Over It - Summer Walker
Intro:
Summer Walker is one of the hottest new R&B stars out right now. The Atlanta singer entered mainstream conversation with her 2018 mixtape, “Last Day of Summer” and other non-album releases. Over It, her debut album, dropped at the end of 2019 and became a huge commercial hit; selling 134,000 copies in its first week. I personally never gave her music a chance after only hearing Girls Need Love. I thought that song was good so I had pretty average expectations going into this.
Strengths:
Topically, we’re getting lots of songs about love, heartbreak and toxicity. Summer makes these topics refreshing with her very personal song writing that makes you believe it’s from an honest place. She’s constantly acknowledging the bad signs from her partner, but goes back to them time and time again. But this album isn’t all about that, as Summer herself isn’t claiming to be perfect. This works well to humanize her thoughts/actions. Her song writing works very well with these themes because her lyrics are so blunt yet vivid; especially when describing thoughts/actions (On Me and other songs, she details an empty gun threat towards her partner).
The best way I could describe the lyrics are that they feel like diary entries/voicemails that are more focused on evoking emotion than being complex. Her voice while singing about all of this is so smooth and pleasing. She’s never over bearing but her voice isn’t too soft either, and blends in well with the production. On top of this, every melody/harmony she chooses compliments the instrumentals too. Despite most of the features being decent, Summer has the tendency to sing along with others and it’s always a great moment (Ex. Come Thru with Usher).
London on the Track SNAPPED as the executive producer of this album. His and everyone else’s production on this album is top tier and incredibly mixed. The little things like the added thunder sounds on “Playing Games” and the woozy vocal effect on “Drunk Dialing” are examples of timely engineering. Every beat has some form of dreamy/smooth R&B chords, melodies, and textures. It also seems like every track transitions very well into the next, almost seamlessly. I enjoyed the older and newer elements of R&B being present throughout the entire album. It all adds on to the moody and romantic aesthetics.
Weaknesses:
I have a few negatives but nothing too bad. For starters, her style and melodies do share some similarities with her contemporaries (Ex. SZA). Although Summer makes up for this by having a unique personality and quality production backing her. Her voice is also soft and can fall into the background if you’re not really trying to pay attention. I couldn’t really get into the song “I’ll Kill You” as the delivery of the “I’ll go to hell and jail bout you boy” refrain sounds sooooo annoying. Also, I love the song “Anna Marie,” but the repeated “Have a cake and eat it too” line sounds really weird and obnoxious to me (I know it’s definitely just a me thing though lol).
Only a few other things I didn’t care for. I really enjoy all of the acoustic guitar cuts on the album, but those were the few moments in the mix that didn’t sound great. Like on the song “Fun Girl”, the guitar gets so loud at points that it over powers her voice multiple times during the song. There were also some pretty bad features from A boogie and PartyNextDoor. A boogie especially though, as his nasally inflection is obnoxiously over exaggerated, and his verse is filled with really bad lyrics. Lastly, it didn’t happen to me but I could see how this album could feel repetitive/samey. 18 tracks is kind of long and the way the songs are paced could bore listeners that aren’t into this type of R&B.
Overall: 8-8.5/10
There were a few minor things I didn’t like on Over It, but the positive aspects definitely outweigh most of the bad. Really, this album serves its purpose as a moody/relatable album about toxic love. I say relatable because i’m sure there are women and men that Summer Walker is giving a voice for with her honesty. If you aren’t into traditional R&B or any of the album’s topics, definitely stay away. But if you liked a majority of the strengths, I 100% recommend you check this album out (linked below) because it really surprised me after finally giving it a listen. Thank you all for reading and I’ll give my final thoughts at the end of the month.
