The constant oscillation between tenors over the album’s 12 tracks creates a battle to maintain lyrical focus and intensity, which Nokia handles to mixed success. She’s at her best when she locks into the understated flow rooted in the tradition of her city’s boom-bap rap that barely rises above the whisper: “I’m drinking blood in the mountain, I got the fountain of youth/I’m scaring men off with rumors, can’t tell the lies from the truth,” she raps along ghostly shrieks and pounding drums on “Blue Velvet.” But production avenues that sound like demos jacked from other artists’ hard drives diminishes some tracks’ impact, especially when paired with writing that doesn’t reach past the surface. “Drop Dead Gorgeous” lands like a Charli XCX bootleg where the BPM doesn’t reach the threshold to become the banger that it wants to be, and her musings feel like they should be backing a TikTok edit of a Bodies Bodies Bodies fan-cam. If you close your eyes, you could trick yourself into thinking the Lindsey Stirling-assisted “Pink Bronco” is a Lana Del Rey cut, where Nokia contorts her voice to match Lana’s ethereal register while attempting to subvert the Americana aesthetic with yearning for solitude and self-love. She conjures images of packing a suitcase and never looking back, dropping references to green juice and white picket fences, almost making you wonder if she’s just saying things because they sound idyllic.
But there are enough moments where the enthralling production overpowers the more cliché leanings. “Matcha Cherry” is quite lush, with layered strings swirling underneath as her voice crescendos to the refrain, “I’m in love with her, see myself in her, I think I know that, girl.” The switch between the murkiness and blown-out bassline helps “Gossip Girl” leap into “club hit” territory, giving the satirical lyrical tone a bit more oomph on the back of Tenebrae-like synths. But Nokia’s most incisive writing occurs when she takes aim at a particular target—perceived contradictions be damned. She has zero qualms about wielding equal vitriol for all her enemies, regardless of gender: “You’re male-centered and you make bad decisions/Bird bitches all bread, no chicken,” she spits on “Phoebe Philo,” cutting through the fat to get to the crux of the problem with a particular type of woman. She’s called Girls as a wake-up call to other women to center their comfort and care; everything else comes second. She makes that clear from “Blue Velvet”’s first lines: “Girlhood is a spectrum, pretty is destruction/I just fell from grace, and I made it into something.” That grave urgency isn’t always maintained throughout Girls’ runtime, but Nokia never lets you doubt her intention for a second.
