The sex goddess is back, for better or worse.
I fucking loved Tove Lo, thought she was a genius. She was thrown into the spotlight by a rather shitty remix of her fantastic song Habits (Stay High), which lead to her great pop album Queen of the Clouds, which I enjoyed a lot. Not only did it have great single after great single (including Timebomb, one of the best pop songs of the decade), but it also gave us an excellent look into Tove Lo's character, shortly summed up by the interludes that break up the album: The SEX, The LOVE, and The PAIN. Tove Lo wants to fuck everything she sees, she falls in love easily, and uses drugs to cope when her life is full of sadness. Perfect, an artist of actual personality. The amount of fucking pop artists that give you nothing but just bland love songs and inspirational anthems exhaust me, so it's nice to see someone like Tove Lo ignore that. Typical topics were swapped out for a song that talks about having a sex addiction so vital that you become a cougar that exploits teen's sexual desires. That's insane. I was totally on board with Tove Lo, ready to name her the Queen of pop music that would replace Kesha while she's gone.
Then Lady Wood happened, and everything fell apart.
Very few people liked Lady Wood, and I was not one of them. Her creative song topics and decent writing fell down the drain, her production was now sluggish, weightless garbage that's no longer fun nor atmospheric, and her personality slowly got sucked away. I was so disappointed, an up and coming pop juggernaut turned into a bargain bin C-lister. The album generated 0 hits, and the album was swiftly forgotten.
Now, in 2017, came the release of her very weird single Disco Tits, and I fucking LOVED it. But, I knew to not get my hopes up completely, as I liked Cool Girl a lot too before Lady Wood became a bunch of shit. So here comes the release of Tove Lo's 3rd studio album, the sequel and "2nd half" to Lady Wood titled "Blue Lips" (which instantly sent my mind to the lewdest ideas possible but, c'mon, it's Tove Lo, do you BLAME me?), which after quite a few listens I can confirm, is not only her best album, but also makes her other albums better!
But we'll talk about that later, first we need to talk about how great this album is on it's own merits, and the first big improvement you notice are the performances. On Lady Wood, Tove sounded like she couldn't give less of a fuck about her songs. On Blue Lips, she sounds absolutely breathtaking. Not only that, but she didn't fall to typical pop star cliches this year either. She's not sing-talking, she isn't fucking rapping, she's just singing, and doing it beautifully. The raw emotion in songs like 9th of October give me fucking chills. The notes in Stranger are hit perfectly, and the sexy as fuck Bitches are some of the best performed songs of the year. She has a solid range, a completely unique voice, and she knows when to start going crazy and when to calm down, the total package. This may not seem *as* important as I'm stressing it, but it's just a relief to hear a great singer after pop star after pop star that seem to live off of 0.3 octave ranges. The only slip up performance wise is on Romantics, where this dude Daye Jack shows up. He isn't awful, but it's similar to Need You by Allie X & Valley Girl off Collxtion II, where the female performer completely blows the male performer away, when they should be equal, and it makes them lack chemistry. But Tove Lo herself constantly sounds on top of her game, doesn't miss a single beat throughout this album, which is very impressive.
Album sounds gorgeous too. It has a perfect blend of Queen Of The Clouds, and what Lady Wood tried to do. There's some great upbeat pop bops on here (Disco Tits, Cycles) as well as emotionally crushing ballads (9th of October, Hey You Got Drugs?), both equally as amazing. The lush songs sound lush (Love the sleek guitar on Strangers), the weird songs sound weird (Disco Tits is fucking insane), and the sad songs sound REALLY sad (White girls gonna be crying to those last 3 tracks for WEEKS), it all works well and every song transitions perfectly. The standout track easily being Bitches, which is the only song I can think of that has used the "bass boosting" trope that's become a trend lately to it's fullest potential. It's blasted to the point where it gets it's cool sound, but the song is mixed properly where your mind doesn't get overflowed and your brain starts pouring out of your ears. Instead, it sounds very slick, one of the best tracks of the year. But the production isn't where this album hooks me, it's the actual lyrics and content.
My biggest problem with Lady Wood is the topics and tone, referring specifically to the topic of sex. Somehow she was both too in your face with it and not in your face enough to make it work. You have the cover which is a zoomed up picture of her crotch, and then very explicit videos oozing with lust, but the actual content in the songs itself were useless. Very misleading promotion is what I'd call it. Well, Tove Lo made it her main mission to fix that. Yes there is of course a bunch of songs that finish the arc of Lady Wood of this dickhead of a boyfriend, but the songs are a lot more stylized. Songs about lesbian sex, golden showers, face sitting, bunch of kinky shit. You got f-bombs and sexual innuendos left and right, lots of sexual tension from the lyrics, and some quotable as hell lines. The "cum/come" fake out on Don't Ask Don't Tell for example:
"Make me come, come so alive"
which reminds me so much of Sleazy by Kesha I start to smile uncontrollably. But, of course, nothing tops Bitches
"All these girls stare at me, drop lip
Dripping in harmony, like fifth"
Which is such an iconic line, with the "like fifth" as in Fifth Harmony. It's like she made this song for me or something! You don't even need the music, you can just pull up the album on Genius and still be entertained just reading the thing.
But then of course, you have the sadgirl Tove Lo, where she tries to get over the dickhead from Lady Wood. "Cycles" has her talking about how she's trapped in a cycle of emotions with this guy of hating his manipulating and ignorance, but keeps falling for his charm and sex. As well as coming to the realization that Tove Lo is in a cycle of relationships, where the same things keep happening again and again: she falls head over heels for some dude, they fuck all day and night, then she gets left for whichever broad the dude decides to bang next. Which then leads to Bad Days and 9th of October, both about Tove Lo overcoming this guy she thought she loved, finally coming crashing down with Hey You Got Drugs, where she's finally free of this hell and can finally live normally again. It's seen as uplifting, when in reality it's anything but. The first 2 tracks are, going through the motions of coping after a bad relationship is all fine and dandy, but Hey You Got Drugs is a serious dark undertone to it. It's all shown through one quick bridge in the song, that also servers as a repeated outro to the song and album itself.
"Hey, you got drugs?
Just need a pick-me-up only for tonight
Don’t tell anyone I was with ya
Yeah, it’s good stuff, but I’m resistin' now
Take it if you want
Think I’ve fallen out of my feelings"
Which shows a striking problem: Tove Lo doesn't know how to cope with a dude doing her wrong. She's used to having control in relationships (as seen at the starting tracks on QOTC), and when she doesn't, she gets sent into a spiraling depression that she can only get out of by abusing drugs. Yeah sure she says it's "Just for the night" but we both know that isn't really the case. More importantly, it makes The PAIN section of Queen of the Clouds that much more potent, as you realize Tove Lo is now trapped in a completely different cycle that she might not even know about. It's a very interesting end to the album that I really enjoy, it's nice when things are up to limited interpretations, all equally plausible.
Overall, I absolutely adored this. It's such a massive improvement to Lady Wood it's shocking. Blue Lips makes Queen Of The Clouds hit harder, it gives Lady Wood more context and not seem like total nonsense, and makes Blue Lips itself in the process shine above and beyond her previous projects as well as most pop divas that struggled this year. It's a rollercoaster of emotions, it's entertaining at every point, and most of all, is sexy as hell. Congrats Tove Lo, you recovered with one of the best albums of the year. Kesha might have your crown for both Queen of Pop & Sleaze, but I'm sure a chick like you doesn't mind being crowned the "Queen of Pussy" as a replacement.
OVERALL: 9/10
BEST: Bitches, Hey You Got Drugs?, 9th of October, Disco Tits, Bad Days, Cycle, Stranger, Don't Ask Don't Tell
WORST: Romantics ft Daye Jack
TRACK RATINGS (/10)
Bitches - 10
Hey You Got Drugs? - 10
9th of October - 10
Disco Tits - 10
Bad Days - 10
Cycles - 10
Stranger - 10
Don't Ask Don't Tell - 10
Shivering Gold - 10
shedontknowbutsheknows - 9
Struggle - 8
Romantics ft Daye Jack - 7
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