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Rae’s voice skips and twirls through relationships in bloom, but it’s when she veers from the fully formed worlds in her storytelling to broad observations that the album falters. The misty-eyed haze lifts on songs like “Call Me When You Get This,” “Breathless,” and “I’d Like To,” which are filled with promise and tentative new beginnings. Rae projects the persona of someone who is weathered and resigned, a hopeless romantic who leaned further into love even as the hurt made her “cry so much I had to leave.” Where do you put the love? A part of that answer lies in “ Choux Pastry Heart,” where heartache folds into itself and becomes something that moves as you do. “Ooo, love, I’m a fool to believe in you/’Cause I don’t know/No, I don’t know/Anymore.” A heartbreak is painful, but sometimes what hurts most is not knowing what comes after the split. “Used to feel like May/I used to hear those violins playing our strings like a symphony,” she croons, sounding like a blues veteran who’s been through the ringer. This was the track that catapulted Rae to fame, and the song that continues to be the most beloved and well-known in her oeuvre, but there are other equally captivating and detailed songs on her debut, including the solemn “ Till It Happens to You.” In contrast to the rest of the album, this track wallows in moody reflection as she ponders a relationship broken beyond repair. Rae once again displayed her knack for adding color and texture to her universe, recalling a summer that “came like cinnamon,” and which met travellers dressed in “sapphire and faded jeans.” The smash hit didn’t just suggest stepping back and unplugging it lightly commanded that listeners dwell in simple pleasures for their own spiritual health. Frolicking through fields and chasing ribbons, Rae was at its center, telling Black women it was not only worth it to escape, but that it was a kind of bliss, attainable for a sisterhood or a party of one. “ Put Your Records On,” with its sun-kissed biking girls and endless, tree-lined roads, made a lullaby out of wellness long before it became a billion-dollar industry. The video, with its soft close-ups of Rae’s face interspersed with clips of a lapping river and bucolic forest, shows that often when falling, the only thing that can bring you down to earth is nature, a gift more overwhelming than your own growing emotions. If the character Janie from Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God had a soundtrack for her early days loving and seducing Tea Cake-the man she’d later run away with-it would be this song. “Just like a song in my heart/Just like oil on my hands,” she sings, evoking the inexplicable bliss of attraction while making tangible love’s capacity to leave marks on our bodies.
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The sparse strings of lead single “ Like a Star” weave in effortlessly as Rae confesses what new love has done to her. With 12 smooth jams that do double time as ballads depending on the mood, the album showcased Rae not only as a vocalist, but also as an enviably candid writer.