The release of I Luv It, the first single from Camila Cabello’s fourth solo album, brought with it something new for the 27-year-old singer: a degree of musical controversy. Ever since her 2017 single Havana sold a staggering 10m copies in the US alone, Cabello has made her way dealing in pleasantly undemanding, low-risk Latin-American pop, the kind of thing that makes its way onto the playlists at Radio 2 as easily as it does Radio 1. Something of the eager-to-please TV talent show contestant she had once been – Cabello first found fame as part of US X Factor semi-finalist girl band Fifth Harmony – seemed to cling to her: her lyrics contained no swearing, she told one US journalist in 2019, because she wanted to be “a good example for younger girls”.

I Luv It was audibly different: a brief burst of wilfully repetitious and tinny-sounding hyperpop that staggered along the line that separates insistent from annoying. Moreover, some people suggested it bore rather too much resemblance to Charli xcx’s 2017 single I Got It, although if you’re playing spot the influence, the offending chorus also seems to have a dash of Ariana Grande’s No Tears Left to Cry in its DNA. Among said voices was that of Charli xcx herself, who posted a parody of Cabello’s announcement video to TikTok, with I Got It replacing I Luv It on the soundtrack: cue the ever-delightful sound of diehard fans arguing with each other online.

But perhaps a bit of controversy is exactly what Cabello is going for this time around. Clearly a dramatic rethink has taken place, possibly occasioned by the relatively sluggish sales of her last album Familia. You search C,XOXO in vain for a gooey ballad along the lines of 2019’s Señorita, her multi-platinum duet with then-boyfriend Shawn Mendes (incidentally co-written by Charli xcx). The closest you come is either the piano-led B.O.A.T. or minimally closer June Gloom, which seems to telegraph the influence of Lana Del Rey in its very title. But the album’s signature sound is skeletal and sketchy: a solitary synth or piano line and the odd sample over a beat, songs that either feel melodically vaporous, such as Chanel No.5, or which alight on a hook then absolutely hammer it into the ground through repetition, as on I Luv It or Dream-Girls. The business of being a good example for younger girls is apparently no longer foremost in her mind: it’s all “Shawty’s the shit” this and “I guess I’ll fuck around” that, and “Does she get this wet for you, baby?” the other. Cabello’s vocals, which traditionally also carry something of The X Factor about them – big on bring-the-audience-to-their-feet emoting and showy runs – have been largely transformed into a mush-mouthed hip-hop-inspired delivery, given an extra sheen of incomprehensibility by the trowelling-on of AutoTune.

In the context of Cabello’s oeuvre, this is all pretty radical to the point of being occasionally baffling. C,XOXO has been subject to some genuinely curious decisions. A track featuring Drake called Hot Uptown features the album’s strongest tune, but it’s immediately followed by Uuugly, another Drake collaboration on which Cabello is almost entirely absent: she contributes a grand total of two words of harmonies and a single line of ghostly backing vocals. She isn’t present at all on Pink XOXO, a brief interlude featuring PinkPantheress that, given the brevity of PinkPantheress’s own work, just sounds like a PinkPantheress track dumped in the middle of someone else’s album. It’s actually pretty good, with a sweetly appealing melody, but it also feels odd and out of place: what is it doing here?

Much as you want to applaud an artist for taking risks in the risk-averse world of mainstream 21st-century pop, you find yourself asking a similar question of Cabello herself. She often sounds slightly uncomfortable, as if she’s speculatively trying on an outfit that doesn’t quite suit her. The monotonal rap vocal on Twentysomethings seems to be proceeding at a pace slightly too fast for her to keep up with: you keep thinking she’s going to fall out of time, making listening to it a slightly more nerve-racking experience than one suspects it’s meant to be. When Lil Nas X makes a cameo appearance on He Knows, he simultaneously transforms and takes over the track completely: there’s an assurance and swagger to his performance that’s noticeably lacking in the main attraction. Cabello often feels like a guest on her own album, drifting through songs too slender to stamp her own identity on, not entirely on board with a dramatic musical shift: an artist who appears to have been interior-decorated out of house and home.

This week Alexis listened to

Zsela – Lily of the Nile
Zsela’s debut album, Big For You, is a treat – filled with songs like Lily of the Nile that are offbeat and left-of-centre in a way that feels entirely unforced and natural.