This Wasn't Meant For You Anyway

This album has been added to 4 public lists:

• 

  Vortex's Album of the Year List '24

  Tom

  I've been following Lola Young since her very first EP, 2020's Renaissance. None For You was one of my top songs of that year, but I haven't checked out a project of hers since.

  It was to my complete surprise, then, that This Wasn't Meant For You Anyway is one of the tightest records of the year. Gone are the muted piano and restrained vocals of Renaissance; now, explosive choruses and meaty guitar riffs fill the silence at every opportunity. The introductory track Good Books sees Young subsumed by the foam of percussion, lamenting the dismissiveness of her boyfriend in restraint-laced lines bubbling over with emotion ("I work hard to stay in your good books/But you don't read, so why do I try?").

  Subsequent track Wish You Were Dead sees that restraint come completely undone; punches are thrown, phones chucked out of windows, and cops are called, and it's so fucking MESSY and unrestrained that you feel every word like a bloody orange sucker punch. You could say that about every song on here, really; emotion oils every cog, greasing it into imperfect life. Young practically spits every line of Conceited, an ugly and burnt woozy rage-track, straight through the middle of some of the most interesting production I've heard on this kind of record in a damn long time.

  There is some tenderness here, too; you can hear it in the warmth of Walk On By's chorus and You Noticed. The latter track is almost a perfect foil for Good Books, which is just a really beautiful way of leading the album into a circle.

  Being honest though, Lola's at her best when she's angry, horny or both, and Fuck ticks at least one of those boxes perfectly. Goddamn this is a sexy song. Really: "You got bitches in your inbox/I wanna see how much you make, I know it's lots/You better show me how that thing works/Cos you know you're gonna make my panties drop"

  just saying. I'm just saying!

  Anyway, this is absolutely one of my top 10 albums of this year. It's loud, warm, violent, horny, and almost perfectly coiled. There's no filler here, just raw feeling, and I appreciated that a lot in a year of sincere incinserity.

• 

  2024 Top 20

  Adam Wood

  It took me a minute to dial into this record, the second full-length release from Croydon singer/songwriter Lola Young (not to be confused with the incumbent Baroness of Hornsey). Across ten (and a half) tracks, she chronicles both relationship drama and inter-personal power struggles, and also negotiates her own internal landscape. Part of that is an effort to explain (perhaps to herself, and to the world) a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder.

  Both musically and lyrically, there’s a captivating balance between smooth surfaces erupting into jagged edges. Prominent single ‘Messy’ catalogues some of these dichotomies explicitly, but they’re present—in one respect or another—across the whole record. The sharp elements (be it a lyrical vulgarity or musical swerve) hit harder because they come surrounded by—for the most part—some very pleasant R&B-inflected pop. Included in there are some superb melodies, such that even when things get dark, it’s hard not to have a good time.

  ‘Conceited’ in particular wormed deep into my brain, to the point that I would get a shiver at the sound of its opening bass line coming on shuffle. That track is an excellent microcosm for the album as a whole: assured, rich vocal performance; direct, occasionally confrontational lyrics; an all-timer of a beat that I expect to hear sampled on hip-hop records in years to come. Oh, and a super-cathartic, grungy explosion of a guitar interlude to boot. This one will stick with me for a while.

• 

  Currently..

  Martijn van Exel

  messy

• 

  Best Ever

  Oliver