Tinashe: pop stardom as an energy you put on

Not one of the sixteen tracks apologises for the title. Tinashe's eighth album is the most electronic record she has made, and the first in years that sounds like nobody was standing over her shoulder. It opens on "Sunglasses" and never quite settles again.

She has been at this since she was a child: acting roles through her teens, a girl group called the Stunners that broke up in 2011, then three mixtapes before "2 On" and a debut album, Aquarius, that reached number 17 on the US albums chart in 2014. Nightride and Joyride followed, then she left RCA and stopped asking permission. Songs for You, 333, BB/ANG3L and Quantum Baby all came out on her own terms, and the audience caught up: "Nasty" went viral and became her first solo chart entry, and the Disco Lines remix of "No Broke Boys" took her to number 36 and to the top of the dance and electronic chart. Popstar closes the trilogy BB/ANG3L started in 2023, and it is her first major-label backing since Joyride in 2018.

It arrives through Nice Life Recording Company, Atlantic Records and her own Tinashe Music, made with a long bench of producers: Ricky Redd, Zach Sekoff, Fred Ball, Kingdom, Dave Hamelin, Machinedrum, Illangelo, Camper, kimj, nightfeelings, Couros, Casey Mattson and Andrew Wells, with Arca co-producing "Sunglasses". Tinashe has called the title an energy and a persona one can embody. The cover is a Hugo Comte close-up with stars sitting in her irises, built to hold the glamour and the surveillance in the same frame. She has said she spent six months to a year on it and still found it hard to describe. That much is true: it keeps moving.

The first half is the club. Nothing overstays: only four of the sixteen tracks clear three minutes, and "Too Easy" is done in 1:53. "Sunglasses" stacks a soft pad against granulated fragments until they fall into order, Tinashe singing "eyes straight forward I see tunnel vision" over a beat that keeps intercutting itself. "Melatonin" is the longest cut here, hyperpop instrumentals pushed into an acid house synth surge at the outro. Then the pressure drops. "Empty Stadium" and "Flashbacks" clear space for a voice that stays silvery over much softer backdrops, and the title track briefly returns to the R&B and pop blueprint she built her name on.

The singles are scattered rather than stacked at the top, and the second half keeps finding new electronics. "Nobody Wanna Dance Anymore" and "Brainrot" go hyper-digital, bubblegum basslines under robotic backing vocals, and "Overdramatic" drops a trumpet figure and one repeated line, "already know I'm the baddest".

This is for the people who stayed through the self-released years, and for anyone who takes their dance music with a side of unease. It sits close to the records Arca, Machinedrum and Kingdom have put their names on, which is convenient, since three of those names are on it. Anyone waiting on a second Aquarius should look elsewhere: the R&B here is a texture, not the frame. Play it late, loud, in one go, because the sequencing is half the argument.

What holds it back is the middle. "Overdramatic" and "The Show Must Go On" are fragments. "The Show Must Go On" is barely a hinge, and neither earns much. Worse, "Nobody Wanna Dance Anymore" and "Brainrot" run the same trick, and four tracks apart they start to sound like one idea played twice. On a record this disciplined, that is a small miss.

Four and a half, then. Popstar is not flawless and has no interest in pretending otherwise. It is the work of someone who has already been through the part of the business where other people decide what you are. Sixteen tracks, no features, one voice, and the strongest case she has ever made for the title.

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