Blue Madonna by BØRNS (2.5/5)

Must Hear Tracks: “Faded Heart” “Bye-bye Darling” “Tension (Interlude)”

BØRNS is back! The trickle of singles he’s been releasing since “Faded Heart” on July 28th, 2017 have finally culminated with a full-length album: Blue Madonna. There’s quite a bit to like here, but forgettable lyrics keep Garrett Borns from the upper echelon. He is an artist in limbo. Is he a bonafide pop star? Is he a glam rock auteur like Bowie or Bolan? There are examples of both on Blue Madonna, but not enough of either to commit BØRNS to one side or the other. For now, he hangs in the middle with his modern incarnation of glam-pop. The beauty of that dichotomy is that BØRNS is probably best off if he continues to straddle that line. He has landed on a musical style that fits him like one of his absurdly tight shirts. The only improvements he needs to make are in his lyrics.

Blue Madonna‘s greatest strengths are the soundscapes. Sizzling yet distant guitars on “Iceberg” and the extended theremin solo on “Supernatural” are just two examples of sounds that captivate the listener. Modern and vintage sounds mingle throughout the album.  The synthesizers sound finely tuned, the pianos sound like they were ripped from an old ELO recording, every guitar tone has its own personality, and Garrett Borns’s malleable voice is the glue that holds these impeccably curated sounds together. From a purely sonic perspective, Blue Madonna is varied, consistently interesting, and downright pleasurable.

Unfortunately, the lyrics don’t do the melodies justice. It’s as if Garrett Borns has a curse where everything he sings comes out like a recycled pop song. It’s hard to connect to the music on a personal level because the lyrics sound like they’re aimed at as many adolescents as possible. “When the lights go down, I want to be your man” . . . was that sung by Adam Levine, Justin Bieber, BØRNS, or Sam Smith? “God save our young blood” . . . was it Lorde, Halsey, BØRNS, or Troye Sivan? You can play this game with too many of the lyrics on Blue Madonna. It doesn’t detract from the compositions themselves, which are too well executed to be completely undermined by unimpressive lyrics. However, the lyrics definitely don’t set BØRNS apart from other pop artists.

On Dopamine, BØRNS’ first album, his penchant for endlessly listenable, grandiose pop music shone most brightly on the hits (“Electric Love” and “10,000 Emerald Pools”). On Blue Madonna, there are still plenty of grandiose and listenable pop tunes (“Faded Heart,” “Second Day of Summer,” and “God Save Our Young Blood,” to name a few) but they don’t have the same spark as his previous hits. They are more subdued, and the lyrics skew toward the generic. Instead, the deep cuts are the most promising. Its easy to overlook the 1:34 flash of “Tension (Interlude),” but a closer listen reveals it as the most repeatable composition on the album. “Bye-bye Darling,” the final track on the album, might be the most compelling example of BØRNS’ underutilized songwriting talent. Lyrically, he bids a fond farewell to paperback novels, telephones, and accidental social interactions while assuring the listener that it’ll be ok eventually. Beneath his breathy crooning, a lush arrangement of acoustic pianos, guitars, natural sounding strings, and buzzing synthesizers fill the song out beautifully. But the real treat comes after the song ends: as the remnants of “Bye-bye Darling” fade away, BØRNS comes back for a brief encore. Accompanied by bare piano and backing vocals, he sounds like Paul McCartney. Its scary how effortlessly perfect this outro is, and it hints at the potential BØRNS has. Maybe the key to Garrett Borns’s future success is for him to stop trying so hard.