video review: 'am i a girl?' by poppy

Man, I do wish I liked this a fair bit more... eh, not bad, though.

Next up, let's blow through this Vince Staples album pretty fast, let's GO!

album review: 'am i a girl?' by poppy

So here's something that concerned me surrounding Poppy for some time now, and really more than ever going into her output in 2018: how long would the satire hold?

Because let's face it, for as much as I enjoyed Poppy.Computer, there was the unanswered question surrounding what that next step could even be for her musically if she wanted to continue down this route. What worked about that album was how, on some level, it was both a dissection of the pop idol and the system that props her up, but a celebration of the craft all the same, and there was enough poise to split the difference between dark, subversive nightmare fuel and the plastic sheen of bubblegum pop. Overall, I found the album pretty excellent, even if it was taking one too many sidelong glances at a sound where Grimes had laid the groundwork - ironic, given that she's now on this new Poppy album.

But to be blunt, 2018 hasn't been great for Poppy. I'm putting aside the Titanic Sinclair/Mars Argo drama - mostly because in mid-September a judge dismissed the case and there were a lot of ugly, convoluted layers that aren't relevant to the music - but it's hard to deny the plotline of the videos has felt undercooked compared to the build-up to Poppy.Computer, and considering the YouTube Premium series never took off, I wasn't sure what more satirical territory they could target. What also raised alarm bells was the expanded team behind the project: yes, Poppy and Titanic Sinclair still had writing credits on everything, but the team was much bigger and it was hard not to see Diplo's increased involvement as a label head looking to deliver a more commercially-viable product, and I didn't want to see good pop satire diluted by the pop machine. But hey, Am I A Girl? could still work, right?

video review: 'poppy.computer' by poppy

So this was cute. Fun record too, really happy I covered this.

And now onto something just as cute in its own way... ;)

album review: 'poppy.computer' by poppy

You know, it's very tempting for me as a YouTuber to start this entire review with a Poppy spoof. The washed out aesthetic and slightly offkilter delivery, full of fragmented non sequiteurs, internet soundbites and memes, the sort of layered satire of pop stars in the age of internet culture directed by Titanic Sinclair which has blown up into something I'd need the next hour to fully deconstruct and explain. To reveal more would be to strip away some of the charm of the original videos which you should all watch, but suffice to say, for the most part, I'm a fan of Poppy as an internet personality.

But I'm not reviewing an internet personality or a meme - I have enough trouble keeping reviews monetized as it is - I'm talking about the music, of which Poppy has touched since the very beginning with covers and eventually original songs that would leverage some of the satire against a technocolor backdrop. And while I've liked her pop music, I've always had my concern that her online persona would overshadow her records, that she wouldn't quite be able to capture the subtle twists and potency of her videos. Now you have to wonder if she'd even bother to try in some cases - around this time last year she released the ambient project 3:36 (Music To Sleep To), and despite certain eerier textures it was far more abstract than her usual content - but it also felt more like a digression, not the blur of k-pop, dance punk, and electronic synthpop I expected we would get on her debut. So okay, what did I find with Poppy.Computer?