Mabel - High Expectations

The Guardian 0

(Polydor)
On her undeniably hit-making debut, the daughter of Neneh Cherry sings ‘I’m not a people pleaser’ over backings intent on pleasing as many as possible

The title of Mabel McVey’s debut album seems less like an expression of thrusting youthful ambition than a statement of fact. High Expectations arrives with her current single Mad Love just outside the Top 10, and its predecessor, Don’t Call Me Up, still lurking around the charts a full six months after its release. Excited voices are calling her the next Dua Lipa, which sounds like faint praise – with the greatest of respect, it doesn’t quite have the hyperbolic cachet of the next Dylan or the next Madonna – until you realise that Dua Lipa is basically the only British pop artist who isn’t Ed Sheeran to have broken America in eons. They don’t want our rappers, however much Drake tries to convince them otherwise; they evince no interest in our massed ranks of earnest post-Sheeran acoustic troubadours, but it’s multiplatinum hits and million-selling albums up the wazoo for the New Rules singer.

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The Guardian 0

(Polydor)
Eschewing the artiness of her uber-cool heritage, Mabel serves up dizzying chart-friendly pop and R&B on her debut album

Every album released comes freighted with hope, this one more than most. Mabel is one of the year’s hottest breakout acts, having gone from box-fresh to bona fide phenomenon in the space of two years.

One minute, she had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-her visual cameo in the video for Skepta’s magisterial Shutdown (2015). The next, she’d had her own hit, 2017’s Finders Keepers. Then came more lighter fluid on her sizzle: collaborations with rapper Not3s – My Lover and Fine Line – which inflamed curiosity online thanks to the pair’s on-screen chemistry. Songs are all well and good, but plotlines really keep the public’s attention. Whatever the truth, Mabel’s hook-up with her fellow up’n’coming Londoner worked because of the warmth coming off the pair, so different from pop’s prevailing cut-throat lust-vibes.

The prospect of lots of hot sex is no bad thing, but songs about it abound

Related: One to watch: Mabel