Malcolm Todd wants to be the next Main Pop Boy — and his debut album Malcolm Todd proves that he’s willing to fight for it, even if he gets a little bloody and bruised in the process. There’s been a noticeable absence of Bieber-esque figures in pop music for a while now, though many have tried to fill that role. Partial Harry Styles replicas have popped up here and there, too. At 21, Todd knows that pop doesn’t function quite the same way that it did when those juggernaut artists first arrived. Their playbooks can’t be replicated. Now, he’s stepping into the ring with a strategy built around careful observations, bluesy guitars and warped synths, and an intriguing vision for a new kind of male pop star — one who makes self-awareness and even self-doubt part of his sales pitch.
“Dance monkey dance/You’re our favorite fool/You’ll never make a profit/If you’re just trying to be cool,” Todd sings on “Harry Styles,” the album’s purposefully deceptive opening track, which veers on parody, or performance art; the minute and a half of passive, acoustic-backed harmonies give no indication of the swelling, big band sounds that appear across the record. “My arms are getting tired/From holding back myself /But if I’m not a Harry Styles/They’re gonna put me on the shelf.” He laments about not being picked to perform at Tyler, the Creator’s Camp Flog Gnaw in 2024, a notable assessment of who he wants to be aligned with in the pop ecosystem. But he doesn’t accept defeat, instead resolving to train harder. Across the album, he makes his case with knockout performances that make it hard not to root for him even when he occasionally stumbles.
Todd lands his hardest blow on “Bleed,” a tag-team effort with Omar Apollo, who did make it to Flog Gnaw. Last year, he spent some time on the road with Apollo, who was touring his own eclectic pop record God Said No. At the time, Todd only had one full-length release under his belt: the promising mixtape Sweet Boy featuring his breakout single “Roommates.” There isn’t a single misstep on “Bleed,” an enthralling performance of all-consuming sacrifice paired with a music video set in a fight club. “Do you wanna know/Know, know about me?” Todd asks. “I swear, you can take control/Control of how my heart bleeds.” His handoff to Apollo is sleek and seamless, keeping the playing field even when he could have easily been overshadowed by the more veteran musician’s sweeping charm.
Todd finds his own signature strength in his earnest grappling with how much of himself he’s willing to sacrifice for love and success — and where those battles intersect. “Tell me where you’re gonna be when I’m gone/You’ve got more of my own heart than I got,” he sings on “Walk to Class,” a theatrical cut that bounces along a plucky bass line. Like the rest of the record, Todd helmed writing and production on the track with collaborators Jonah Cochran and Charlie Ziman. There’s a physicality to his vocal performance that appears again on the deliciously dramatic single “Chest Pain,” sounding almost as though he’s stumbling around while performing. He bleeds out as the loneliness of long distance (“symptoms of sorrow and dread”) consumes him.
On the bluesy standout “Make Me a Better Man,” Todd croons as though he’s gripping the microphone on stage at a hazy, dimly lit speakeasy. “Now I’m in a place that I’ve never seen/With someone I have never been/It might make me a better man/But you’ll never know,” he sings. “I ain’t never cried/But I’m getting closer then I’d like/You had my heart in your two hands/And you let it go.” The song is punctuated with a dizzying guitar solo, a reflection of the album’s masterful instrumentation that feels connected to the sprawling guitar work of Mk.gee, another shadowy pop force. Later on, Todd opens “Concrete” with a woman calling him pathetic for crying. He tries to put on a sharper edge to counter his sensitivity, but barely convinces even himself. “I don’t want to hate you, but I’ll try,” he offers.
Todd takes an emotional beating throughout the album. He tries to hide the extent of his internal damage on “Doll,” singing: “I might break this time around/But you won’t hear a sound.” He follows it up with “Lying,” a brassy, horn-backed track tinged with desperation as his armor cracks straight down the middle. “My nature’s been concealing everything that I could be,” he sings. “What you know ain’t all of me.” But the twinkling, soft rock-influenced highlight “Florence” introduces the lover behind the fighter, the reason he’ll keep stepping into the ring. “I loved you before I could even say it/And I’ll miss you before you walk away,” he sings. “I’m in deep but I don’t know if I can chase it/I’ll miss you but I know that you can’t stay.”
Malcolm Todd feels like an introduction that’s also a bit of a farewell, tempering its blind ambition with a sense of subtle hesitancy as the singer-songwriter steps into the pop ring. “I faded away/When they pay me to play for you/Now I don’t sound the same/Don’t let them take me away from you,” he pleads into a vocoder on “Cheer for Me,” before closing the album with a promise to return on the stripped-back outlier “I’ll Come Back for You.” Despite painting himself as this willfully tattered and worn punching bag, Todd demonstrates, more than anything else, a true spirit of resilience. It’s an essential trait for a pop star to have. He’s betting on himself. We are, too. It just might pay off.
