Every album released comes freighted with hope, this one more than most. Mabel is one of the year’s hottest breakout acts, having gone from box-fresh to bona fide phenomenon in the space of two years.
One minute, she had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-her visual cameo in the video for Skepta’s magisterial Shutdown (2015). The next, she’d had her own hit, 2017’s Finders Keepers. Then came more lighter fluid on her sizzle: collaborations with rapper Not3s – My Lover and Fine Line – which inflamed curiosity online thanks to the pair’s on-screen chemistry. Songs are all well and good, but plotlines really keep the public’s attention. Whatever the truth, Mabel’s hook-up with her fellow up’n’coming Londoner worked because of the warmth coming off the pair, so different from pop’s prevailing cut-throat lust-vibes.
Mabel, though, is not just any 23-year-old warbler from west London; she is an artist who comes with pedigree and, you suspect, pragmatism. She is the daughter of illustrious parents: Swedish-born pop outlier Neneh Cherry and producer Cameron McVey, two creatives with no shortage of cool. Cherry comes from jazz royalty (her stepfather was trumpeter Don Cherry) and her first band, Rip Rig and Panic, fused post-punk with skronk; her 1989 solo hit single Buffalo Stance was all bullish and hip-hop in its suspicion of money and its demand for “sweetness”. McVey senior, meanwhile, produced Massive Attack’s seminal Blue Lines.
There is no reason anyone should follow in their parents’ footsteps. Mabel McVey doesn’t. Her official debut studio album eschews the left-field artiness in her lineage. It also misplaces the charm of her own earlier releases. Despite being packed with bangers, High Expectations is not a little frustrating, reigniting an old question: by what criteria should we judge success?
Last year, Jorja Smith provided a template for how a self-possessed British voice can make internationally recognised mainstream music that’s both streetwise and vulnerable. Anyone expecting innovative R&B from Mabel will be disappointed.
There’s plenty of big-trainered sass on High Expectations, but it’s the canned stuff that goes “I was unruly when you met me, you just have to accept it”, as per Mabel’s recent single, Bad Behaviour. You’re reminded of Lauryn Hill’s advice in Doo Wop (That Thing), all those years ago, but evergreen: “Don’t be hard rock when you really are a gem.”
If chart hits and playlist ubiquity are the metrics, then Mabel has got High Expectations exactly right. The songs that have preceded this 14-track album are currently accreting streams hand over fist. Don’t Call Me Up – in which Mabel declares herself over her former lover – has more than 101m YouTube views and over 250m plays on Spotify. Just out, the video for Bad Behaviour is closing in on 1.5m views on YouTube.
None of these tunes lacks lustre. Don’t Call Me Up holds up well in pop’s kiss-off subgenre (Icona Pop’s I Don’t Care, Dua Lipa’s IDGAF). Bad Behaviour nags very nicely in the ear, bang on trend in its admixture of US R&B and diffuse Caribbean stylings.
There’s no shortage of hits-in-waiting on this tracklisting either. FML might pose problems as a single release (its chorus is “fuck my life”), but you couldn’t imagine such a catchy trap-pop bagatelle failing.
But with the exception of OK (Anxiety Anthem), produced unmemorably by the usually excellent MNEK, these 14 tunes could have been made by anyone with a well-oiled larynx. Even as Mabel’s voice stands proudly without Auto-Tune, High Expectations is just disappointingly all right, lacking any playfulness, or top spin, or a sense of who Mabel is. Her own emotional truths seem scarce. OK, which probes Mabel’s anxiety, presents a series of worn phrases for lyrics, the production bereft of either nerve-jangle or succour.
Ultimately, High Expectations trades in well-appointed, British-tilting genericness that ticks Spotify playlist boxes, promising party vibes and availability, then wallowing in non-specific romantic dismay. The prospect of lots of hot sex is no bad thing, but songs about it abound; you could imagine any one of pop’s reigning female front-people being very grateful to have bagged Mad Love from a bidding round: Dua, Rita, Ariana. Here, as everywhere, Rihanna’s husky, catch-in-the-throat R&B is the model: fine when she does it, just overdone when everyone from Anne-Marie to Zara Larsson affects the same sexpot weariness.
Rewind, and Mabel had a personality. Thinking of You (2016) channelled Jessie Ware. Mabel showed some backbone too, with lyrics that seemed to have been written by a sentient human, not an automated come-hither generator. Bedroom, back in May 2017, found Mabel fuming: “I broke your guitar up against your television and I smashed every glass that you had in your kitchen.”
But however classy Jessie Ware is, she has not had massive worldwide hits to date. The road on which sweet-natured, retro-tinged emotional soul-pop runs is short. The stuff made from trap beats, tropical breezes and a little lubriciousness opens up a vast highway. And that’s the road Mabel is travelling.
