A Complicated Woman

A Complicated Woman by Self Esteem is a decent pop album from 2025. It's not one of the best albums from that year, but it's no punishment to listen to it with nice songs with often original lyrics and a lot of variation in style.

Is that Kate McKinnon on the cover?! Uncanny resemblance. Anyway, I'm suspicious of anything offered here from the last 12 months but "I Do And I Don't Care" was an incredibly arresting start to what was an impressive album! So well-produced without degrading the emotion behind these songs. This feels intensely personal and has me quite taken. I can't wait to check out Self Esteem's earlier albums - definitely listening to Prioritise Pleasure next! What a terrific surprise!

I’m a massive fan of prioritised pleasure (which id give 5 stars), this the follow up just felt like a disappointment to me. Usually happens when you enjoy the first album you hear by an artist so much. I’d maybe have a different view if this came first.

Rating: 7/10 Best songs: Focus is power, Mother, In plain sight

4 I like it

Pop, experimental pop. Me ha gustado. Un 4.

Un bastante buen disco de una gran voz femenina con variedad de estilos, variando entre el pop, en ocasiones algo más bailable y con variedad de instrumentación y de tonos y enfoques. Recomendable por ser distinto y porque cada canción merece la pena.

It's not bad, but I wonder how much staying power this has. I think it's too new for lists like this.

Kind of on the fence about this one. Very polished and stylish, but I'm not sure there's all that much there under the surface.

Not my favorite type of music, but it's good for what it is. 3 stars.

Bri’ish

Peak feminist lyrics. Cool beats

Do you like choirs?

I liked A Complication Woman far more than I expected, and yeah it's too recent to be on here, but I didn't know anything about her and came away pretty interested. It's good pop with enough throwback hooks and stylings to the late 90s/early 00s to grab the nostalgia side of me, it's executed well, there's a little bit too much of her spoken word stuff mixed into songs that takes the edge of the impact it has at first, but largely more good than bad overall. I Do And I Don't Care, Mother and If Not Now It's Soon are really good, high 3/5 and if her other work is better than this I'm gonna check it out.

The number of people adding albums released less than a year ago baffles me. Plenty of LPs in the modern canon that have yet to be added yet we're getting albums from last year that will be forgotten as soon as their promo cycle ends. Case in point, this LP has little to offer in the way of staying power – the pop meets spoken-word elements don't stand out relative to other efforts in the genre, and the instrumentals are pretty limp, failing to support the prominent vocals up front in the mix with any kind of notable melody. The whole effort reminds me of the SAULT LP on the main list, an album which wanted to say big things about the state of the world but only offered a slapdash mix of vague gestures and forgettable instrumentals towards that goal. If this is really your idea of /the/ album to listen to before you die, you're probably missing out on a big chunk of what's happened musically in the last 20 years.

Very boring, generic pop. Go off queen or whatever, but man does this feel like it's been specifically engineered to make me feel like I'm trapped in a time rift for seven millennia. Bonus points for the cover because it's really fucking funny to me for some reason. Can't look at it without thinking of that one meme sound of an extremely loud burp.

For each user submission I will decide if I believe it was submitted to "correct the record" and deserves inclusion on the main list or if its more of a personal favorite or pet album of the user. Pet album because its so recent. I still don't really like seeing albums that are so new, need some time to see if it stands up. I did like the 69 song though

A bit disappointing from someone I like, have enjoyed some of her music but think she’s run out of ideas here.