{"id":872641,"date":"2026-10-06T09:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T09:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/872641\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T09:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T09:56:08","slug":"cara-delevingne-not-normal-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/872641\/","title":{"rendered":"Cara Delevingne: Not Normal Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

The problem is, there\u2019s just so much going on. \u201cLights Up\u201d and \u201cThe Mask\u201d have striking melodies (and, on \u201cLights Up,\u201d a beautiful piano part from Tommy King), yet can\u2019t develop them, as if fearing they\u2019ll lose interest if they stick on one idea and one volume for too long. Maybe this is intentional given the album\u2019s themes, but the unpredictable starts to feel predictable when every quiet moment sounds like a crescendo is about to erupt. The constant shapeshifting nearly torpedoes a would-be standout like the Fiona Apple<\/a> co-write \u201cFeel It\u201d (\u201cFuck me, don\u2019t fix me, excite me with safety\u201d). The mesmerizing side-chained synths and syncopated melodies of the early choruses give way to a diffuse second half, and the song runs out of steam with more than a minute to go.<\/p>\n

Delevingne and Burton take lots of risks, and many pay off, but they\u2019ve skipped a few steps on the way to making an experimental opus. The thing about Apple\u2019s music\u2014one of Delevingne\u2019s formative influences\u2014is that however weird she gets, underneath the caustic, cerebral<\/a> lyrics, there\u2019s a love of old-school Cole Porter and Gershwin songwriting that roots her in that Great American Songbook sensibility. Not Normal is most fun when, on the title track, Delevingne dispenses with the chilly distortion and hams it up like a Disney villain. It\u2019s a weird moment, and yet the clich\u00e9s about humans just \u201ctrying to get by\u201d land because there\u2019s an earnestness the rest of the album is too afraid to embrace. When, on the genuinely soaring \u201cCrazy, Baby,\u201d Delevingne goes, \u201cI\u2019m sorry, this is a love song,\u201d it\u2019s emblematic of a record that\u2019s both achingly vulnerable and never truly lets its guard down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The problem is, there\u2019s just so much going on. \u201cLights Up\u201d and \u201cThe Mask\u201d have striking melodies (and,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":872642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[776,236,88,777],"class_list":["post-872641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-albums","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872641","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=872641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/872642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=872641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=872641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=872641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}