Review Summary: Hawks told me to post something.
Lauren Spencer-Smith caught lightning in a bottle when the self-released "Fingers Crossed" became one of the surprise sleeper hits of 2022. Following a top 20 finish on
American Idol, she seemed poised to really break out among the crowded crop of female mainstream pop. It was a 'classic heartbreak anthem', where she spilled her guts out about lamenting betrayal and lost love in a way that underscored her smoky and capable voice. She no doubt has a personality as a vocalist, but she has anchored herself to an all too familiar flavor of girl pop that is perpetually inward-facing and seemingly allergic to growth or change. "Fingers Crossed" would headline her debut album
Mirror from 2023, which was an innocent, if starkly average, introduction to the young star. The newly released follow-up,
The Art Of Being A Mess, looks like it will fail to maintain any momentum she had, or set up a natural artistic progression going forward; quite conversely, it goes out of its way to
not do that.
Gen Z, which lives on TikTok and has bastardized mental illness to the point of making an aesthetic out of it, will eat this up. And that's too bad, because
The Art Of Being A Mess is pretty much "Fingers Crossed" or "Best Friend Breakup" retraced and reworked twelve times over. Just about
every song here sees Spencer-Smith either mourning the loss of, or plotting revenge against, a friend ("Bridesmaid") or romantic companion ("Parallel Universe", "Lighting the Flame") who is no longer in the picture. She rarely wholly reclaims whatever agency she's supposedly lost, and
never entertains any notion that it was or could have been an amicable split, or that she may have played a part in the relationship's demise. Spencer-Smith has one gear: victim. She is
always the one who's been wronged, and the only emotion she seems to want the listener to feel for her is sympathy. After hearing "If Karma Doesn't Get You (I Will)", which might quietly go down as one of the most problematic pop singles of its time (a morbid feat considering what Swift, Roan and Carpenter are putting out), I struggle to feel any sympathy for her.
This pervasive issue continues through songs like "Worse," where Spencer-Smith wishes the pain she's endured will come back ten-fold on her former flame, and spares no expense to enumerate every detail of strife and humiliation she hopes will be involved. The
only time she stops festering in the self-pity and starts transcending it is the closing track "Someday," where she looks forward to a time when she can love herself and be obsessed with her favorite features about her appearance ("I'll talk to myself/And say/I love the dimples on your back/I love the freckles on your nose"). On the second verse, she specifically alludes to waking up one day and not being hateful anymore, and all I can think to myself is, "well, there's no time like the present to start doing that!"
The Art Of Being A Mess should be a career ending trainwreck. It's not relatable or universal, at least not in a healthy or positive way. I don't deny this young woman is in therapy, but she badly needs some, because her talents aren't nearly enough to keep this from being the ugly and unsettling experience it results in being. The paint-by-numbers alt pop with artificial drum fills would be harmless, if uninteresting, but factoring in the bordering on
scary lyrical content takes it to grim territory. Stay the f*ck away from this one.
