You could paint Coping Mechanism as a cynical exercise in exploiting how music is disseminated these days: the science of what makes songs TikTok friendly is hardly an exact one, but it’s generally accepted that big surges and sudden drops help, handy for the moment when your crocheted bucket hat is revealed in all its glory. On Maybe It’s My Fault, she matches the sonic twists with a melody that doesn’t go where you expect but maintains a tight grip on your attention. On Curious/Furious, she pulls off the kind of instantly appealing tune people pay vast sums to vast teams of Swedish writers for. But her melodies are both strong enough to stick in your head and anomalous enough to never feel bland. Relatable for their target market, they probably won’t detain you long if you’re old enough to drive yourself places rather than rely on your parents for lifts. Her lyrics deal in shouty angst, clunky poetry that reads like it’s been ripped from a secret journal – “the wind in the trees whispering mathematics … refract the wisdom to heal the abyss” – and self-help homilies of the I Don’t Know Who Needs To Hear This But variety. Moreover, if you were looking for a very prosaic reason for her success, you might alight on the fact that she’s an exceptionally tidy songwriter.
All this, it’s worth noting, is crammed on to an 11-track album that lasts less than half an hour. Here, the shards of metal coexist with operatic harmonies that alternately evoke goth-rock and Queen, that wobbling, lo-fi guitar sound that gives the impression it’s been recorded on an old cassette, ska-punk, slackly strummed guitars that recall early 90s US alt-rock and a guest appearance from defiantly avant garde electronic experimentalist Yves Tumor.
But it’s less generically streamlined than Smith’s previous albums, which clearly set out their stall – psychedelic cover art for the shoegazey Willow, guest slots from Blink 182’s Travis Barker and Avril Lavigne on Lately I Feel Everything – and stuck to whatever style was currently turning her head. There is indeed the frequent hint of the circle pit and the battlejacket about its approach: a downtuned heaviness to Ur a Stranger’s riffs the climax of Maybe It’s My Fault, powered by a double kick drum beat, is topped with screamo vocals. You wouldn’t bet against something similar happening to a track from Coping Mechanism, which toughens up her sound. Smith seems to keep doing it without breaking a sweat.
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There are marketing departments spending millions trying to work out how to provoke dance trends, get emo types lipsyncing and indeed reach the world’s #hotboi cineastes and bucket-hat crocheters. Likewise, 2019’s woozy Time Machine found a niche soundtracking TikTok videos that dreamily salivate over #hotbois, be they Harry Styles or Chris Hemsworth 2020’s Pixies-ish Meet Me at Our Spot was the perfect accompaniment to videos about what you did in the summer and/or anime clips and 2021’s Transparent Soul resonated with emo types lipsyncing, more anime clips, and “Hey guys check this out I crocheted my own bucket hat!!!”-core. No matter that her exploratory debut album Ardipithecus got a muted reception: its track Wait a Minute! inspired an online dance challenge, and has been streamed 765m times on Spotify. What’s beyond debate is Smith’s ability to make music that resonates with a young audience. Whether you view all this as Bowie-esque shapeshifting, a reflection of the post-genre pop world engendered by streaming or the dabbling dilettantism you might expect from the child of Hollywood superstars is up to you. By the time she released 2021’s pop-punk leaning Lately I Feel Everything, she was at a point where she could appear on the cover of Kerrang! discussing the influence of Lamb of God and sludge metal heroes Crowbar.
Even leaving aside her brief period as a tween pop idol, Smith has moved from leftfield alt-R&B to experimental bedroom pop, from Alanis Morissette-inspired singer-songwriter confessionals to shoegazy psychedelia. Certainly, few can claim to have covered so much musical ground. F ew 21-year-olds can claim to have enjoyed a pop career as long as Smith’s, which is now in its 10th year.
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