Selena Gomez hit all the usual notes in the run-up to “Revival,” the first album this former Disney Channel star has made outside the House of Mouse.
There was a sexed-up lead single, “Good for You,” with a roguish guest verse from rapper ASAP Rocky. There was the song’s music video, in which Gomez writhes on a sofa before jumping in the shower. And there were comments in interviews about her hard-won liberation from the repressive constraints of the Disney machine.
So far, so Miley.
Yet that’s where Gomez, 23, stopped following the script for a tween idol looking to grow up in public. Far from a scorched-earth rebranding a la Cyrus’ 2013 raunchfest “Bangerz,” “Revival” turns out to be surprisingly modest, from its midtempo pacing to its thoughtful introspection.
Even “Good for You,” which seemed to presage an album long on breathy bedroom talk, is less about titillation than female solidarity, she told Billboard in a cover story that also revealed she’d recently entered rehab not for addiction but for treatment of lupus.
Weeks after Cyrus released an unlistenable, indulgent freak-out with the Flaming Lips, “Revival” feels almost radical in its judiciousness.
Am I making Gomez sound like Natalie Merchant? OK, hold up.
Collaborating with Top 40 regulars like Benny Blanco, Stargate and the Swedish duo Mattman & Robin (who also worked on “1989” by Gomez’s pal Taylor Swift), the singer juices her once-edgeless music with some grabby textures, as in the throbbing dance cut “Body Heat” and “Me & the Rhythm,” an ’80s-flavored jam about how “everybody wants to be touched.”
Source:http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-selena-gomez-revival-review-20151009-story.html
No comments:
Post a Comment