On the outside, Tom Odell is living the wonderful life he sings about on his seventh album. The former BRITs Critics’ Choice winner has hit a prolific patch since becoming an independent artist, with his fourth album in five years. He’s gaining new fans on TikTok, opened for Billie Eilish (a fan of his 2024 album *Black Friday*) on tour in 2025, and delivered a self-assured tribute to Brian Wilson at Glastonbury a few weeks before this release. But dig deeper into his lyrics and there’s a mass of vulnerability, self-doubt, and sadness at the world. The willingness to bare his soul has led to a deep connection with fans—underlined by the continuing viral success of his 2012 debut single “Another Love” and 2023’s “Black Friday”—and *A Wonderful Life* finds Odell at his most authentic, even if he still doesn’t love the mid-thirties version of himself. “I’m standing in the mirror/I want to change my skin/Wish that I was taller/Wish that I was thin,” he sings on the early Radiohead-esque “Ugly.” Written on tour in 2024, *A Wonderful Life* is a snapshot of a hectic period in which Odell balances the messy business of life on the road with love and friendship. There’s a nod to a pre-gig burnout on “Can We Just Go Home Now,” where he’s determined to carry on despite his ills: “Call the doctor up to my hotel room/You see I’ve lost my voice, I’m in a very bad mood/Give me drugs, give me a drip, give me a 20 minute’s rest.” But the show does go on and by the time Odell reaches the album’s closing track, the Leonard Cohen-inspired “The End of Suffering,” there’s a glimpse of light coming through the curtains. “It’s good to see the sun,” sings Odell, suggesting that life might still be a little bit wonderful after all.
Mimi Webb’s *Confessions* is packed with self-assured pop goodness, but the singer-songwriter had so many doubts about it she abandoned her initial ideas. “The first version of the album was completely scrapped,” Webb tells Apple Music Radio. “I wrote it about a year and a half ago and I just freaked out and felt so uninspired. I was like, ‘I can’t sing these bloody songs for the next two years on tour. There’s just no way.’ Even though I had so much love for them, it wasn’t touching the surface for me, it wasn’t deep enough for what I was going through in my day-to-day life.” Webb admits starting again on the follow-up to 2023’s *Amelia* was a challenge, but it’s one that left her “very happy.” And putting in that extra shift paid off, with 12 songs that show the emotional range of mid-twenties life. Webb shot to fame in the early 2020s with the Charli D’Amelio-endorsed “Before I Go,” and *Confessions* finds her diving deeper. Beneath the glossy Y2K R&B of “Kiss My Neck” lies hidden heartbreak, and she offers a tender acceptance of her parents’ split after 30 years of marriage on “You Don’t Look at Me the Same.” One of Webb’s favorite tracks on the album is “Mind Reader,” with Meghan Trainor. “We went to her house and we were vibing the whole time writing that one,” she says. There’s also the standout “Love Language,” a tight three minutes of sophisticated pop that sees Webb examining what she wants from a partner. “It changes a lot with age,” she says. “When I was 21, it was gift giving and then as I got older, it’s all acts of service for me, just being a few steps ahead and helping me. If I’m rushing home from work, I’d love a bit of dinner on the table.” There was just one more element of uncertainty once *Confessions* was finished: the title. “I had no idea what I was going to call this album and I was back and forth,” she says. “There’s a lot of positive and a lot of negative in it, and I think that is the story of life. For me, it was about being able to break the fourth wall on this album and dive a lot deeper than the surface levels. It’s about the whole experience of unexpected turns—you never really know what’s around the corner.”
On Rob Thomas’ sixth solo album, *All Night Days*, the Matchbox Twenty bandleader yearns for the chaos of youth. The title puts the singer in that hazy early-morning light, in that half-sleep state after an all-nighter, before the body can figure out what time it is and why it’s been awake for so long. On the title track, Thomas cooks up a hard-charging drum groove and atmospheric synths that give way to a chugging guitar melody and pedal steel accents. He wishes to be wild for just one more minute, to approach life with the unabashed joyfulness of his youth. He admits it might be the booze speaking, but honesty always flows easier with inebriation. “Picture Perfect” is a throwback cut, featuring drum sounds from ’80s synth-pop records and glimmering synths. Here, old memories are like “sad, sad songs.” Thomas asks to be taken back to a time he can hold on to, to a world in which the highs of freedom are tangible—not merely memories he’s left singing about.
