to waste your time. The songs know what their strengths are, and utilize them with efficiency and without wearing themselves out. It’s a great thing to hear, how economical pop music can be while it’s simultaneously going all out. Because this is not an album that cuts corners when it comes to sound and texture. When it finds an idea that sounds good, it doesn’t matter how much it costs, it’s gonna go for it.
One of the many things that Future Nostalgia succeeds at is taking its early-80s/mid-90s dance pop influences and acknowledging the place where they came from-a sense of release and euphoria that needed to go through many stages of longing and pain in order to properly get to it. By all means, this is pop music that celebrates because it understands that the fun won’t last forever, that there’s a world of dirt outside the dancefloor that it’s going to have to give in to eventually. “Don’t Start Now” may now be the sound of pop radio now, but once you dig in, you see it’s incredibly rough around the edges-the bass that doesn’t get to form a truly defined bassline, the skitterish drums mixed with moans and screams from the beyond, the strings that sound like they come from a forgotten garage house mix. This is nowhere as squeaky clean as it sounds on surface listen, this is a call from all the forgotten corners of the club coming out to play. The opener and title track should already give you enough reason to give into the sound but with precaution, as it rides through frightened strings and a wonky groove like a funky zombie (the bridge in particular is an explosion of surrounding ideas that it’s almost tiring). There’s a certain kind of unrest throughout the entirety of the album that seems to understand the anxiety and yearning that comes with its influences.
Out of that anxiety come wonderful things. No song gives its cards all at once, as they give you more and more reasons to get through to the end. “Pretty Please” may take a while to get going, but once in its second half, as the synths seem to take the place of the vocals, they seem to take over the song as the midnight highway gets flooded by multicolor goblins. “Break My Heart” may not have the best composition in the world (and its so-called “sampling” of INXS’ “Need You Tonight is bullshit-they have nothing in common other than a similar cadence), but listen to how the dynamics of the verses change at the will of the drums, or how it seems invaded by reverb throughout the pre-chorus and then shuts itself off like it was nothing, or how tiny backing vocals come in to invade the main melody and make holes in it like it was a pickle, or how the guitars play off the strings as the latter sustain themselves all throughout the entire track. “Good in Bed” may be an outlier in the album, it may even be a terrible song, but think about how daring it is as a concept-a de-escalating chorus so stilted in its writing and its execution-although the pre-chorus and post-chorus are even worse-all in the middle of drums that don’t know what the fuck to do, and a breakdown that seems designed exclusively for Dua to say “fuck”-it’s all so obviously bad, it’s like it’s daring you to hate it, I can’t help but respect that.
Out of every listen comes a different favorite. Sometimes, it’s “Cool” and its slippery bass, its shapeshifting drums that twist and bend like purple rubber, and its incredible sense of atmosphere, like flying with no hands as the sun sets and parts of your hand get to touch the clouds (“I guess we’re ready for the summer”). Other times, it’s “Love Again” with its slow burn of a buildup and genius sampling, like watching a black-and-white silent movie being colored before our eyes. When I’m feeling generous, it can even be “Boys Will Be Boys”, even if its second verse comes off as a neoliberal feminist tweet (ie, no bite and no commentary, just a meaningless quip) and its bridge is very patronizing and simplistic-but the strings have a certain swell like little else out there, the main hook is a chant if I’ve ever heard one, and there hasn’t been a better use of “The kids ain’t alright” in pop music probably ever. Often, it’s “Hallucinate” simply because it spins in circles around itself building a fortress out of nothing, as it captures the tension of a lost stare in the middle of the dancefloor, the unspoken becoming the spoken, as it explodes in probably the album’s best bridge (and that’s a huge compliment!). Most times, it’s “Levitating”, a bubble that spreads itself around as it explodes, a crowd of people singing and dancing together as they share the same melody and sentiment; no one’s guiding the crowd, they all just have the exact same song stuck in their heads, and sing accordingly, it’s a pop music paradise!
But most times, it’s “Physical”, a song with more flaws than most of the other tracks here. For one, they had no idea where to stick the “Who needs to go to sleep” section, so they just put it wherever they could; the second half of the second verse (“I don’t wanna live another life”) seems like it came from a different song and clashes with the rest of it; and it’s probably the song on the album with the least amount of fluidity between all sections, which is one of the album’s main virtues. But the main flute motif is one of the top 5 best individual melodies of the year, and as it plays in the background of a grandiose chorus, it’s a sight to see. The song is a communion of sounds and ideas that unravel as the song goes on, as Dua’s layered vocals come up with different ways to interpret the main melody, the strings crescendo and destroy in the back of the mix like fireworks, all the synths have conversations with each other, and the chorus seems to be running through the streets only to stop as it runs out of air, to pick up for the showstopping bridge that pulls back the curtain and the despair for something else in the world travels around the globe 4 times in a row. It’s a powerful machine, a sight to see. We can only hope that the best is yet to come.