There is some courage to go out with an album whose title explicitly invites you not to reproduce it. There is all the courage that Ava Max, in his words the worse pop star of the last few years, has not had during a still young career, but already irreparably compromised. How quick decline is responsibility for the label and how direct emanation of the sound/aesthetic choices of the US pop star is not easy to determine, however the fact remains that after a lightning -free general falling in love, the collapse seemed inexorable.
Once to the third album, followed by a “Diamonds & Dancefloors” who already fell under the weight of his anonymity streamingcorewith “Don't Click Play” does nothing to reverse the china, but entertains the same sudden relationship with a pop danceable with synthetic outlines, as suitable for any algorithm as it is without ideas and personality. The descent continues inexorable.
To concentrate, in fact a peculiarity emerges with respect to the previous tests: where the pieces of Ava Max overturned samples of known songs Urbi et orbithose of the new album renounce such an expedient, investing rather on original material. The choice silence the rumors that the pop star was nothing more than a “sample queen”, however, they prove to be all the limits of a proposal that, net of its danceability, never takes a risk.
Would like to show all his “cazzimma” in title tracktarget the hater and their statements, but above the beat Basic technoid the song proceeds formulate, an ambulating stereotype of residuals dance ten years. And so individualism a lot of the kilo of “Lovin 'MySelf” takes synthwave ideas but dilutes them in an abused melodism eurowhich is used here on more than one occasion with rather predicable results (the Abba derivations of “Know Somebody”). Study Funky-House phrasing (the Kylie Minogue in sixteenth of “Take My Call”) or ill-concealed homage to the era of “Flashdance” (“Wet, Hot American Dream”) complete a dull picture, a succession of conventions in which to enter without really making your voice assert.
In this sea force zero, just two episodes know how to communicate something different: the pop-rock attitude of “Lost your Faith” and the east-European touch of “World's Lonterst Violin” offer a different look, a sign of opportunities that Ava Max could seize to diversify a catalog of too much crystallized. To persist in the same ski dance, the results also on the streaming will only make worse.
07/10/2025
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
