Music has always rewarded performance. But lately, the performance comes first. American singer Poppy exemplifies this different kind of pop star: maximizing performance, personality and pandemonium in her art — and she does so effortlessly on newly released project Empty Hands.
In today’s musical landscape, some of our biggest pop phenoms didn’t start out primarily as musicians at all. Sabrina Carpenter, Djo, Troye Sivan and even the likes of Joji all arrived with earlier internet incarnations — and that transition, more often than not, works. Poppy herself has come a long way from her uncanny YouTube videos throughout the last decade, and continues to trickle that bloody mystique into her current personal sound.
Now with Empty Hands, her excursion into flirting with metal music doesn’t stop. She riles up the support from her long-time producer Jordan Fish and aims to self-understand through artistic freedom and vulnerability. Across the project, she shows that performance may be carefully staged, but skill isn’t.
The apocalyptic opener, “Public Domain,” gives the first sighting of her harsh, condensed and raging sound. Lyrically, the song takes a cynical stab at modern society, critiquing how existential themes like identity, violence and truth have all lost their value due to normalization of exploitation and overcommodification.
“Can you bottle it? / Will you sell it for food? / Would you sleep with it? Tell me who’s using who? / Isn’t it peculiar how the chatter fails to offer any solace in the light of the truth?”
The track also features ultra-processed vocals to make her sound like a cutesy animatronic — tightly dancing on a line of dry irony. That’s what she loves on this album: vocally floating between the rage and the silly.
Empty Hands only truly fails when Poppy continues to glom on to the juxtaposition of saccharine pop and harsh metal aesthetics, like on the unobjectionable track, “The Wait” and several overly-melodramatic pockets on the album.
Back to the heaters, “Dying To Forget” launches into immediate overwhelm: monstrous screaming, spanking beats kicks — it sounds like being placed right in the center of a burst rifle chamber.
Similarly, on “Eat The Hate,” Poppy goes full Nirvana-mode — busting out raw, propulsive riffage to sneer her haters over. Narratively, she disregards any negative perceptions about her and sings, “I’ll eat the hate / ‘Cause you’ll complain either way,” to embrace it and get a rise out of naysayers, especially when there’s sexual gratification on the line.
These tracks show the tough skin of Poppy and how she navigates the world’s chaos around her. But throughout the whole record, Poppy asserts control over her narrative, making it clear that she sees the world on her own terms and that she won’t apologize for what she shows.
Ultimately, this album’s biggest strength lies in Poppy’s ability to curate songs that feel claustrophobic, deafening and maximalist, but in that same breath, still liberating, enjoyable and gratifying. She’s taking her career to more serious places, and it’s exciting to see how this is pure character-building for her, rather than a tacky gimmick to add shock value to her music or just following the cultural winds in music.
HIGHLIGHTS: PUBLIC DOMAIN, BRUISED SKY, DYING TO FORGET, TIME WILL TELL, EAT THE HATE, IF WE’RE FOLLOWING THE LIGHT, EMPTY HANDS
3.5 peonies out of 5.
