Lover Review

The good songs here are very good. Cruel Summer is a superb piece of pop that took five years and a stadium tour to be recognised as the single it always was. The title track is a genuinely lovely waltz that trusts a small arrangement. Cornelia Street and Death by a Thousand Cuts are the best writing on the record. Daylight closes it with real warmth. The rest is the problem.

ME! is the worst single she has released, You Need to Calm Down is a well meaning song that ages by the month, and London Boy and The Man both state a thesis rather than dramatise one. At eighteen tracks and over an hour the album has no shape at all, and the pastel production applies the same soft palette to everything so that the strong songs and the sketches sit at the same volume. Her most uneven record, and a reminder that unlimited freedom is not always a gift.