Good Enough

Uffie’s Sex Dreams and Denim Jeans doesn’t pretend to be anything but noise and beats engineered to work on your body. No subtlety, no point, just sound. There’s something honest about giving up on meaning entirely and going for the dance floor.

Kele left Bloc Party to make The Boxer, and you immediately feel what’s missing. The album’s solid—hooks that stick, lyrics that try to matter, production that’s thoughtful. But Bloc Party was a four-person thing, and Kele solo is just one guy trying to carry what took four people to hold up. Not bad. Just smaller.

Sia’s We Are Born is Sia doing what Sia does, which happens to be better than almost anyone else at catchy ballads and strange electronic pop. She figured out her thing years ago and has no interest in changing. That kind of certainty is rare. That kind of stagnation is rarer still.

I put all three on back to back on an afternoon and felt nothing like excitement or discovery, just the sense of three competent people making records because they could, not because they had to. Pop music feels stalled right now. These three didn’t cause it, and they’re not going to fix it. They’re just standing in it.