Big Ideas

On <i>Big Ideas</i>, Remi Wolf gives us grade-A pop music viewed through a funhouse mirror—familiar shapes twisted into kaleidoscopic new forms. Doubling down on the quirky charisma and unabashed joy of her debut LP, the boundary-pushing pop artist’s sophomore album reveals the true scope of her artistic vision: There are husky soul excursions (“Motorcycle”), cacophonous indie anthems (“Wave”), helium-filtered disco cuts (“Slay Bitch”) and splashes of electro and jazz. These explorations never feel scattershot or unsure of themselves. Wolf’s magic is that she knows exactly who she is. Her songwriting is more sophisticated here—but still genuinely funny—and covers a lot of emotional ground. Ping-ponging between vulnerability and cheeky bravado, she takes listeners inside the hyperactive brain of a Gen Z twentysomething—overstimulation, searching, sarcasm and all. “So good the sound of crypto bros/Eating cubanos by myself,” she quips on “Alone in Miami”, an upbeat song about the isolation of celebrity. “The walls are closin' in on me in this Art Deco museum/Daughters in thongs are roamin' freely, pop stars in my DMs.” It’s this carefree combination of power and sensitivity—she’s both the life of the party and the friend you break down to at 3 am—that makes <i>Big Ideas</i> more than a collection of bops. Rather, it’s a dizzying, stream-of-consciousness snapshot of what it feels like to be young in 2024, searching for depth and meaning in an increasingly material world.