{"id":302835,"date":"2025-11-20T08:26:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T08:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/302835\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T08:26:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T08:26:08","slug":"summer-walker-finally-over-it-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/302835\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer Walker: Finally Over It Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

No amount of emotional clarity can substitute for the barbed specificity and desperate rhythmic phrasing of Walker\u2019s strongest writing, largely abandoned on Finally Over It in the name of self-restraint. Instead, she disappears, along with guests Anderson .Paak<\/a> and Bryson Tiller<\/a>, into a tedious stretch that brings to mind a certain subgenre of YouTube tutorial: How to Make a \u201990s Slow Jam Type Beat in FL Studio. What Walker has not surrendered in the pursuit of growth is the near-pathological obsession, shared with her contemporaries across genres, with overtly referencing R&B hits of previous decades. \u201cBaby\u201d first samples and later interpolates Mariah Carey<\/a>\u2019s \u201cAlways Be My Baby,\u201d sullying the promise of an everlasting duet with a dispassionate performance from Chris Brown, who continues to patronize major-label releases with the enforced ubiquity of a mafia racket. \u201cNo,\u201d a midtempo, boundary-setting anthem, begins with a sample of Beyonc\u00e9<\/a>\u2019s 2003 song \u201cYes\u201d and then firmly rejects the gendered domesticity famously pledged on Destiny\u2019s Child<\/a>\u2019s \u201cCater 2 U.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walker is at her most effective as a songwriter and memorable as a performer when she makes room for the pistol-toting, drunk-dialling heroine of Over It and Still Over It, the very character she seems to be forsaking on this album. Still, the journey isn\u2019t without lessons learned. By disc two, it\u2019s clear, for instance, that she fares better when her costars are women. \u201cRobbed You,\u201d a set-up fantasy featuring Atlanta compatriot Mariah the Scientist<\/a>, is more esprit d\u2019escalier regret than warning: \u201cI should have robbed you\/I should have popped you,\u201d Walker sings, crafting a hook from imperfect anaphora. On \u201cGo Girl,\u201d she proffers a clipped self-appraisal that lands more like statement of fact than affirmation, finding natural rhythm with Latto<\/a>\u2019s boastful drawl; true beauty seeks to convince no one. Both handily outrap Doja Cat<\/a>, who trails with the overworked affect of someone shooting for latter day-Eminem<\/a> but landing closer to Qveen Herby. On the Kanye-referencing \u201cHow Sway\u201d with Sailorr, Walker is at her funniest and most compelling: \u201cYou ask me if I\u2019m flexible, I\u2019ll do a split\/I wanna get your name engraved in pink glitter right on my blick.\u201d When Walker represses that streak, she inevitably shrinks. \u201cAllegedly,\u201d featuring Teddy Swims, is, at best, a bore\u2014a belter whose just-familiar-enough genre fusion and generic flyover-country allusions suggest it may find favor with whomever chooses songs for contestants on The Voice.<\/p>\n

In the months preceding the release of Finally Over It, Walker repeatedly selected flashes of aqua that inevitably hinted at Tiffany Blue and the luxury bridal associations of Tiffany & Co. She launched a promotional website whose landing page resembles a wedding invitation. Most recently, she turned up to The Jennifer Hudson Show in a wedding dress, turning the show\u2019s familiar \u201ctunnel walk<\/a>\u201d into a bridal march. If that weren\u2019t literal enough, the album\u2019s cover\u2014photographed by Richie Talboy\u2014doubles down on Walker\u2019s matrimonial third act: The image is a reference to Anna Nicole Smith\u2019s 1994 wedding picture<\/a>, in which a stone-faced Smith clutches a bouquet of flowers in one hand and the sallow hand of octogenarian billionaire J. Howard Marshall in the other. What is less clear is whether Walker intends the cover as a celebration of the transactional nature of love or a critique of its parallels in her chosen industry or a rejection of both. One hopes, as Walker lingers at the altar and at an apparent crossroads of her own, that she has considered what awaited history\u2019s most recognizable and maligned sugar baby after she crossed the threshold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No amount of emotional clarity can substitute for the barbed specificity and desperate rhythmic phrasing of Walker\u2019s strongest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302836,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[776,88,216,777],"class_list":{"0":"post-302835","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-albums","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-web"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}