Review Summary: An innocuous, if middling debut.
Lauren Spencer-Smith initially gained traction in North America as a contestant on season 18 of
American Idol. Though she bowed out at top 20, her recent surge in visibility warrants her the distinction of perhaps being the competition's most commercially successful non-winner since Chris Daughtry. She shot consecutive platinum singles "Fingers Crossed" and "Flowers" up the charts last year and soon posited herself as a potential force to be reckoned with in the realm of mainstream pop. If you've spent more than thirty seconds on one of her social media accounts, you've probably been bombarded with videos of her and other aspiring artists singing obnoxiously loud in parking lots. Coming up in the age of TikTok, she will no doubt rack up the streaming numbers on her debut LP
Mirror, but does that mean the music itself is something to write home about?
If Smith's towering cover of Pink's "What About Us" for her
Idol audition was any indication, she's got a powerful voice. As seen on album opener "Never Been In Love", she can toy with a variety of vocal flourishes. When she's not timbering in lower registers, she's utilizing a more graceful sounding alto. Lyrically, she's the next in the long line (Eilish, Rodrigo) of Taylor Swift copycats, honing in on the kind of "diaristic-in-form" songwriting that became one of Swift's trademarks (think "Tim McGraw" and "White Horse"). While I certainly can't fault these artists for adopting a Swiftian writing style, I don't believe it's always executed without a hitch. Chalk it up to young age? Maybe. But that would fly in the face of the wisdom beyond years bravado that artists like Spencer-Smith can convey. On "28", Lauren laments about being a teenage girl who's just been tossed aside in favor of a grown woman twice her age. She gives the performance 110%, adding some girlish and vulnerable textures to her voice, and the track employs some gritty pop punk vibes towards the end. But the reality of her being much older than the track's protagonist hinders her ability to slip into that role as palpably as she attempts, in my estimation at least.
Throughout the album, Lauren showcases an ear for smarter pop tendencies. On the star-studded "Fantasy" (GAYLE and Em Beihold), she trades the simplistic guitar pop that makes up the album's chassis for electronic beats and jaded dark pop affectations. All three women provide strong vocals, but I wouldn't say the track is an all-out event. On "Love is an Understatement", she exploits solid production, vocal layering and calculated, if minimalist, song structures and brings the affair to life with earnest vocals that take charge, particularly on the outro. Elsewhere, however, she opts for hyper-specific lyrical tropes you can smell coming from a mile away. "That Part" is all about the white picket fence and arch around the entrance that Lauren wants for herself. She even readily admits her feelings are clichéd, and while I don't deny for one second that her heart isn't invested in every verse, these aren't exactly treasure troves that have never been looted before. On "Bigger Person", she bemoans about having to be..well, you guessed it; the bigger person, the only one putting any effort into the relationship.
Lauren Spencer-Smith has a phenomenal voice, and a taste for interesting pop compositions. But repetitive song structures and often predictable and hackneyed songwriting holds
Mirror back from being the momentous debut it could have been. But perhaps, it still is, anyway. Smith is coming up in an era where female fronted pop music is consumed like gospel, sometimes with copious amounts of mindless sycophantism (see Taylor Swift again). It's also produced and presented with a kind of rudimentary zeal that Smith's predecessors, even young Swift herself, did not enjoy. So, suffice to say, Spencer-Smith may very well ride the wave of uncynical social media appraisal, enough so to drown out any substantial criticism of her output; she's already established herself as a TikTok and Instagram juggernaut. But again, what she's doing is clearly working from a commercial standpoint, so while I'm not uncomfortable with her having a seat at the mainstream pop table, I don't believe she'll do much to separate herself from the rest of the pack. If the formula she's adopted, be it by accident or design, proves to be commercially potent, why reinvent the wheel? I'm not saying she has to, but I hope we'll see some songwriting and creative decisions on future projects that subvert expectations and really take the pop game by storm. One thing's for sure, she's got the vocal chops for it.
