Phoenix

I can’t say album Phoenix comes fresh off the heels of the critical and fan success of Ora, because it doesn’t. Ora was made in 2012 – her debut album, which actually took three years to develop under label Roc Nation. To be honest, I first started to recognize Rita Ora on America’s Top Model in 2017, when she was the host, and I was like, where the hell Tyra go? I had heard a couple songs from her and thought they were pretty cool, and that she had an awesome, more R&B orientated voice for her Pop categorization, yet I never felt she was someone to write home about. Liked her – I’ll leave it at that. What I did notice is she popped up as a feature in that era’s EDM and Synth Pop scene often, and she had one heck of a siren’s call. Eventually, I listened to the album Ora, and thought it was a cool little mix of R&B and Pop, and so giving Phoenix a spin, I assumed it might be more of the same. I have to say, it is good in a different way, with some serious House related Dance Pop joints, front-loaded on the album, and some very palatable Pop ballads, any of which could compete with the top performers in the industry. Sure, it took some time for Rita Ora to bless us with some new music, but it was worth the wait. Not only that – she really mixes modernity with the Pop conventions of the last couple of years, so that there is ample stylistic coverage of trends and sounds to make everyone pretty much happy. And isn’t that what Pop is all about?

After releasing nothing but singles & occasionally featuring on a much bigger artist’s song for years now, Rita Ora has finally released another fully-fledged studio album in the form of Phoenix & just like the name suggests, she has been completely born anew, not only maturing in compositional skills but upping her game as far as narratives are concerned, focusing on burning social topics in the zeitgeist of pop culture & expanding her feministic boundaries as far as her celebrity status will allow her to – Strangely enough, that doesn’t seem to have been enough to pique the interests of today’s listeners, as the seven years between her first record Ora & now has seemingly stripped her of the unique identity she once held over the music market back before artists like Jess Glynne & Ella Eyre turned the UK Pop scene upside-down with their incredibly catchy hooks & powerfully feminine charms; Where Ora achieved chart-topping success, peaking at the number one spot in the UK & hitting relatively high numbers in other European regions, Phoenix completely failed to capture that same spark, barely breaking 11th position in the UK & hitting a paltry 79 in the US, with her two main singles not even hitting the US Top100’s at all – What’s so peculiar about this is the fact Phoenix is an astonishingly solid album, but the tunes within & the sensibilities she puts on display may just be a bit too old-fashioned for today’s listeners to take, clearly hanging on to the sonic aesthetics she made her reputation upon back in the day.