Jorja Smith's latest musical offering, 'What Are the Odds,' embarks on a sonic journey grounded in dance rhythms, yet it frequently struggles to connect on an emotional level. While the UK singer expresses a desire for listeners to feel both physical and emotional resonance, her performance often feels muted against producer P2J's polished soundscapes. This third studio effort, characterized by its rapid creation, presents a somewhat distant artistic persona, raising intriguing questions about the balance between artistic intention and the demands of the pop music landscape, particularly in the context of recent challenges to her artistic integrity.
The album's centerpiece, 'What's Done Is Done,' emerges as a highlight, featuring an old-school UK garage vibe infused with a relaxed G-funk undertone. Smith's vocals skillfully navigate the intricate melody, asserting dominance as she dismisses a former lover. This track stands out for its vitality, a quality often elusive in other parts of the album where Smith's delivery sometimes appears to follow the beat rather than defining it. Her previous album, 'Falling or Flying' from 2023, saw her maintain a busy schedule of deluxe editions, tours, and singles, alongside a deliberate withdrawal from social media to escape public scrutiny of her image. A notable incident involved the viral EDM track 'I Run' by Haven, which sparked accusations of AI voice cloning from Smith's label, FAAM, highlighting contemporary concerns about digital identity and intellectual property in music.
The intentional emotional distance evident in 'What Are the Odds' suggests Smith's effort to regain control over her public image and artistic voice. Throughout the album, her distinctive vocals are frequently veiled by reverb and soft-focus synthesizers, blending into the programmed percussion. This ethereal quality, while sometimes mesmerizing, keeps her performance at a remove, limiting both risk-taking and vocal experimentation. The opening track, 'For Life,' establishes a cosmic atmosphere that largely defines the album. Producer P2J's smooth, synth-heavy arrangements, incorporating elements of two-step garage, UK funky, and house, tend to create a homogenous soundscape. This uniformity in production is further compounded by lyrics that often default to generic breakup tropes, failing to inject the emotional depth needed to offset the sonic consistency.
Smith maintains a concise list of collaborations, featuring grime artist Devlin and Afrobeats sensation Wizkid. While Wizkid's contribution aligns with his prior work with P2J, resulting in an effortlessly enjoyable track, neither collaboration leaves a lasting impact. Listeners might long for the more playful and engaging energy of past collaborations, such as her track 'Crush' with AJ Tracey, which skillfully sampled Brandy and showcased a vivacity largely absent from the current album. This contrast underscores a potential missed opportunity for 'What Are the Odds' to fully leverage Smith's dynamic range and more expressive side.
The core issue is not Smith's ambition to produce a dance record; rather, it lies in the production's apparent disconnect from her emotional narrative. Unlike 'Falling or Flying,' where the music's physical energy amplified its emotional intensity, the arrangements in 'What Are the Odds' often feel independent of Smith's lyrical content. The beats remain largely static, and the words do little to inject dynamic tension. Smith revealed in an interview that the album's creation was remarkably swift, with five songs recorded in a single day and four more freestyled the next, a testament to her and P2J's efficiency. While many acclaimed albums have been created rapidly, envisioning 'What Are the Odds' as a more concise four-track EP, featuring standout songs like 'What's Done Is Done,' 'Pretend,' 'The Way It Was,' and 'When It Gets Like That,' suggests a potentially sharper and more impactful project. Such a format might have transformed Smith's perceived emotional detachment into a deliberate artistic aloofness, allowing greater freedom of expression within the dance genre and avoiding the diluted effect often associated with full-length albums in the pop industry.