“I don’t wanna go all natural, I want electronic,” sings Demi Lovato on her cracking ninth album, It’s Not That Deep. After a couple of rockier records, the Disney graduate’s recent embrace of frenetic EDM beats – dancing around her emotional messiness like a handbag – has sparked a minor debate online: is she trying to emulate Charli XCX’s Brat summer? Or was she (gasp!) the OG Brat? In a widely shared article for Paper magazine, Ivan Guzman argues that the former Disney Channel star grew up straddling the roles of pop princess (flashing her wholesome smile on As the Bell Rings) while making emo rock and guesting on EDM hits in “the golden days of pop girl rebellion, when Lindsay Lohan was wearing an ankle monitor and Sky Ferreira’s mugshot leaked”.
To anybody over 30, the debate sounds daft; hectic hedonism has always been a thing. While it might not always have been as socially permissible for women to live it out loud, I imagine back in neolithic times some wolfskin-clad babe will have flipped off the tribal elders, recklessly shagged a medley of the wrong people round the back of her family cave, and rubbed ash from the fire around her eyes while throwing defiant shapes to what Lovato now calls the “electric energy” of a big old thunderstorm.
The real questions are: how effectively does Lovato plug into this ecstatic-chaotic mood? And does she make it her own (even though she is working with producer Zhone, who also helped to build bops for Charli, Kylie Minogue and Kesha)? The answers are: with gusto, and yes. The more conversational Charli XCX leaned deeper into messy self-destruction (Brat had her singing about “doing a line” and “doing a key”) and cockily kicked the can of consequences down the road.
Big star, big stage Lovato, meanwhile, has over the years been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, recovered from near-fatal drug addiction and maintained sobriety since 2021. So now she’s leaning on relentless beats through which to sweat and sex it up as a means of survival. If the hooks and vocal commitment feel so steel-cored, it’s perhaps because she’s hanging onto them for dear life. It’s a truth she owns on “Sorry to Myself”, which is a tougher, more confronting song than its title implies, as the singer takes a look at her tumultuous history and powers through recovery.
Her mission statement is baked into the chorus of lead single (and opening track) “Fast”, as she insists: “I wanna go fast, I wanna go hard.” The energised house track sees Lovato re-harnessing some of the upbeat energy of 2015 hit “Cool for the Summer”, only now she rides it with confidence and control. The pace picks up with the excellent “Here All Night”, in which the (newly married) singer bops through a breakup. Glossy, rap-sung verses describe a chemistry in which the couple could “make any ordinary location erotic” before Lovato throws her determined lungs into a chorus about “begging for the bass ’til it’s hitting me right…/ DJ’s working late, she’s helping me try to get over you.” Things get enjoyably wonkier on “Frequency” with its repeated chant to “f*** up the vibe!” and neon scrawls of synth. The winkingly raunchy “Kiss” twists sweet and sour synths while Lovato pouts: “I use my tongue luh-luh-luh-luh like this.”
There’s nothing too original or experimental going on here (that’s more Charli’s bag.) But there doesn’t need to be. Zhone (a former high school teacher) keeps things tight and disciplined across the 11-track set, only slowing down for the final two songs. Closer “Ghost” is a full-on belter of a power ballad that layers Lovato’s rich, emotive vocals to create a dichotomy between softness and vulnerability, strength and determination. There’s a lot of human heart pumping beneath the bangers here. Be prepared for your mascara/fire-pit kohl to get smudgy. Because It’s Not That Deep actually sounds like the work of a woman who’s done some serious digging in order to party this hard.
