The debut full-length album from singer
Julia Michaels, 2021's
Not in Chronological Order, is a smart, swaggering pop album that balances big hooks with her fiery, empowered charisma. It's a style she's been honing for years as a songwriter behind-the-scenes for artists like
Justin Bieber,
Maroon 5,
Selena Gomez, and others. Here, she grabs the spotlight, nicely building upon the anthemic, genre-bending rock, electronic dance-pop, and R&B that made her previous solo tracks, including her 2016
Kygo collaboration "Carry Me" and her 2017 orchestral-accented single "Issues," such welcome surprises. Working with a handful of producers, including the Monsters & Strangerz,
G Koop, German, and others,
Michaels has crafted an album packed with universally relatable themes of falling in love, getting your heart broken, and wishing you were a stronger, more independent person.
Michaels gives you the sense that she's writing from experience and transforming her emotions into cathartic pop anthems. It doesn't hurt that she also has a warm, expressive voice, marked by a dusting of vocal fry that can make her sound vulnerable and sweet one minute and wickedly intimidating the next. It's a flirtatious dichotomy she plays with throughout
Not in Chronological Order, moving deftly between romantic longing and burn-it-all down relationship jealousy. It's a vibe perhaps best expressed on the album-opening "All Your Exes," in which
Michaels wills herself into being the one and only, past, present, and future object of her lover's desire. That the song starts as an acoustic ballad and ends in an anthemic fury of rock guitar bombast speaks to
Michaels' knack for capturing how the ups and downs of a relationship can feel so genuinely dramatic that the only way to express them is in song. ~ Matt Collar