Tinashe has spent the past few years building toward Popstar, the final chapter of the trilogy that began with 2023’s BB/Ang3l and continued through 2024’s Quantum Baby. Across 16 tracks and 39 minutes, the album delivers exactly what its title promises on the surface: pop ambition, club energy, R&B intimacy and a willingness to move between styles without asking permission.
That freedom is both Popstar’s greatest strength and its most complicated trait. Tinashe clearly had a strong creative picture in mind, and the album rarely feels disjointed despite its genre shifts. At the same time, that very variety can make some songs feel more fully realized than others, particularly when the production moves faster than the emotional ideas underneath it.
The album’s best moments arrive when those two sides meet. “Melatonin” is a prime example, combining house, pop and alternative R&B over dense percussion, pulsing bass and rhythmic synths. Tinashe moves effortlessly between atmospheric harmonies, clipped verses and a sharper chorus, while the song’s central joke about people “sleeping on” her gives the track a playful confidence without slowing its momentum.
“Crash Out” takes a harder route, using knocking bass, 808s and nocturnal synths to turn frustration with internet toxicity and social expectations into something physical. Tinashe’s half-rapped, half-sung delivery gives the song a sense of urgency, while “I’d Rather Be Alone” provides one of the album’s clearest emotional pivots. Its airy vocals, delicate guitar and restrained groove frame a decision to walk away from an emotionally distant relationship rather than continue forcing something that no longer works.
The title track is where Popstar’s central idea becomes most explicit. Built around an energetic alternative-pop and dance-R&B foundation, it plays with the fantasy and artificiality of celebrity while Tinashe performs the contradiction at the center of the record: wanting the spotlight while understanding exactly how superficial that spotlight can be.
With no guest features, the album also places the entire burden of its identity on Tinashe. Popstar works best when Tinashe embraces contradiction rather than trying to resolve it. She can be a club artist, an R&B singer, a pop performer and an independent-minded songwriter within the same 39-minute record, and the album’s refusal to choose just one identity is precisely what makes it interesting.
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