This Wasn't Meant For You Anyway

This album has been added to 1 private list and 5 public lists:

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  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.

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