On April 4, 2025, Malcolm Todd released his new album “Malcolm Todd” which included 13 new songs along with a track featuring Omar Apollo. The eponymous album, “Malcom Todd” is Todd’s follow up album from 2024, “Sweet Boy” which was Todd’s debut album with a smash hit of 150 million streams on Spotify. This album brings an assortment of alternative R&B and indie pop that combine into a pleasant listening experience for the listener. This album explores a plethora of ideas such as love, not fitting in, and loss that brings a powerful story through Todd’s music.
The first track in the album, “Harry Styles,” has a uniquely different tone than most Malcolm Todd songs, and has a very soothing zen feeling to the whole song, in which Todd describes his feeling as a pop star in California and his inadequacy compared to other famous pop stars. This song is an out-of-character intro for a Todd album, but is very much welcomed.
“Make Me a Better Man” is a song that has a very mysterious message about someone who wronged him. Todd later confirmed that the song was about a girl who broke his heart and turned this into a song about his feelings afterwards and how it may have made him a better person. This song has a very accusatory beat that makes the listener feel what Todd was trying to portray perfectly, such as the lyric “You’re lookin’ bored, you’re lookin’ at me like you look at the ground”.
Additionally, a few songs have a more unique tone to which Todd does not typically incorporate. An example is “Good Job Malcolm,” which was a very short song that incorporated a violin solo that transitioned into an electric guitar. On the contrary, the track “I do” is simply a guitar duet by the sound of it, as if it was not recorded in a studio of any kind. This song was simple, yet nice as it was a slower pace song without any theatrics.
While this album was overall a great piece, some covers such as “Who’s the Fool” have a rather bland and static flow to them that do not clearly demonstrate much to them other than confusion as to what the lyrics are about.
Along with the song “Doll,” similar to “Who’s the Fool,” has a rather repetitive nature, additionally, has lyrics that do not mean more than face value and fall rather flat when put with an upbeat tempo that does not feel right when put with the lyrics.
Despite the slight disappointment from these songs, the track “Chest Pain” is nothing short of spectacular. Not only is this song the most popular track on the whole album by a mile, but it also has some of the greatest vocals out of all of Todd’s songs by a wide margin. The message of the song being Todd’s struggle for connection when it comes to love ties this song together beautifully. This theme is demonstrated in the lyrics, “My chest is hurting, my feet can’t fall out of bed, I don’t know where to go.” giving it a well deserved 89 million monthly listens.
Additionally, the song “Bleed” was a well blended mix of vocals tangled with drum and electric guitar, and was also the only feature of the album, with R&B pop star Omar Apollo. This collaboration resulted in a wonderful chorus telling a story about struggling to fit in and having to hide one’s true self to appeal to loved ones.
This album was a great mix of the vocals of Todd that have stayed consistently amazing throughout his short music career. Despite some repetition in the lyrics, Todd still created a very impressive album with a whopping 93.8 million streams. Along with that, this album has many amazing instrumentals that are incorporated perfectly into the songs that accumulate into a collection of beautiful sounds.
