Lady Wood - Review
Sex and drugs are a fact of life for Tove Lo. Ones that she won’t lie about. You can fault her for many things, but her honesty is not one of them. And in Lady wood, she carries this candor over a haze of smooth pop beats. She owns everything about herself, every flaw and imperfection, which brings an interesting side to pop that we don’t normally get to see. Her imperfections are real and she is very imperfect, as compared to a lot of the more plastic imperfections of many pop stars. She’s messed up, but stronger for it. Lady Wood is about owning the sex and drugs lifestyle that she has found herself living, with a candor that would make the vanilla pop of Taylor Swift blush.
On the title track “Lady Wood”, she opens up about her desire, brazenly singing, “I don’t care what people say about you, they say the same about me… Dirty on the inside, damaged goods with nothing but pride, yeah you give me wood, give me lady wood.” It’s as explicit as of a discussion of sexual desire that you will find anywhere, and instead of being concealed in a guise of desire in the name of love like more mainstream pop music, she simply wants her partner. It’s physical desire and brutal honesty paired together, but “we give zero fucks about it.”
To hell with the prudes, Tove Lo is a sexually liberated woman, who just might have a bit of a drug problem. She weaves a tale of a woman inside of the club scene, music hazed by a thick layer of drugs as her voice dreamily dances through it, uninhibited in her actions. It’s refreshingly brazen, devil may care pop that signifies what I really like about the genre. Unfortunately, it is those same beats that hold her back, keeping her tied to a more traditional pop sound that she seems aching to break out of. She’s held back by her music here, and when it manages to shine through, it was amazing, I just wish she could have spread her wings much further, lifted by her own cloud of fairy dust.
3/5
Tracklist:
1. Fairy Dust (Chapter I)
2. Influence (Feat. Wiz Khalifa)
3. Lady Wood
4. True Disaster
5. Cool Girl
6. Vibes (Feat. Joe Janiak)
7. Fire Fade (Chapter II)
8. Don’t Talk About It
9. Imaginary Friend
10. Keep it Simple
11. Flashes
12. WTF Is Love
Our review code can be found here for information on how we write and score our reviews. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or concerns, please contact us at contact@deathofthecritic.com
_____________________________________________
Tom has been writing about media since he was a senior in high school. He likes long walks on the beach, dark liquor, and when characters reload guns in action movies.
You Might Also Like:
Sit Still, Look Pretty - ReviewHERE - Review
The Healing Component - Review
_____________________________________________