Grade: 2.5\/5<\/p>\n
On Oct. 24, Demi Lovato released her ninth studio album, It\u2019s Not That Deep. Lovato has been pivoting away from pop music for years, with this 2025 album serving as the plier that removes the nail from the genre\u2019s coffin. In 2022, she posted a photo dressed in black, middle fingers raised, captioned \u201ca funeral for my pop music.\u201d That record, Holy Fvck, funneled raw emotion through hard rock and pop-punk, trading the Hollywood glamour of her earlier hits for pure grit. But by summer 2025, the 33-year-old was already teasing a comeback, posting a TikTok from the studio captioned, \u201cMy pop music coming back to life after we held a funeral for it.\u201d And just like that, \u201cPopvato\u201d was officially born again, producing an album that lives up to its name. Sometimes, pop music just isn\u2019t that deep.<\/p>\n
You must give her credit \u2014 with all the memes she\u2019s been made into, it\u2019s impressive that she has the courage to name her album It\u2019s Not That Deep. How does one come back from Poot Lovato? Maybe by embracing the joke \u2014 after all, according to a viral interview, she can dish it out and take it, her favorite dish being a mug, of course. Although we may need to confirm she knows all the meanings of the word \u201cdish.\u201d Nevertheless, it is clear with this album, Lovato simply set out to \u201chave fun,\u201d and despite however audiences may feel about the actual music value of this album, you\u2019ve got to Taylor-Swift it, and just say, \u201cMan, we love this era for her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still, from a critical lens, it\u2019s hard to ignore how not deep this album truly is. Rolling Stone\u2019s sentiment that \u201cLovato is back to the sound where she shines brightest\u201d is not only unfair to the work she\u2019s done in the recent years, but it\u2019s also pointing at a more deeply ingrained truth: that Demi Lovato\u2019s songs were better when she was younger and shinier. In working with a rather new-to-the-scene producer, Zhone, Lovato was attempting to tap back into \u201cher electronic-pop roots\u201d and ultimately what worked for her when she too was \u201cnew to the scene.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The lyrics, however, pulse with the urgency of a middle-aged man\u2019s forehead vein. \u201cFrequency\u201d carries a club-like energy as she repeats \u201cfuck up the vibe\u201d over a pounding beat. \u201cKiss\u201d mirrors the robotic tone Zhone once crafted for Kesha\u2019s \u201cBoy Crazy,\u201d while singles such as \u201cFast\u201d and \u201cHere All Night\u201d dive headfirst into EDM. Yet the production often overpowers the message. \u201cSorry to Myself,\u201d for example, sounds as though it\u2019s stuck in 2015.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, beneath the noise lies a glimmer of something real. Although the closer, \u201cGhost,\u201d is not a fan favorite, it offers the audience a flicker of authenticity that is otherwise lacking. In this emotional ballad, Lovato finally opens up to her audience as she sings about a love she hopes will follow her into the afterlife: \u201cI hope you flicker the lights \/ And send a chill down my spine so cold \/ Wanna be haunted for life by your ghost.\u201d While it may not lend itself to grinding on someone at a club, it provides a welcome glimpse of emotional honesty. Coming from an artist that has shared her sexuality, overcome drug overdoses, endured numerous health scares, a new marriage and more \u2014 all while under a microscope \u2014 I honestly wish there were more songs like \u201cGhost.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s Not That Deep delighted me at certain points and made me turn my headphones down at a few, but did any song besides \u201cGhost,\u201d truly stick with me? No \u2014 which is a bummer, considering Demi Lovato\u2019s wide-spanning celebrity track record does have important lessons that could make us all feel deeply. Lovato has always known how to transform pain into poetry, but the albumremains rather hollow.<\/p>\n
Though maybe that\u2019s the point. After everything she\u2019s survived, maybe Lovato has earned the right to not be deep for once. But for an artist with a voice as powerful as hers, I can\u2019t help but wish she\u2019d dug just a little deeper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Grade: 2.5\/5 On Oct. 24, Demi Lovato released her ninth studio album, It\u2019s Not That Deep. Lovato has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109162,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[51135,156,157,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-109161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-album-reviews","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109161\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}