{"id":616084,"date":"2026-09-30T06:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T06:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/616084\/"},"modified":"2026-09-30T06:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T06:10:08","slug":"tinashe-popstar-album-review-pitchfork","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/616084\/","title":{"rendered":"Tinashe: Popstar Album Review | Pitchfork"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe you\u2019ve noticed recently how evergreen pop-song subjects like love and fantasy have been supplanted by the \u201creality\u201d of hustle and a meta-narrative. The inspirations and tribulations of life as a full-time entertainer are the subjects of many a recent female pop album, from debutantes and establishment icons alike: AD\u00c9LA<\/a>\u2019s PRIMA<\/a>; JADE<\/a>\u2019s THAT\u2019S SHOWBIZ, BABY!<\/a>; Ariana Grande<\/a>\u2019s petal<\/a>; Taylor Swift<\/a>\u2019s The Life of a Showgirl<\/a>; every Charli xcx<\/a> album since Crash<\/a>. I think this emergent phenomenon is like fifty percent a function of late-capitalist anxiety and fifty percent stan culture wagging the stars, but maybe it\u2019s one and the same thing. \u201cThe American Dream is outdated\/Now they sittin\u2019 on the internet hatin\u2019,\u201d as Tinashe<\/a> puts it on \u201cCrash Out,\u201d one of the dozens of brilliant little moments on Popstar, her new pop meta-narrative album to end pop meta-narrative albums. After this, hang it up.<\/p>\n

Popstar really is that good: top-shelf material with a sense of purpose\u2014a compulsion, even\u2014about connecting sounds circulating in pop, electronic, and dance music right now. Its rhythmic sensibility works both song-to-song and as a full-album listen. It\u2019s fresh in the best way\u2014immediately accessible, a little bit avant-garde. And it\u2019s super recognizably Tinashe: her voice, taste, points of reference, backed by the kind of producer lineup a creative director would probably call \u201cdirectional.\u201d She\u2019s got Arca<\/a> and Machinedrum<\/a> on the dial-up modem (\u201cSunglasses\u201d) and Kingdom<\/a>\u2019s crazy \u201cCloser<\/a>\u201d-meets-bassline production for \u201cNobody Wanna Dance Anymore\u201d is in the lead for dancefloor makeout track of the year. She\u2019s playing into the self-aware theme by interpolating herself and the pop era she came up in. She knows when to step on the gas, and she will make the song too short before she ever gets bored.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

One of those recognizably Tinashe things is the hooks with a facility for zeitgeist phrases<\/a> that would embarrass another artist. You could go the rest of your life without hearing the word \u201cbrainrot\u201d? Me too, but not when I hear Tinashe sing \u201cBrainrot,\u201d or \u201cCrash Out\u201d (a rather belated addition to Merriam-Webster this month<\/a>), or \u201cIt gets to a point,\u201d or \u201cWe live in a society.\u201d It\u2019s not just her line readings or her longstanding knack for getting in on the joke: Somehow she\u2019s singing a little less than on past albums, not just when she\u2019s sing-rapping but because the Popstar toplines are so integral to the beats. It\u2019s as much about the melodies as the way their percussive qualities factor into the whole (brainrot, brainrot, brainrot)\u2014this is something she\u2019s worked toward for a long time, really being part of the rhythm. On \u201cPillow Fight\u201d: \u201cI was never innocent,\u201d with an echo on \u201cinnocent\u201d that sounds like it\u2019s coming through the Britney<\/a> mic; straight into a threat to whack you into bed that makes her sound like a featherweight Pusha T<\/a>; then she says \u201ctussle\u201d so it sounds like \u201ctesselate,\u201d there\u2019s a gorgeous harmony section, and it\u2019s over so fast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maybe you\u2019ve noticed recently how evergreen pop-song subjects like love and fantasy have been supplanted by the \u201creality\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[4958,156,157,111,139,69,1251],"class_list":["post-616084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616084","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=616084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}