Better Things’ Finale Isn’t Just the End of the Show.Turning Red Is a Love Letter to Fandom-With One Huge Blind Spot.
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The Biggest Thing That’s Changed With Sex on TV Even album-closer “Am I Dreaming?” with Cyrus-who picks up the family tradition here after dad Billy Ray’s well-known remix spot on “Old Town Road”-ends on an ambiguous and ominous note of farewell rather than the upbeat healing-and-recovery of a conventional pop album arc. Those armfuls of burdens come up toward the end of the strong second track, “Dead Right Now,” then dominate the second half, in songs like “Tales of Dominica,” “Void,” and “Sun Goes Down” (“Always thinkin’, Why my lips so big?/ Was I too dark? Can they sense my fears?/ These gay thoughts would always haunt me/ I prayed God would take it from me”). More substantially, while it predictably dwells on proving his doubters wrong (an audio clip of multiple award announcements on the track “Dont Want It” is an unnecessary intrusion), the album’s primary concerns are much more vulnerable: his longing for love and his reckoning with the pain, including suicidal ideation, he endured growing up as a closeted Black Southerner in a churchgoing family with a mother dealing with drug addiction.
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On “Life After Salem” and the enchanting “Lost in the Citadel,” that extends to full emo-rock guitar workouts (leaning toward metal on “Salem”) among which Nas X sounds quite at home. It’s probably wise that it doesn’t revisit the country twang of his breakout hit, but it doesn’t just fall back on conventional rap sounds, instead using lots of string- and horn-based hooks to further Nas X’s identity as an artist of a beyond-genre generation. But the video is a tour de force performance of in-your-face queerness (also featuring the icon Billy Porter) he’s one of a pair of pink-clad football players making out extensively in the locker room, then strips down Brokeback-style with another cowboy camped out in the wilderness, before ending up alone in a church in full bridal drag playing an electric guitar solo. His music can’t match the effortless assuredness of the parody billboards he mounted and the hilarious “ pregnancy” photos he staged leading up to a live “talk show” on YouTube Thursday night, in which Nas X juggled with gusto the roles of smarmy host, swollen-bellied guest, and hyped-up audience member, climaxing with him “giving birth” to the album as well as premiering the video for new single “That’s What I Want.” The song itself is fantastic, an anthem of same-sex longing that pays giddy stylistic homage to Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” complete with the acoustic strums and hand claps and raindrop-bloopy synth notes. Still, even after several complete listens, few moments on Montero reverberate in my mind as vividly as all the viral action Nas X has generated around it in other media.