{"id":262625,"date":"2025-10-31T09:56:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T09:56:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/262625\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T09:56:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T09:56:16","slug":"new-album-how-to-be-human-shows-a-softer-side-to-the-traitors-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/262625\/","title":{"rendered":"New album How To Be Human shows a softer side to the Traitors star"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark SavageMusic correspondent<\/p>\n

\"SonySony Music<\/p>\n

Cat Burns’ second album finds her dealing with heartache, in more ways than one<\/p>\n

If you’ve been introduced to Cat Burns through Celebrity Traitors, you might assume she’s a tough nut to crack. <\/p>\n

As a player, she’s cautious, cunning, inscrutable. Her cards are firmly clasped to her chest. She’s foxier than Fantastic Mr Fox, with as many lives as her name suggests.<\/p>\n

People who’ve heard her music know that’s a fa\u00e7ade.<\/p>\n

Her debut album, Early Twenties, was full of chatty self-interrogation and emotional candour, as Burns described falling in love, coming out to her family, and the social anxiety of her autism and ADHD.<\/p>\n

Powered by the breakout single Go, a raw but soulful break-up ballad, it earned the 25-year-old a Mercury Prize nomination for album of the year.<\/p>\n

Six months later, she was whisked off to Ardross Castle to become the pot-stirring, strategic mastermind of the Traitors’ new spin-off series.<\/p>\n

By that point, Burns had largely finished her second album, How To Be Human, so anyone hoping for musical treachery and skullduggery will be disappointed: There are no cash-in covers of Talking Head’s Psycho Killer, or Macy Gray’s I Committed Murder.<\/p>\n

Death, however, lingers over the album like a dense fog, as Burns grapples with the loss of her father on Christmas Day 2020, and her grandfather, John Burns, who passed away last April.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"CatCat Burns<\/p>\n

Cat paid tribute to her grandfather John shortly after his death last year, calling him “my inspiration”.<\/p>\n

His is the first voice you hear on the album, sending Burns a simple message of love from his hospital bed, over the opening chords of Come Home.<\/p>\n

She picks up the narrative, remembering one of their last days together, in a drab Welsh ward room.<\/p>\n

“You were laying there with such love in your eyes \/ Did you know it then or did you think you had more time? \/ Cause you made us all hold hands.”<\/p>\n

Tenderly, Burns imagines her grandfather, part of the Windrush generation, being summoned back to heaven by God, the reward for a life well lived. <\/p>\n

“You’ve done everything I could have wanted with the time I gave you… It’s time you come home.”<\/p>\n

It’s a stunning piece of writing, specific yet universal, that establishes grief as the overriding theme of Burns’ second album.<\/p>\n

Andrew Garfield’s inspiration<\/p>\n

On the itchy, impatient Can Time Move Faster, she daydreams about escaping its grasp. Later, she observes that a break-up is “like grieving someone who’s still alive”.<\/p>\n

Along the way, she drops breadcrumbs for anyone else who’s stumbling through loss to follow. <\/p>\n

She treats sadness as a stimulus on the gospel-inspired All This Love, determinedly pushing herself back into life.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been going out more \/ I’ve been seeing friends on the weekends \/ Saying yes more,” she sings. “And maybe that’s th\u0435 gift in all of this.”<\/p>\n

The song, she says, was inspired by watching a video of Spider-Man actor Andrew Garfield discussing his own mother’s death.<\/p>\n

“He said, ‘Grief is love with no place to go’, and I was like, ‘That’s such an amazing way to put it’,” she explained in a video for the charity Marie Curie UK<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“So when I’m bawling like a complete lunatic, what centres me is remembering this is just the love that I can’t [share]. I would like to have a hug, and I would like to have a conversation but I can’t.”<\/p>\n

“That’s why I made All This Love, because life keeps going and you have to move with it.”<\/p>\n

\"Cat<\/p>\n

The singer-songwriter won three Brit Award nominations before she’d even released her debut album, Early Twenties<\/p>\n

It’s one thing to dispense advice, but quite another to follow it, as Burns discovers on a suite of ballads about a disruptive break-up.<\/p>\n

Judging by the lyrics, it was an amicable split – which only made letting go harder. <\/p>\n

“All we talk about is work and weather\u2026 God I hate this \/ Why are you acting like you haven’t seen me naked?” she agonises over the acoustic strum of Small Talk.<\/p>\n

Eventually, she realises this can’t go on, concluding: “No contact is hard, but better for us in the long term.”<\/p>\n

Throughout the album, Burns’ vocal delivery is almost conversational, making her songs feel like intimate conversations with an older, wiser (and sometimes a little bit messed up) sibling.<\/p>\n

Cleverly, the understated production never distracts from the lyrics, with ringing piano chords and gossamer strings that tesselate seamlessly with Burns’ soulful melodies.<\/p>\n

There are more playful moments, too. The swoonsome groove of GIRLS! soundtracks a celebration of horny feminism; while Lavender is a delirious devotional for a new partner, that you can just tell was sung with a wide-eyed smile.<\/p>\n

\"Cat<\/p>\n

The winner – or winners – of Celebrity Traitors will be revealed next week<\/p>\n

At 16 tracks, the record could have done with a touch of Burns’ cut-throat approach to the Traitors. <\/p>\n

A few songs that dwell on similar lyrical themes could have been culled; and it would have been thrilling to hear the star’s Machiavellian side explored amidst the radio-friendly pop.<\/p>\n

But that’s a minor quibble. As her fellow contestants have discovered, Burns is a good hang. Even though, as she sings on the percolating title track, her autism means she’s often “acting” in ways that she’s learned people will expect.<\/p>\n

“I wonder if they can tell \/ That I’m not like them \/ But I’m trying to be human,” she sings.<\/p>\n

But if nothing else, the record shows Cat Burns is as human as the rest of us: Anxious, hopeful, downbeat, idealistic, flawed and funny. <\/p>\n

Just make sure to watch your back.<\/p>\n