If the idea is to rack up streams at volume, Free Spirit will succeed at rarely inspiring enough of a reaction to warrant the thought of hitting “pause.” These cuts can be slipped into a wide range of playlists without interrupting the flow.
That emotional mode might seem au courant given the generally bummed-out mood of radio over the past few years, but what feels more 2019-y about this album is the elevation of vibes above songs.
“I feel like there’s nothing for me here,” he sings. His lyrics tell tales of in-betweenness too, with an ambivalence in love and life that blurs into burnout. Over 17 echoey songs, Khalid approaches melodies with a moaning, slurring approach that doesn’t demonstrate any particular emotional state beyond a lack of commitment. Free Spirit emits from the speakers like sage smoke emits during a yuppy smudging session: for a pleasant effect that is of dubious lasting significance. That a 95-minute film appeared in theaters this week to promote Free Spirit is a sign of the nexus he’s nailed: being backed both by genuinely fervent fans and by the industrial music machine.Īll of which means it’s tempting to hear his shockingly inert new album as a referendum on this era in pop. When it comes to the traditional barometer for reach, the Billboard Hot 100, his biggest hits are collaborations with other recent pop arrivals: Halsey, Benny Blanco, Normani, Logic, and Alessia Cara (the latter two on the sadly timely anti-suicide song “1-80”). Apple Music has been advertising his second album, Free Spirit, nonstop over the past few weeks. He’s currently the fourth-most-streamed artist this month on Spotify. The song initiated a rise that would see him labeled as a voice of his generation, and the 21-year-old’s success can be quantified in fittingly of-the-moment terms. But this prayer was a murmur from someone sunk into a mattress amid hours of scrolling. His rich drawl had a faint hint of church in it. As he pleaded for a crush to send him coordinates on Google Maps or one of its competitors, a harplike trill sounded, questioning and unpredictably paced, like a notification. He was getting specific, app-y, and post-privacy. He wasn’t hanging on the telephone, and he wasn’t emailing someone’s heart. The debut single from Khalid Robinson, 2016’s “ Location,” marked a new model in an old love-song category: the kind about telecommunications.
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