Ctrl Review

The great achievement is the refusal to make herself look good. Supermodel opens the album admitting to petty revenge sex and insecurity in the same breath. The Weekend is a song about being the other woman that never resolves into either regret or defiance. Drew Barrymore is the sound of someone apologising for existing at a party. Prom and Normal Girl name the specific shape of a life she thinks she has failed to have.

Nobody had put that voice on a major R&B record with this little armour. Musically it is looser than its peers, built on live sounding guitar, drums that drag slightly and vocals stacked in imperfect harmony, and the roughness is deliberate and correct. Love Galore and Broken Clocks are the hits and they are not the best thing here. Her mother's spoken interludes tie it together. It changed the register of an entire genre and it still plays like a diary that was never meant to be published.