April 20, Wild Things by Ladyhawke

Genre: Pop
Year: 2016
Runtime: 37:48
Total tracks: 11
Songs you might know:
– “A Love Song”
– “Wild Things”

My prior relationship with this album: I first discovered Ladyhawke/Wild Things because several songs were on rotation at the store where I used to work. The one that really sold me was “Golden Girl.” Upbeat and catchy, I was always excited when it came on at work, and I often found myself singing it in my head after hours. After Shazam informed me of who it is, I listened to the whole album a year or two back. It’s been one I’ve always had fun returning to since.

My impressions this time around: Lately I’ve been craving music that is pop, but not “popular” if that makes sense, and Wild Things does a great job of satisfying that. I’ve written about it previously in my post about Albums to Listen To Instead Of Taylor Swift’s Reputation and I would stand by everything I said in that post. Both musically and lyrically, this album is incredibly similar to Taylor’s post-2014 stuff, but the album has a wonderful consistency that Taylor’s albums don’t.

One thing I will say is that I don’t think this is the sort of album the becomes new and exciting again after you’ve taken a break from it for a few months. The songs that were my favorites are still my favorites (“A Love Song,” “Golden Girl,” “Wonderland,”) Maybe one could argue that “Chills” is worthy of being a favorite when I never considered it one in the past? The songs that are good are still good. Nothing is a dud.

And none of that is a bad thing. It’s a real achievement to put out 11 songs that I can listen to without having an “oh shit, this song again?” moment. However, I can see how this could be an album that bores people after several listens. It’s not all that different from other artists who dabble with the same sound. Listening to this album makes me feel the way I would after eating a good cheeseburger. I’m satisfied, I’m happy, but I’m not necessarily compelled to shout from the rooftops about how special my experience was.

Who would enjoy it? People who like mainstream pop music that are also easily bored with the mainstream pop music that the radio has already played 10 million times.