This post was updated Oct. 28 at 8:50 p.m.
Dance music can be as deep as the artist wants it to be – a truth Demi Lovato seems aware of.
Lovato’s ninth studio album, “It’s Not That Deep,” released Friday, marking the pop star’s first LP of new material since 2022’s rock-leaning “HOLY FVCK.” With 11 tracks – seven of which are less than three minutes long – spanning just over 32 minutes of music, “It’s Not That Deep” is also the singer-songwriter’s shortest album to date. The LP provides several catchy and worthwhile tunes in spite of its brevity, even if the final product amounts to a collection of tracks that is more imitative of Lovato’s pop contemporaries than an original addition to the broader dance genre.
The album kicks off with its lead single, “Fast,” which was released in August and features rave-ready synths reminiscent of a David Guetta production. Despite the momentum of its title, the verses drag a bit for an opening track, and Lovato’s vocals sound a bit hushed and more heavily processed than normal. “Fast” encapsulates the album’s mission statement – to provide a set of fun, catchy songs – but is simultaneously more faceless than the singer’s past work, as if it could have been easily performed by a pop peer such as Bebe Rexha or Addison Rae.
[Related: Album review: Mariah Carey’s ‘Here For It All’ may not be all we want, but we’re still obsessed]
The second single, “Here All Night,” offers a bit more verve with cheerful synths that evoke the chimes and horns of a carnival ride or amusement park. Lovato’s vocals are more assertive and powerful, capturing the feistiness displayed on past hits such as “Heart Attack” and “Sorry Not Sorry,” complementing the song’s message of dancing through a heartbreak. This elastic earworm seems tailor-made for both the club and radio, complete with Lovato’s melismatic flourishes that add a bit more character to otherwise drab lines such as, “To get over you / I’ll be here all night.”
The finest number on the entire project is the sixth track, “Little Bit,” which happens to feature some of the best-executed lyrics on the album. There is nothing inherently remarkable about the playful line, “Maybe we’re one and done, or maybe I’ll hit it twice,” but Lovato sings the words with the appropriate blend of silliness and seductiveness to sell the vibe over an infectious beat. Given the dance floor’s rich history of being a haven for expressing carnal passion and finding love, Lovato’s flirtatiousness makes “Little Bit” a sinfully enjoyable, albeit predictable, bop.
In addition to these generic but likable tunes, a curious overarching trend across the album is the sonic references – deliberate or not – to Charli xcx’s “BRAT.” For example, the production of the third track, “Frequency,” elicits the vibes of Charli xcx’s “365,” while including a burst of profanity that feels unnecessary and performative. Even more striking is the third single, “Kiss,” which is a raucously fun but basic replication of “Guess featuring billie eilish” down to its delivery of lines such as, “It’s not that deep unless you want it to be.” While it is understandable that Lovato might want to make music with influences of “BRAT” – an album that won three Grammys and was the most acclaimed LP of 2024 – her foray into hyperpop appears to be a derivative oversimplification of a quirkier lane in the pop zeitgeist where Charli xcx excels.
[Related: Album review: Mitch Rowland contrasts musical styles in new album ‘Whistling Pie’]
A couple of other songs feature some bizarre choices, such as the abrupt ending of “Sorry To Myself” and overly peppy yelping on the chorus of “Say It.” That said, the biggest clunkers on the album are “Before I Knew You” and “Ghost,” which feel nonsensically stapled onto the closing stretch of the LP without any level of cohesion to the nine tracks that came before. The former is a forgettable midtempo cut that attempts to curate a wistful, reflective energy without enough lyrical substance to stand out. The latter is a proper ballad in line with Lovato’s earlier material in 2011’s “Unbroken,” complete with synthetic whistles and warbles, but its existence on this track list impedes the artist from committing to the vision of a nonstop dance record.
A regrettable misconception among some music listeners is that dance music is less artistically valuable or thematically complex than more acoustic or rock-centric genres. Unfortunately, it is music like the songs found on “It’s Not That Deep” that validates these stereotypes, as the material is often too simple and trite to truly move the listener to dance or to feel any degree of emotional resonance. At other times, however, dance music is meant to be so straightforward it can provide listeners with readily accessible escapism. On this front, Lovato succeeds even if the album does not play to their strengths quite like the punk and rock of “HOLY FVCK” did.
True to its title, “It’s Not That Deep” gives listeners some groovy jams without bringing a more complex message to the party.
Comments are closed.