Demi Lovato is the second former Disney star in a week to release an autobiographical album, but Confident is a good deal starker than Selena Gomez’s Revival. Lovato has the voice and the backstory to ensure that her fifth album is often compelling: a teenage stint in rehab may be behind her, but – perversely for an album called Confident – her fragility surfaces more than once. While some of tracks abound with self-assurance that would do credit to Miley Cyrus, others show the uncertainty underlying the big-voiced swagger, and it’s these flaws that make the album. The blaring, Max Martin-produced title track and the hypnotic Cool for the Summer (in which she becomes the latest female pop star to reveal bi-curiosity) may be tremendous pop songs, but statements of vulnerability such as Old Ways – a reference to the temptations that encircle former addicts – and Father show a far more complex Lovato. Only a certain sheen that turns her vocals into a generic hybrid of Sia and Kelly Clarkson stops Confident from being one of the pop albums of 2015.
