Camila Cabello - Camila (Japanese Limited Edition) (2018)

When Camila Cabello announced this debut album in May, she named it ‘The Hurting. The Healing. The Loving’. Cabello, who’d quit US girlband Fifth Harmony the previous December, said her solo record would tell “the story of my journey from darkness into light, from a time when I was lost to a time when I found myself again”. But a few months later, a Latin-influenced pop tune she’d cautiously released as a “promotional single” became an unexpected smash: ‘Havana’ eventually spent five weeks at Number One before finally being toppled by Ed Sheeran. Perhaps in response to its success, Cabello’s album now arrives later than originally planned, with a less melodramatic title: ‘Camila’.

Though there’s no obvious “darkness into light” storyline, ‘Camila’ definitely has edgier moments than the romantic ‘Havana’, which was named after the Cuban city where she was born. “You’re good at making me feel small,” she sings on ‘Something’s Gotta Give’, a strikingly direct break-up song. Stripped-down piano ballad ‘Consequences’ feels even more candid: she tells a former partner that “loving you was dumb and dark and cheap,” and says she “lost a little weight because I wasn’t eating”. It’s a long way from her biggest Fifth Harmony hit, ‘Work From Home’, which was basically about bunking off early to get laid.