These days, every pop star wants to make a concept album. Every pop star says things like, “For me, the album is so much better in its entire context,” as Tinashe did in a recent Stereogum cover story. (Not everyone is against AI and “the TikTokification of it all,” though.) What sets Popstar – the artist’s eighth LP and first on a major label (Atlantic) since parting ways with RCA in 2019 – apart is how its outsized ambition and sense of intentionality feels unequivocally like a product of self, one both unburdened and conflicted about its place in the industry. Brilliant, self-assured, and tapped-in, the album has little to say and a lot to emote about its titular subject, warping, relaying, and dissecting the singer’s experience like a lover would at the end of a long day. “The American Dream is outdated,” she sings on ‘Crash Out’, living her own while sounding totally of-the-moment.
1. Sunglasses
Popstar steps forward by tapping into its most avant-garde tendencies, recruiting Machinedrum and Arca for a glitched-up beat that divinizes the plasticity of pop music as much as its accessibility. “There’s a billion of us, but there’s only one of me/ A independent shorty and they’re so intimidated by it,” Tinashe flaunts, sounding not just singular but untethered from the real world. That’s her favorite part, she tells us, presumably of fame. What’s thrilling as a listener is that it’s the first sign she’s letting us in on it.
2. Too Easy
On an album that overflows with effortless confidence, ‘Too Easy’ is the charged-up moment of recognition: “I know that I’m a superstar/ And they hate to see I’ve come so far.” Dialing up the pace, it urges you to turn the volume up at just the right time.
3. Melatonin
The album’s longest track and best single offers a strangely satisfying fusion of its rhythmic and melodic eccentricities – its frantic flow makes no concessions to its immaculate hook. A meeker artist would follow up ‘Too Easy’ with a slower tune, but Tinashe won’t compromise the album’s momentum so easily.
4. Empty Stadium
But she will naturally make space for a moment of nocturnal vulnerability – Tinashe sings of a recurring dream that finds her standing onstage by herself, awaiting applause that never comes. With Machinedrum back on production alongside Fred Ball, the track balances traditionally balladic instrumentation – lone strings that carry the chorus back to the verse – with eerie details that point to the surreal nature of the lyrics. Commanding your attention most of all, though, is Tinashe’s singing, swinging up and down from one line to the next with such force that when she sings, “I put the work in and I waited,” the aforementioned effortlessness appears as something of a feint. Of course she’s put the work in; of course she’s been slept on. Perhaps no amount of applause could ease the anxiety, but it’s long overdue.
5. Flashbacks
The album lingers in that dreamy mode a little longer, this time getting equal parts heartfelt and horny over delicate, floaty pianos. On any other record, ‘Flashbacks’ would scan as a yawning interlude, but the experimental production keeps a touch of the surreal in ways that render it a highlight.
6. Overdramatic
Barely a minute long, ‘Overdramatic’ finds Tinashe pinching herself back to confidence. A pleasant jazziness infiltrates the air, with Arnetta Johnson’s trumpet gliding smoothly over a simple beat; it’s time for everyone to cool down.
7. I’d Rather Be Alone
It takes an album’s worth of songs – if the album is as long as 2023’s BB/ANG3L, the first in the trilogy that Popstar completes – for Tinashe to lean into more conventional R&B. Zack Sekoff and Ricky Reed’s production slightly overburdens Tinashe’s kinetic flow, which gets clogged up by a tangle of electric guitar solos.
8. Crash Out
Snapping seamlessly into place, the album’s designated freakout also contains the most honest assessment of Tinashe’s relationship to fame: “Don’t need validation, but it would be nice/ I can’t pretend/ All my enemies getting in my head.” Being real doesn’t mean she can’t go crazy; in Popstar’s universe, they’re mutually inclusive.
9. Pillow Fight
Twirling around a hypnotic piano loop, ‘Pillow Fight’ assumes a more traditional structure (again with Reed on production), but the layering of ideas is ingenious, giving form to the mingling of “oxytocin and adrenaline” (melatonin certainly’s not part of the equation) that Tinashe sings about. A surge of bass obstructs any sense of sleepiness, making the rush of excitement sound vaguely unsettling.
10. Nobody Wanna Dance Anymore
We’ve got a winner in the category of “the kids don’t wanna dance” songs of 2026, and arriving so soon after Miley Cyrus’ latest album, it’s crazy how much more the bass persuades on Popstar – and especially ‘Nobody Wanna Dance Anymore’, its dancefloor standout. It’s contextualized just right in the sequence of the album, too: “Between a late night and sweet romance/ Can’t lie, I’d rather just dance.” If you’re keeping your hands in your pockets, clapping, or, God forbid, on your phone, a jolt of guilt should instantly hit your body.
11. Twentyfive Eight
Tinashe offsets Popstar’s catchiest cut with its wooziest, an off-kilter, Smerz-y tune contemplating the exchange rate between the love of the game and the game itself. “If you win the rat race and you come in first place/ Then you’re still a rat,” she quips. And yet…
12. The Show Must Go On
The word “popstar” loops and warbles, giving a proper introduction to the title track while twisting the concept itself.
13. Popstar
Tinashe’s widescreen pop ambition couldn’t shine brighter on the title track, which has all the markings of a classic noughties hit. But the star isn’t stuck in the past so much as lost in the moment, making the best of “a pretty little mess” – a phrase Grace Ives would use, though ‘Popstar’ is grand in every way possible.
14. Brainrot
Tinashe sells nonchalance as well as starry-eyed ambition, channeling Erika de Casier (whose collaborator Nick León has already remixed the track) over a sparkly Casey Mattson-produced beat. Even her carelessness sounds infectious.
15. Cloud 9
Restless and hard-hitting, ‘Cloud 9’ revives the frenetic pulse of the album’s A-side highlights, no longer yearning for but celebrating nearly stratospheric love (“Your sex almost sending me to space”). Placed after ‘Brainrot’, it makes for a potent one-two punch before the album’s acoustic conclusion.
16. Heavy Weight
On a record as dizzying as Popstar, the stripped-back closer doesn’t feel trite; its simple-heartedness is grounding. There’s irony to Tinashe singing about being weighed down on the lightest track here, feeling stuck while being poised for a breakthrough. She’ll have to pass the torch someday; right now, she’s bravely carrying it.
