girlfriend material

by Lauran Hibberd

Easily my favourite artist in the last five years, she's number 1 on my last.fm, she's also had first place in my best of lists two years in a row (2021 and 2022). So I was really looking forward to this.

If not as immediate as debut Garageband Superstar, Girlfriend Material definitely feels more personal, intimate and accomplished. With huge life events happening to Hibberd over the last 18 months, the album explores coping through that. From grief from the death of a family member to the grief of the end of a long-term relationship.

I've always felt that alongside the fun self-deprecation, Hibberd has always managed to do melancholic introspection really well. Older songs like "Shark Week" and "You Never Looked So Cool" paved the way for songs like "Slimming Down" and "Last Song Ever", and there's plenty of that here. With album opener "I Suck At Grieving" being a fully relatable exploration of the process of grieving, not shying away from the mundane constant process that it is. With a frank description of attempts to grief and some vividly imagery to express this. It's a strong opener, adding a lot of context to the rest of the album.

And the rest of the album works after settling in. From the "Complicated" homage that is "jealous" sitting alongside "happy for you", "better than i was before", "anti-fragile", "girlfriend material", "pretty good for a bad day", "so romantic" and "not the girl you hoped" all tied into an ongoing narrative of living after a break-up. It beds itself a firm footing that the album is a concept album around break-ups and the stuff around it.

But the album does manage to get it's Hibberd-esque bops in. "2nd prettiest girl in the world" is a full-on banger that might be this album's "Still Running." Fully locked into Hibberd's brand of self-deprecation and the best chorus on the album.

I think I might still slightly prefer GS, but this is still an album I know I'll end up playing the rest of the year. 2 albums for 2 at the moment. I really can't think of anyone else who is hitting my music taste as much as Hibberd is at the moment.

Love it.