(Credits: Far Out / Audrey Hobert)
What is pop for? A punchy dose of good times? A bit of sun? A hit of something not so serious? If that’s the case, Aubrey Hobert should be ruling the genre.
Everything about the roll-out of Hobert’s debut album, Who’s The Clown? has felt refreshingly recentering. In an industry now so accustomed to huge marketing schemes, industry-heavy introductions to cherry-picked new stars and then a slow and carefully-crafted launching of them into the world, complete with a curated brand and a crafted image, Hobert’s hello felt like the exact opposite.
Maybe that’s because, to a lot of people, she needed no introduction. For a while now, Hobert’s name has been finding light as she co-wrote a bunch of songs on Gracie Abrams’ most recent record, The Secret Of Us. But the intrigue there was less about ‘who is this mysterious new collaborator’ and more about the fact that it was instantly obvious who she is, which is Abrams’ best friend.
So much of the success of the record came down to the candidness of it and the way Abrams leaned into phrasing that was at once both richly emotional and deeply casual, as if she was in a conversation with her friend—because she was.
That’s where Hobert’s talent lies: the ability to make her songs sound like the voice inside your head or like an unfiltered chat with a best friend. In the same way that a girl’s group chat can zap between humour and depth at hyperspeed, flitting between emotional sincerity and sheer silliness, Who’s The Clown? does that too.
The candid power of Hobert’s work was made clear the second she stepped out of Abrams’ writing room and into the spotlight with ‘Sue Me’. Within one song, she nailed it, casting off the polished pop branding or the typical considered roll-out to instead land with a home-made music video that looks like the kind of maladaptive daydream you have when you hear a good song.
Hobert is both imagining herself as the superstar while proving her potential to actually be it, as ‘Sue Me’ is the definition of an earworm with pure maximalist power that is stuck in your head from the second the introduction starts, and is permanently etched by the time the final chorus punches through.
It’s not that her band of pop is devoid of depth. Smashing an enduring misconception that the silliness of pop music equals shallowness, Hobert nails the nuance that exists in the genre. ‘Bowling Alley’ is a great example of that as she dives into social anxiety and self-isolation but with a 2000s flair to it all and another all-dancing music video casting herself in the self-made, daydreaming superstar role, boogying in her bedroom like we all do as she sings “I don’t think anyone cares if I go or not So wrong to think everyone loves me? / But doesn’t need to be around me all the time”.
Simple, conversational, relatable and endlessly catchy over the twee, noughties instrumental, isn’t this what pop is all about?
With 12 songs over 35 minutes, covering the topics of love, friendship, fucking your ex, not going back to that same ex, self-sexualisation on social media, heartache and having fun, Hobert does it all with the refreshing honesty and candidness that hyper high-production pop has been lacking for so long now as she’s a masterclass in reminding the world that perhaps, it’s not that serious.
Related Topics
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source faroutmagazine.co.uk ’
