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!

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

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.

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.

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.