That a 95-minute film appeared in theaters this week to promote Free Spirit is a sign of the nexus he’s nailed: being backed both by genuinely fervent fans and by the industrial music machine.Īll of which means it’s tempting to hear his shockingly inert new album as a referendum on this era in pop. When it comes to the traditional barometer for reach, the Billboard Hot 100, his biggest hits are collaborations with other recent pop arrivals: Halsey, Benny Blanco, Normani, Logic, and Alessia Cara (the latter two on the sadly timely anti-suicide song “1-80”). Apple Music has been advertising his second album, Free Spirit, nonstop over the past few weeks. He’s currently the fourth-most-streamed artist this month on Spotify. The song initiated a rise that would see him labeled as a voice of his generation, and the 21-year-old’s success can be quantified in fittingly of-the-moment terms. But this prayer was a murmur from someone sunk into a mattress amid hours of scrolling.
His rich drawl had a faint hint of church in it. As he pleaded for a crush to send him coordinates on Google Maps or one of its competitors, a harplike trill sounded, questioning and unpredictably paced, like a notification. He was getting specific, app-y, and post-privacy.
He wasn’t hanging on the telephone, and he wasn’t emailing someone’s heart. The debut single from Khalid Robinson, 2016’s “ Location,” marked a new model in an old love-song category: the kind about telecommunications.
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