“Don’t Pretend,” “Talk,” and “ My Bad” work hard at cutting down on distractions and miscommunications in a budding romance. In the album’s intro, Khalid emotes in a blizzard of hurried sentences about a relationship going south: “I can’t even live with being by myself / That’s the part of me that really needs your help / Lately, I haven’t been doing very well / That’s the difference between heaven and hell.”įree Spirit is a battle between bad feelings and good intentions. Free Spirit doesn’t waste a minute getting to the heart of the matter. The seriousness of these conversations made American Teen seem light in the britches, like a singer writing songs he thinks people want to hear rather than hashing out what he feels it is imperative to say to them. In interviews, he grappled with mental-health woes like stress, panic attacks, depression, and social anxiety. “ Location” and “ Young Dumb & Broke” are the kinds of tunes that Ocean might have landed on had he continued down the Nostalgia, Ultra path of making moody, relatable, Zeitgeist-minded love songs instead of embracing a literary, Expressionist approach to writing on Blonde and Endless.īut there was more to Khalid than American Teen suggested. His 2017 debut album American Teen served a smart, charming hybrid of soul and pop that picked up where the Everyman concerns of early Frank Ocean records left off.
Texas singer-songwriter Khalid Robinson tangles with the beast on his sophomore album Free Spirit. It gets you stuck on stasis, fearful of movement and evolution. Depression is a landlord that wants to keep you renting. Holding fast to all three can be hard to manage. Comfort is a matter of monastic poise, militant daily routines, and therapy. The spiral’s hard to shake sometimes thrashing around to make your escape just tires you out and traps you further. Your mood sours, then you doubt yourself, then your creativity and productivity suffer, then you make mistakes that make your mood even worse.
They get you thinking you’re only as strong as your most recent failings, that the worst you can feel is the best that life offers. Khalid writes with intense honesty about the pitfalls of fame.ĭepression and anxiety are mercenarily efficient conditions.
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