Sad Romance and Complaints – An Album Review of Ckay’s ‘Sad Romance’
On Friday, 23 September 2022 CKay dropped his highly anticipated debut album titled Sad Romance. As a long-time fan of CKay’s music, I must admit I was left wanting more. I believe CKay has the range to create music that sounds a lot more creative and inspiring than what he delivered on Sad Romance.
Sad Romance feels and sounds safe. Commercially, the album is probably perfect – its easily digestible, relatable and the songs are arranged and mixed properly. Some of the records, such as ‘soja,’ ‘leave me alone’ and ‘mmadu’ are also quite catchy. However, if we discard commerciality and just focus on the music (which is the main objective of Indigo Distortion), I personally think the album sounds formulaic. It’s ironic that I hardly feel little to no emotion conveyed in many of the songs, considering the theme and album title falsely teases the listener and deceives us into thinking we are in for a display of sensitive emotions and feelings throughout the project. I wanted to feel heartbreak, emotional pain and ‘Sad Romance,’ through the music and instead I received lack lustre lyrics about cheating and being cheated on, as heard on ‘you cheated, I cheated too.’
I wish CKay took more creative risks on Sad Romance to deliver a much more versatile and cohesive debut, as he’s done in the past with his previous EPs – CKay the First (30 August, 2019) and Boyfriend (12 February, 2021). With CKay’s cross-over success (due to ‘love nwantiti’ blowing up on tik tok in 2021), the pressures of appealing to a mass audience probably factored into what songs made the album and what stayed off. Nonetheless, I would have loved if the album included music which gave me the same feeling I got from hearing ‘Mezebu,’ (featuring Oxlade) or ‘Show My Side,’ (featuring Amaarae) for the first time. These songs are so authentic and unique, but still commercial enough to appeal to a wide range of music fans. From my perspective, such authenticity is lacking on Sad Romance and the pre-dominant focus appears to be commerciality.
Although I have my complaints regarding the Sad Romance album, there are some standout songs. One standout song, which was not previously released as a single is ‘come close,’ featuring Ayra Starr. In my opinion, this song is the album’s saving grace because it has the emotion and feeling missing on a lot of the other records. Ayra’s voice sounds so rich and subtle, making her the perfect feature to complement CKay’s soothing vocals on ‘come close.’
Most of the songs I enjoyed on the album such as ‘you,’ ‘emiliana,’ and of course ‘love nwantiti,’ were previously released singles. This was concerning and anti-climatic to me, as there was hardly any element of surprise or feeling of ‘ohh he was hiding and saving this one for the album!’ while listening to Sad Romance.
I like to find hidden gems when I listen to a project for the first time and all great albums have these. It’s not a good sign that my favourite songs on the album (asides from ‘come close’) are previously released singles, especially in relation to an artist as talented and versatile as CKay who is capable of much more artistically.