Three years after the release of her debut, Speak Your Mind, Anne-Marie’s sophomore follow-up, Therapy, has been well worth the wait. And, considering Anne-Marie already established her career based on waiting for when the time felt right (deliberately eschewing a full-fledged album until she could fine-tune her talent), it’s no surprise that her second record has turned out as well as it has.
From the second it opens with the vengeful bop that is “x2,” Anne-Marie has us immediately locked in her trance. But for those hoping that she might actually have it within herself to be so spiteful in her current incarnation, don’t get too excited. For, as she stated of the song’s origins and its need to open the album, “This is a revenge song. When we were in the studio, I wanted to write about doing someone worse off than what they did to you, which is literally what I grew up being like. I was Googling people’s stories about what they’ve done to their exes—it was so fun just seeing the crazy shit people had done. Looking back, I think it shows that this is who I used to be and I’m working to make myself better. So I knew it needed to go first.” Damn, that just doesn’t make for good drama.
In any case, what needed to go second is “Don’t Play” featuring KSI and Digital Farm Animals, a nice thematic tie-in with regard to the kind of feelings that can lead to the ones presented on “x2.” Like Backstreet Boys before her said (in the form of: “Quit playing games with my heart”), Anne-Marie declares, “Don’t play games/Don’t play games with my heart.” She then takes a more Madonna on “Sorry” lyrical tack by continuing, “Yeah, I think I’ve seen it all before/Seen it, seen it all before, ah/Everything you’re sayin’/Yeah, I think I’ve heard it all before/Yeah, heard it all before.” As the lackadaisical yet upbeat rhythm punctuates the urgency of the song’s message, Anne-Marie also warns, “If you don’t give me your time/Then I ain’t givin’ you mine.” It’s all part of the expected motif of an album called Therapy, highlighting just how important one’s own well-being is over trying to suppress their true emotions solely to bend to the whims of others. And all in the false hope that they might give you the emotional return you’re putting out.
That sense of newfound empowerment appears on the following track. And yes, it’s been long overdue for someone to sample Lumidee’s 2003 hit “Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh)” (itself a sample of Dirt McGirt and Nicole Wray’s “Welcome Home,” as well as Steven “Lenky” Marsden’s Diwali riddim). So thankfully, Anne-Marie—in conjunction with Little Mix—has brought us “Kiss My (Uh Oh)” in time for the summer, which interpolates this specific beat and vocal sound into the song’s triumphant “I’m so over you” lyrical mantra. And yes, “uh oh” is obviously meant to substitute the word “arse.” Complaining of the sort of man who only shows interest when she seems unattainable, Anne-Marie again conjures Madonna vibes (via the “Miles Away” lyrics, “You always love me more, miles away”) as she demands, “Why you only lo-o-ove me when I’m walkin’ away?/Only ever wa-a-ant me when I don’t wanna stay?/Love the feeling, hittin’ different/I’m not ever looking back/While I’m leaving, see you staring/Go ahead boy, you can kiss my—” And that’s when the “uh oh” comes into play. Self-censorship and all.
The upbeat tempo continues on “Who I Am,” an anthem of self-acceptance that, once again, stresses the significance of the album’s title. Here, the lyrics channel Britney Spears’ declarations on “What U See (Is What U Get)” as Anne-Marie asserts, “‘Cause you can love me or hate me/Nothing’s gonna change me/Ain’t no time to play pretend (no, no)/What you see is what you get/‘Cause that’s just who I am/If you don’t like it, I don’t give a damn.” At thirty years old, she’s come too far and endured too much to feel otherwise, wanting to impart this feeling of self-assurance onto her listeners as well.
Slowing the pace down slightly on “Our Song” featuring Niall Horan, the tempo is befitting of a tragic and bittersweet love song (and so, naturally, a breakup song). Detailing the issues that go hand in hand with getting over someone you once loved, the lyrics speak from both people’s perspectives in the relationship as they think they’re fine most days (namely, “Sunday mornings, in my own bedsheets” or “own white tee”). That is, until the radio plays their song—and yes, some youths still do actually listen to the radio. Even if what’s really meant by that is some sort of algorithmic playlist. Like another signature duet—Gotye and Kimber’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” (de facto Charlie Puth and Selena Gomez’s “We Don’t Talk Anymore”)—this lament also ruminates on no longer being close to the person you once believed you would always be closest to. Thus, the duo sings in melancholic unison, “Just when I think you’re gone, hear our song on the radio/Just like that, takes me back to the places we used to go/And I’ve been tryin’ but I just can’t fight it/When I hear it, I just can’t stop smiling/I remember you’re gone, baby, it’s just the song on the radio that we used to know.” Ah, still further proof that the only sense more powerful than the olfactory is the auditory.
Keeping the thread of nostalgia and yearning going, “Way Too Long” featuring Nathan Dawe (who also co-produced) and MoStack is a bemoaning elegy that anyone in a long-distance relationship can certainly understand. But, just as it was in “Our Song,” it also speaks to how the person you cared about most can suddenly become “nothing,” as evidenced in the lyric, “It’s funny how I loved you/Then suddenly you’re nothin’ but a song.” Later on, Anne-Marie highlights yet again just what a summer record this is by wistfully remarking, “Summer in the back of your car/Singin’ Drake in the dark/Oh, it’s been too long/I can’t help but think about you/And the way that it was/Baby, I should let go of us, oh.” And so, like Lana Del Rey on “Summertime Sadness,” she reminds just how lugubrious one can feel during this season despite its promise of “levity.”
The next number, “Breathing” (easily differentiated from Ariana Grande’s “Breathin’” and even Anne-Marie’s own “Breathing Fire”), offers a controlled, midtempo pace that brings up the setting of the car again as Anne-Marie mentions in the opening verse, “I’m sittin’ in the seat of your car/Your hand on my thigh, yes, I think I’m alright, babe/And now you’re here, don’t ever go far.” Filled with exuberance thanks to the high of love—the supposed panacea that makes people think they could never need therapy again (until they do)—Anne-Marie feels untouchable as she lets her happiness crescendo in the chorus with, “‘Cause now I’m in love, can you believe it?/That being in love was just as easy as breathing.” Alas, sometimes, as we all know, that kind of air supply can get quickly cut off. And yet, the very specific callout to the word/notion of “breathing” indicates that Anne-Marie is also aware of the practice’s value as a means to achieve calm in the face of panic and anxiety (you know: “and iiiiiin, and ouuuuuttttt”).
One-upping The Smiths (she is British, after all) with her own track called “Unlovable” featuring Rudimental, this song is in contrast to the previous one in that it’s far more visceral. Not afraid to address the very sentiments we have all felt at one time or another (or perhaps all the time, really), Anne-Marie’s heart-wrenching chorus dares to ask, “Who could love me? Could anybody love me at all? So used to being lonely/Could anybody love me at all?” Nonetheless, she clings to the hope that there’s someone out there for her (perhaps she has some sort of Practical Magic trick up her sleeve). Which is why she adds, “Still I’m looking for the one to take me as I am/I’m a broken mess, I must confess that late at night/I wonder/Is there anybody out there?”
Changing tack again to return to the theme of self-acceptance that was certainly less present on “Unlovable,” “Beautiful” definitely not only replicates what Christina Aguilera was saying in her own song of the same name, but also a previous Anne-Marie hit from Speak Your Mind, “Perfect.” This redux is not quite so annoying, however, as thin, blonde Anne-Marie doesn’t say such things as, “I eat my body weight in chocolate and ice cream” (uh huh, sure) to drive home her point about how okay she is with herself, therefore everyone else should be too. Rather, with the co-writing help of Ed Sheeran (his musical sound, in fact, is all over this cheeseball ditty) and yes, Max Martin, she pronounces, “We are beautiful, all of us/‘Cause we got something natural/It’s a part of us/Darling when they put you down like that/Yeah, you can reply right back/We are beautiful, yeah I know, I know, we are.” Mmm…it would be difficult to tell that to a certain orange ex-president. Oh wait, he already tells himself that every second.
While “Tell Your Girlfriend” might have technically similar vibes to Robyn’s “Call Your Girlfriend” in terms of blowing up a dude’s spot about his lack of genuine care for his current girlfriend as revealed by, you know, his cheating, it is the former that’s far more severe. And, after all, Anne-Marie, as the “other woman” in the permutation isn’t complicit in the affair like Robyn is. Picking up where the tone of “x2” left off, she harshly warns, “You always call when you’re lonely/I never answer your texts/Ooh boy, you’re gonna be sorry/When I show all the things that you said.” Painting the picture of the classic fuckboy, Anne-Marie relishes singing the chorus, “I’m gonna tell your girlfriend/What a liar you are/She’s gonna know your secret/It will be my pleasure/How many, how many times do I say no/Before I’m gonna have to go and tell your girlfriend?”
This leads seamlessly into “Better Not Together,” which could just as easily be directed at that aforementioned girlfriend Anne-Marie was going to help see the light. It also appears to be a song destined to soundtrack the inevitable demise of Bennifer 2.0 as Anne-Marie bewails, “No, I don’t wanna fight/Don’t wanna say goodbye/When will we realize we’re better not together?/Been here a thousand times/Least we can say we triеd/‘Cause neither of us wanna be alone.” That’s clearly true of J. Lo, but anyway, Anne-Marie continues, “We’re losing grip, but we can’t let go I don’t wanna fight, it’s time to say goodbye/We need to realize we’re better not together.”
The coda to the standard edition of the album is the eponymous “Therapy.” Upbeat and mournful at the same time (sort of the Anne-Marie signature), our conflicted chanteuse realizes—in a fitting stream of consciousness way—that none of the distractions she’s engaged to numb herself can seem to keep her psychological issues at bay. Thus, she admits, “I thought love was the answer to all of my problems/And kissing your lips was the key/All these tattoos and dancing/Distractions ain’t working for me/So I think that maybe I just need therapy.” Admission is the first part, as they say, to a healthy new beginning. Which is why it’s so appropriate that Anne-Marie would conclude the record with this; a final call not to arms, but to the couch.
