Audrey Hobert’s debut album “Who’s The Clown?” turns the human experience into witty pop songs
By Mason M
One of pop music's boldest newcomers, Audrey Hobert, releases her debut album Who's The Clown? filled to the brim with catchy melodies and comedic writing that doesn't take itself too seriously but understands everything everyone is feeling.
Audrey Hobert coasted smoothly off of the success of her first three singles ("Sue Me" in particular, now with over 20 million streams on Spotify) into Who's The Clown?, her debut album. Gaining immense musical inspiration and aspiration from close friend Gracie Abrams and brother Malcolm Hobert (known professionally as Malcolm Todd), Hobert dips her toes into the pop space, supported behind the scenes by producer Ricky Gourmet. Before releasing music of her own, Hobert was best known for supporting Abrams lyrically alongside her album The Secret of Us, and it's made known through her comedic and quippy lyrics.
Every song on the record feels like a casual but heavily detailed conversation, electrified by synth and fun guitar. The lyricism is fast-paced and clever. She's bold and unabashedly herself in what she says. But there's bound to be one thing that resonates with you, no matter how different her life may seem compared to yours. From pretending to not care about a date in "Wet Hair" to the idea of disliking how you look in "Thirst Trap" and "Phoebe," Hobert catches lightning in a bottle if the lightning was the constant and common feeling of social anxiety. The track that exemplifies this the most in my mind is the second single, "Bowling Alley," which details the idea of party anxiety, even if you were invited. The idea that people will only admire or care about you if you do something monumental, like hitting a strike.
It's small, seemingly inconsequential things like this that build up the thematic core of this album: feeling out of place. This inescapable social anxiety and pressure that everyone feels is all throughout this project, albeit spliced between moments of lyrical levity, such as, "Cause I'm drunk and I'm high so I'm crossed / Didn't score any guys so I'm lost / That's all for now Mr. Driver / I'm rating you 5 stars," from the referential track "Sex and the City." Hobert's songwriting capabilities shine here as not only a device for her clear aptitude for comedy but also her ability to make people feel seen. It's not only a humorous project, but one that people can see themselves in (minus maybe the constant party life and city hopping).
The album's recurring themes of the intersection between humor and social anxiety culminate in the final two tracks, "Phoebe" and "Silver Jubilee." "Phoebe" starts with the notion that Hobert has started watching the television show Friends. She dwells on not liking herself, specifically in terms of her beauty, but then likens herself to Phoebe from Friends—a carefree character known for ignoring the opinions of others and instead being content with who she is—the same realization Hobert makes in this song. The album concludes on "Silver Jubilee," where Hobert loudly and proudly states, "I'ma live it up like my life starts now." Unlike the rest of the album, where she overthinks and lingers on every little detail of how everyone (including herself) perceives her, she ignores it. She chooses to live her life without those burdens.
It's an album that may not appeal to everyone looking for deep and insightful lyricism, but it houses extremely catchy songs that are just plain fun. It doesn't take itself too seriously, and it thrives from that distinction when comparing it to other modern pop albums. You can understand exactly the type of person Audrey Hobert is from this album with the amount of odd lyrics and phrasing she administers and that is the exact type of artist I am excited to see grow.