I keep hearing people invoke the Moulin Rouge soundtrack cover of āLady Marmaladeā ā starring Lilā Kim, MĆ½a, Pink, and Christina Aguilera ā in speaking about the new Ariana Grande, Lana Del Rey, and Miley Cyrus Charlieās Angels soundtrack single āDonāt Call Me Angel,ā and I sorta get it, but I also donāt. Itās a successor to the 2001 hit in the sense that, yes, multiple famous women are singing together on the same beat. Thatās the beginning and the end of it. āMarmaladeā braided voices together that had been circling the same hip-hop and R&B/pop scene. āDonāt Call Me Angelā is something else, something that could maybe only happen in an era where everyone exists in their own tailor-made internet with their own little network of music-app playlists and Netflix and Hulu recommendations. āAngelā blends styles that sound fine alone but struggle to jell together, such is the vastness of the space between the singers present.
Thatās cool, though. Ariās in her zone skating around the elaborate network of interlocking notes designed by frequent collaborators Max Martin and Ilya Salmanzadeh, and Mileyās Music Cityābyāwayāofātheāclub drawl and timbre are adaptable enough to keep her from breaking anything here. āAngelsā strains to figure out what to do with Lana, such as she exists now, as a singer who does her best work at half the speed of her peers in the biz, whose last album was closer in spirit to glacial ā90s northwestern indie rock than anything on the radio in this decade. The beat here slows its tempo to accommodate Lana, which is fine because it ran a little fast in the first place. In the end, āAngelsā is less of a meeting of like minds and more of a ride from the pulsing center of a city past the limits and into the laconic stretches outside.
Maybe popās done consolidating. Maybe the logical end of the algorithmification of mainstream music is that in the next decade, artists will get to occupy their own individual principalities of sound and trust that our tastes are limber enough to traverse between them, instead of always meeting us in the middle. Or maybe they wonāt! Time will tell. Iām thankful for āDonāt Call Me Angel,ā at the end of the day, because Iāll take every opportunity to watch Lana Del Rey wield weapons. Thanks to director Hannah Lux Davis and everyone involved for a GIF gold mine full of throwing knives and nunchaku.