Blondie and the Beat

Tove Lo’s latest album Blue Lips (Lady Wood Pt. 2) is her best collection yet. Keeping her refined edgy style with pixie pop vocals, the “Stay High” singer has finally found a sound that’s distinctly her own. A little more band-based at times, while still upbeat, pop, with a modern mix of alt/electro. She wraps up all of these sounds together, dumps glitter on it, and launches it into your eardrums for consumption.But, we hear more emotion on this album than we’ve heard in the past from Tove. “Bad Days” is about nostalgia and self worth. “you used to love me on my bad days, when the sun wouldn’t come out” she sings right at the top of the gorgeous track. “Days” is the most beautiful I’ve ever heard Tove Lo. “Cycles” follows suit with a slightly more upbeat feel reminiscing about life and the cyclical ways we become stuck; “I’m in a cycle, yeah I admit it, how can I change it when I don’t know that I’m in it.” A song so relatable, it hurts.

This Sweden native worked with pop mastermind Max Martin to achieve a curated sound she knew fans would drool over. Tove talks her emotional and sexual rawness on the album with TIME magazine saying, “It’s just being a woman, you end up having to defend yourself if you choose to sing about things that aren’t seen as a good example. But it doesn’t really matter to me if people don’t agree with it.”

But Tove has proved time and time again that she is more than her sex. Always standing up for women’s issues to fight for equality amongst the sexes. And she does it all with her boobs out (hence disco tits) which was a nickname her boyfriend gave her once at Coachella.

Blue Lips’ sound is modern yet distinctly vintage. Hit single “Disco Tits” triggered a discussion around the comeback of 70’s sounds into modern pop. A pulsing sex-fueled track you can’t help but swing your hips to, the beat is almost too good to be true. “I’m sweat from head to toe, I’m wet through all my clothes.” You either love it or hate it – there’s no inbetween. “Bitches” follows suit; another ballsy track with explicit sexualized lyrics. Each song packs a different type of punch.

It’s easy to get lost in the shuffle of pop, but every now and then there’s an album that you can always go back to and sing every word; that’s Blue Lips.