On Friday, Oct. 24, American singer Demi Lovato released her ninth album, It’s Not That Deep, marking a return from her four-year pop hiatus, as her two previous albums stray more toward rock and pop-punk. Lovato steps into a new age of pop music with her latest release, producing an electronic sound similar to other pop stars of today, but fails to satisfy. True to form, the album fails to reach any depth of complex lyricism, falling back on its headache-inducing electropop production.
Lovato, whose rise to fame began on Disney Channel, is best known for her dominant presence in the 2010s pop scene, with hits like “Heart Attack” and “Sorry Not Sorry.” The latter, her last U.S. Billboard Hot 100-charting song, was released in 2017 with Lovato’s sixth album Tell Me You Love Me, after which she stepped back from music due to mental health concerns. Lovato was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2011 and has faced other personal challenges, such as substance abuse, eating disorders, and depression. The artist has incorporated these themes into her music, in songs such as “Melon Cake” in her 2021 album Dancing with the Devil… the Art of Starting Over. However, as the title alludes, Lovato doesn’t mention these personal challenges on It’s Not That Deep.
The lead single, and track one, “Fast,” is an optimistic start to the album production-wise, with its pulsing upbeat rhythm; however, it falls flat both lyrically and vocally. “No matter how close, no matter how far, I wanna go anywhere, anywhere you are,” Lovato sings, in a generic cliché. Lovato’s vocals are the nail in the coffin for this song, a breathy, pitchy foray far outside of her vocal range.
The song stands in stark contrast to her previous pop projects, contributing to an inauthentic sound throughout the album and creating a choppy amalgamation of other rising pop stars, such as Tate McRae and Olivia Rodrigo. Against the fast-paced track, Lovato struggles to keep up, leaving the song pervaded by anxious vocals.
Track two, “Here All Night,” follows a similar theme to its predecessor, filling lyrical holes with an aggressive synth-heavy beat. Lovato’s use of autotune is increasingly prevalent here, but toes the line between sounding intentional and like a vocal cover-up. The lyrics are just as vapid and two-dimensional as before, “I don’t want to go all natural, I want electronic,” Lovato sings, a mission statement for the album.
Lovato’s repetitive lyrics are a monotonous weight on the album, most apparent in track nine, “Kiss.” “L-l-l-like what? L-l-l-like this,” Lovato repeats 12 times during the outro of the song. The energetic beat captures the best of the album’s production, reminiscent of the producer, Zhone’s, work on Charli xcx and Troye Sivan’s “Talk, talk.”
“Before I Knew You,” track 10, takes a much slower pace, a more vulnerable pop ballad that reaches the absolute depths of It’s Not That Deep’s lyrics. She opens up about the trauma of a past relationship, setting itself apart from the flatter writing in the rest of the tracks, “Wish I could go back to the way I was, I liked me more before I knew you.” Lovato finally finds her mark with lyrical repetition in the “Before I Knew You” outro, a spliced “Me before I knew you” layered and fading out, giving the song an end-of-album feel.
However, Lovato keeps going, in a conceptually off-base 11th track, “Ghost,” which morbidly explores the hypothetical death of a romantic partner. “Ghost” captures various issues from throughout the album, including literal, redundant lyrics and pitchy vocals, against a dark concept. “You could send a chill down my spine, so cold.” Where the rest of the tracks might be redeemed by their lighthearted theme and upbeat sound, “Ghost” is an out-of-place, uncomfortable listen in multiple ways, ending the album on an unfulfilling note.
It’s Not That Deep is mercifully short, lacking in vocal performance, quality songwriting, and authenticity as much as length. In creating the album, Lovato clearly had nothing profound to say and a misguided understanding of modern pop finesse. In trying to find her way back to pop, Lovato sounds as if she has lost herself, making the album unremarkable and earning It’s Not That Deep a two out of five feathers.
