10 Best Pop Albums Of 2018
8. Christine & The Queens - Chris
With her Christine & The Queens act, Hélöise Letissier has always made the graft behind her craft seem irritatingly easy, but don't sleep on the breezy veneer. Simply brushing off her exceptional second studio LP as another short story of bi-lingual love and lust ignores her deft grasp of what glues heart and hit together.
Far from sophomore slump it could have been, 'Chris' distills some of the mass exposure received through the Tilted-led debut, enhancing the aesthetic and allowing Letissier to refine and polish an already-shimmering reputation as an unexpected and organic burgeoning pop icon.
There's no variation or sub-genre marked European Sex Poetry in record shops yet, but this would have seen shelves rapidly emptied had it become the first to the fulfil the description. Girlfriend was the album's gift to the mainstream in 2018, but Damn (What Must A Woman Do) and The Walker make the most of Letissier's awe-inspiring gift for imagery and heft.
For all it evocatively offers, the album doesn't compromise the value of a killer hook, gut-wrenching vocal or artisan sexual energy. These are traits that broke her away from the chasing pack in 2014. Four years later and those same supposed contemporaries still struggling in the unsettled dust.