a study of the human experience (volume 1) by GAYLE

GAYLE went viral on TikTok with the song “abc”. Hearing this song, I really liked it, and wanted to discover her other music, and I found her debut EP, “a study of the human experience (volume 1)”. I was pleasantly surprised with the 6 songs and liked them a lot more than I thought I would. The first track is titled “luv starved”, a beautiful pop-like but not quite pop song about love, and how crazy it can be, and the confusion it comes with. A lot of the lyrics really stuck with me, such as “Swear to God I’ma change but I’m Agnostic'', or “Knowing if I'm ready to trust you is hard…” Another track, titled “ur just lonely”, has very pop punk, rock vibes, it kind of reminds me of songs like “10 Things I Hate About You”, it kind of makes its own subgenre between pop, emo, and rock, a take on the classic breakup song. The lyrics are very clever, including “You don’t wanna be friends, you’re just lonely”. The fifth track, “e-z”, was my personal favorite on the album. It’s a remix of her earlier song, “z”. The remix features UPSHAL and BluDeTiger. It has mostly the same lyrics as “z’, adding an extra verse for UPSHAL and BluDeTiger. The background starts simple, but the chorus becomes a lively pop punk song, and the lyrics are genius and fun to sing, like “My best friend met my ex-boyfriend and then his best friend is me”, or “That's how we do, we glorify our problems but we never solve em.” The song is simply relatable to anyone young right now. The album ends with “kiddie pool”, which was also one of my favorites. Kiddie pool is a slow rock ballad that is about being in love with a not necessarily kind person. The background is beautiful, and the lyrics are really good, such as “Got my ‘leave you before you leave me’ type of mentality” and “Don’t want kiddie pools, I’ma fool, I want oceans”. The album, overall, is really good. Maybe a little too similar to other new popular artists, like Olivia Rodrigo, but at the same time, it has a lot more Avril Lavigne than Taylor Swift, unlike Rodrigo’s SOUR, an album that somehow fuses 90’s punk with Taylor, in a weirdly great way. GAYLE’s album may seem similar in comparison, but it stands out from the rest in a unique spin on an overused idea, a perfect pairing to her smash hit, “abc”, and doesn't have a single skip, every song is great.