Conceited

There is a brittleness to the self-examination here that most songwriters don't risk. Lola Young builds this track around an almost confrontational intimacy — the production is stripped and angular, guitar that feels like it's being held at odd angles, rhythm that stutters slightly as though the song itself is uncertain of its footing. Her voice is a remarkable thing: husky, slightly chafed, capable of shifting between girlish vulnerability and a kind of weary knowingness within a single phrase. The subject is vanity's shadow side — not the triumphant kind but the defensive kind, the way people construct sharp edges around themselves to avoid being the first one hurt. Lyrically it's a confession disguised as an accusation, or possibly the other way around. It belongs to the wave of young British women — many of them emerging from the same scene as Arlo Parks, Celeste, or Raye — who are reintroducing emotional rawness to pop without the theatrical production usually deployed to amplify it. The nakedness is the point. You'd listen to this when you're being honest with yourself in a way you haven't quite been able to say out loud yet, turning over a behavior pattern you recognize but aren't proud of.