By JADYN IBY
Arts Editor
Breakthrough R&B, Amapiano (a new South African genre), and pop singer, Tyla, launched her new album “Tyla” this year, after her hit song “Water” electrified fans.
The African pop star Tyla, released her debut album March 1, of this year, with 14 songs within it.
The first “song,” is not technically a song, it is only 41 seconds, but Tyla names this so-called “song,” “Intro.” This intro consists mostly of people talking within the studio and working on the album, some background noise, and laughing. I thought it was something interesting and different, but it didn’t add anything special to the album, so why include it. I applaud Tyla for trying something different, but you don’t usually see those sorts of things in other albums (and for good reason).
Some of the songs that I wasn’t fond of included, “Truth or Dare,” “Safer,” and “Breathe Me.” A lot of Tyla’s songs had similar beats, which I was disappointed about. I expected a little bit more variety from the album, and hoped that a lot of the songs would be different from one another. However, that is not the case for a good portion of this album. In “Truth or Dare,” I found that the song was a lot quieter than the other songs, and it didn’t sound as upbeat. The song was released earlier than the album, on Feb. 13, of this year. “Safer” in my opinion got quite boring after listening to it for a while, it had similar beats to a lot of the songs on the album. Lastly, “Breathe Me” wasn’t anything special, again it was repetitive with the beat.
Tyla released four out of the fourteen songs from the album earlier this year and last, which lessened its grand reveal in my opinion.
Some of my favorite songs from the album were “Water,” the remix of “Water,” and “Jump.” “Water” was released early, as a leading single for the album on July 28, of 2023. The song peaked and placed number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. This year, “Water” was nominated for several awards including, Brit Award for International Song, and Metro FM Music Award for Song of the Year. The song is very catchy in my opinion, and I think that is why it is so popular. The remix for the song “Water,” was just as good as the original song and features Travis Scott, who is a very well known rapper. The song “Jump” was really good and featured Gunna and Skillibeng. I think the song did a good job at evenly including all artists which made the song all that much better.
After listening to the album as a whole, I think that a lot of songs had a very similar prominent beat, which made a lot of the songs not as unique. That being said, I think that Tyla does a good job of creating a unique style of music that combines both afrobeats and pop music. A lot of the songs also have a good beat, although repetitive. If you are interested in artists such as SZA, Tyla has a very similar vocal range and tone. I would recommend this album to people who listen to SZA, as it is somewhat similar.
