Lingering in Doorways

I am in love with Audrey Hobert. In love. No kidding, I think I am actually kind of obsessed with her and quite literally everything she does. Since the release of her debut album “Who’s The Clown?” — and really since “Sue Me” not three months ago — I’ve been a proactive member of the Audrey Hobert marketing team, a position I know one must take very seriously and which I do, with gusto. It’s been really easy. After what feels like months of hyperfixation drought (I’ve honestly cared for little of this year’s pop culture besides maybe Katseye and the last season of Severance), I feel like my quality of life has once again been improved by a personal rediscovery of fandom. I’ve missed the exciting countdowns and the radio show interviews and the TikToks. I’ve missed new music. And I’ve missed Audrey Hobert — in the sense that I might not have known who she was before this summer, but now that I do I’ve become aware of this gap in my life she was always meant to fill. This is a track-by-track listening party-esque journal — something I’ve done before with “The Good Witch” by Maisie Peters — and not a review, exactly (because I’m a bad reviewer that will give everything I like five stars), but a closer look at why her music hits me as hard as it does.

I’ll preface this deep dive with the disclaimer that I am a girl who listens to a lot of pop music, and that I have an affinity for up-and-coming female artists. I love storytellers and I love when tracks are boppy and danceable, but at the same time reveal something true and honest. I love a bold voice and a fresh take. I love when my heartstrings are plucked at. When I’m asked what kind of music I listen to I typically say “Oh, you know, the Taylor Swift genre,” which is deceptively no-nonsense and enough to satisfy any casual attempts at small talk, but what I really mean by that is “Diary Music,” as in, “I could have written this in my diary.” This is the real appeal of Audrey’s music to me. There are no real love songs in this album — instead she sings about love only in relation to dating as a social experiment, or the desperation to be seen as someone hot and desirable. It’s so relatable, and the perfect accompaniment to my life at the moment. It also certainly doesn’t hurt that her style evokes a surprising amount of nostalgia. I heard “Bowling Alley” and instantly thought of early 2000s Disney Original movies, reminiscent of scrunchied side ponytails and birthday parties and an era of my childhood that is tricky to capture. It’s so fun. She’s so fun. In this parasocial relationship of ours I see her as this spunky older sister, awesome and so awkward that it’s automatically cool, the kind of person you can’t help but want to be when you grow up. And I do. I can’t help but want to be Audrey.

I’m rambling here, and I should stop because I would really like to get into this track list and what each song made me think and feel. I would also really like for you to listen with me as we go, because at the end of the day that’s my job here done.

“Who’s The Clown?” is Audrey Hobert’s debut album, out on all streaming platforms now.

I like to touch people

What I’ve learned about Audrey Hobert is that she’s a very humorous sort of person, the kind that can’t resist a cheeky pun or two, and that she began as a staff writer on a Nickelodeon sitcom right after majoring in screenwriting. Knowing this — and maybe even just by seeing the title of this first track — might give you an idea of the tone the entire album takes. In this narrated scenario she is at a party (spoiler alert — she is never not at a party) and when asked about what she likes to do, she thinks of saying, “I like to touch people.” Not in the way your mind instantly travels (although actually, possibly, maybe a little of that too). What she means is that she likes to make an impact — that she likes the way people respond to her, like they’re totally in sync and she just gets them — when in truth the connection is almost always superficial. It’s her people-pleasing tendencies at work. Not fate, not instant chemistry, but a performance.

This is a short track, but the brevity here is intentional. It ends in that sing-songy, la-la-la, almost Disney Channel-esque way I mentioned that eclipses everything else if you’re not listening closely. But while I breezed through this intro during my first run, a second and third listen hit me hard. I’m a very social person when I try to be. I’ve been told the same things — that I’m charismatic, warm even, but I worry sometimes that it’s only because I make an active effort. I like being perceived that way. It’s a muscle I’ve had to train after a pre-teenhood of being socially inept. And while I do know that I have a genuine curiosity for strangers, and that my excitement in finding common ground with someone has never been faked, I can’t deny that there’s a layer of selfish intent underneath it all — that in some way or another, I’m using these “successful” interactions to improve my self-perception somewhat. I like that this is a sentiment Audrey wrote about because it’s not the type of material that gets made into a song. This unflinching self-awareness, along with a melody that you quickly establish as her sound, is a common theme in this album, and you’ll find it everywhere you look.

Sue me

“Sue Me” is her most popular track by far, the first single of hers to be released, and also my introduction to Audrey as an artist. The music video popped up on my Youtube explore page the day it was posted, and since first viewing (since those first few seconds, really) I’ve been properly hooked. Though the song itself — an upbeat break-up anthem meant to be screamed into your hairbrush — is a relentless earworm, one that burrows deeper into your brain with every replay, I was initially drawn to her because she’s just such a joy to watch.

Audrey begins this era by dancing in her bedroom. You can’t tear your eyes away — there’s something magnetic about the way she moves, the way she gets down with reckless abandon. Her energy is so infectious that it exudes through the screen. And then she starts singing, and you’re bopping your head along, and before you know it your new vocal stim is “And I’m sorry that your dog died,” which you learn too late is so not the lyric to be singing out loud. I also really love, “Not that it matters, but I’m breaking patterns and getting so good at pilates,” which may be a mouthful, but it’s so darn satisfying to get right.

Drive

I don’t drive (yet), but I like to think that in a month or two this will be the track playing when I’m in my car, with the windows down, escaping a party I was itching to leave and have now successfully abandoned. I can’t wait to drive for this very reason. I love the idea of being able to just dip. Everyone tells me that this is the best thing about driving, the freedom, the ability to go wherever whenever you want — and I do see it, and want it so badly for myself. It seems like such a healing activity. There is nothing, I assume, like flying down an open road, especially when you’re going nowhere in particular — just the act of driving is a treat. In “Drive” I’m getting that Audrey isn’t just talking about literally driving away, but the ability to just keep moving. To take yourself out of situations that no longer serve you, and to recognize when that time has come. Sometimes, she repeats over and over again, it’s all you can do.

Wet Hair

Audrey is so good at telling stories. I’m saying this as though it’s not a fact you’ll be able to glean for yourself, as though “Wet Hair” isn’t a prime example. It’s brilliant imagery. She’s pep-talking herself through the lead-up to a date with an ex, a date she’s trying to convince herself she doesn’t care about — which, sure, explains the hair she doesn’t bother to style, but not the drinks she’s knocking back, or the nervous wreck she turns into in the car while waiting for him to show up. The picture she paints in this is so endearing to me. It’s so real, down to her insisting the whole time that she doesn’t really want him — but also ending up in bed with him with the excuse of, well, whatever, she does what she wants. I feel like it’s a situation we’ve all been in at some point. The urge to gaslight ourselves into nonchalance in order to spare ourselves from disappointment hits too close to home. I’ve also got nothing but rave reviews for this music video, which is so early 2010s YouTube coded and really how more modern music videos need to be.

★ Bowling alley

Though “Sue Me” was my introduction to Audrey, it was the release of “Bowling Alley” that fully cemented her as one of my new favorite artists. It’s a contender for my top song of the year. I love everything about this track — from its catchy melody, which I immediately took to the Finsta to fish for why it sounds so fresh and yet so damn familiar, to this Oscar-worthy, self-directed music video, which of course features a dance battle on bowling alley lanes. Lines like, “So wrong to think everyone loves me, but doesn’t need to be around me all the time,” could pass as the title of a Substack article I would actually read. I find myself so giddy replaying this (kilig might be the most appropriate emotion) because of the weird sense of deja vu it evokes — like I’m a middle-schooler again, watching my favorite show. I think a lot of its charm also lies in the fact that it’s essentially a three-act story about thinking about going to a bowling alley party, being at a bowling alley party, and leaving a bowling alley party. It’s so funny and unserious and it works. If stanning Audrey were a religion I’d say “Bowling Alley” would be the most likely to convert you.

★ Thirst Trap

“I’m taking thirst traps in the mirror in my room, I think I look bad so I take a hundred,” is how the chorus of this banger goes. “I used to kick back watching movies and the news. But now I’m lame, it’s such a shame, I used to be so super cool.” The thirst trap bug is a rite of passage. Modern dating can be hell on earth, and in “Thirst Trap,” Audrey comments on that soul-sucking need for validation, the desperation to be seen and wanted. It’s funny and relatable and honestly really sad, because it’s true. We’ve all been there. I love the bridge the most — “But now I listen to my playlists and pretend I’m you, look at what I posted and pretend I’m you” — because it captures the real performative nature of having a crush on a guy. It’s an exhibition really, a painstakingly curated display, that begs the question: Are we as obsessed with the person in our head as we are with the perception of ourselves through their eyes? I love the shot at the end of the music video, of Audrey gazing almost lovingly at her own reflection in the pool, a nod to the Greek myth of Narcissus (who, as a refresher, fell so in love with himself that he wasted away and died). Although the song is clearly a message on vanity, and how these acts of desperation make us boring, lesser versions of ourselves, I choose to see that one image in a more empowering, appreciative, “I think I’m actually really beautiful” type of way.

Chateau

Surprise! Audrey is at another party! And it’s a party she does not want to be at. “Chateau,” which according to the online forums is a fan favorite by a landslide, has Audrey at an industry party with very important people. She’s supposed to be having the time of her life, surrounded by all this glitz and glamour, but the truth of the matter is that the whole thing is actually really, really lame. “Are we legally bound to stand in this circle, looking around?” she bemoans. “Can’t lie but I’m thinking like, high school is better than this.” That’s a bold statement to make, so you know she means it. The charm of this track is that it’s catchy but relatively straightforward — that moment of hyper-realization when you’re drunk at a party, and are standing there stupefied thinking Oh shit, I’m drunk at a party. In this case Audrey may or may not be on something, but she is miserable. It’s an awful, ugly feeling, but it makes for a damn good song.

★ Sex and the city

While one might think a track titled “Sex and the City” would be Audrey’s spicy homage to the New York dating scene, this is surprisingly the most earnest, stripped-down ballad of the record. It’s an assumption Audrey refutes in the very first line: “This isn’t Sex and the City.” Here Audrey is trauma-dumping to her Uber driver while crossed. She goes to bars hoping to meet someone (no dating apps — if it’s not fate, she doesn’t want it). She leaves disappointed. There are lines in this song that I swear I might’ve written myself at some point: “But instead I’m in the shower, gotta feel a warm touch somehow,” and “I wanna wake up in make-up with him in the morning.” Audrey in this is a kindred spirit, one that touches on a familiar ache. It’s exhausting to be a hopeless romantic in the age of modern hook-up culture. It’s exhausting to dream of any kind of romance at all, really. “Sex and the City” is a stand-out because it’s Audrey at her most soulful and vulnerable, smack-dab in the middle of her most glitter gel pen tracks, and yet it still boasts of her signature stream-of-consciousness humor. I’m rating you five stars.

Shooting star

We’re talking green flags, red flags, and all the flags in between. “Shooting Star” is the type of song I put on while getting ready — by that I mean pure dance party material — that sees Audrey, self-aware queen that she is, spewing one blunt truth after another. “He’s perfect, he treats me like shit but it’s worth it,” she sings. “‘Cause it hurts me, and I’d rather be hurt when I’m drunk at a club on a Thursday.” Because I’m in my party girl era (as coined by my hometown friends who clock me drinking out every weekend), I get this sentiment a lot more than I probably should. Sometimes, you just want to do it for the plot. Does it matter if you get hurt in the process? (Yes, actually, but who cares?) Fun is fun, even when logic points you in the other direction. “Shooting Star” is a bop, and it’s so infectious I keep humming it under my breath.

Don’t go back to his ass

AKA Audrey Plays Therapist — a lyrically impressive, one- sided conversation we’ve all probably heard (and maybe even been on the receiving end of) before. “That shit is a trap, it never lasts,” she pleads with a delusional friend, proceeding to play a game of “Remember when?” Cons are listed. This guy they’re talking about is a jerk. But it’s safe to assume she’s speaking to a brick wall, because while the sheer awfulness of her friend’s ex is obvious to us, said friend probably still needs to be locked up in a cellar and screamed at to understand. The folk melodies in this track are so satisfying, building up to the perfect crash-out of a crescendo, and the rhyming schemes are just plain fun. I can’t stop trying to sing “The city sounds like gin and tonic / and old friends from college / and sunsets and honest opinions and olives,” and “He made you feel like he wouldn’t fidget / if you were dead in the ditches / and all his exes were bitches,” which are downright poetic and scratch an itch in my brain.

★ Phoebe

The One In Which Audrey Hobert Watches Friends For The First Time and immediately sees herself in Lisa Kudrow’s eccentric, comic relief Phoebe Buffay — who, she later points out in interviews, is the only one in the friend group who isn’t romantically pursued by the three male leads. “Why else would you want me?” she muses in the chorus. “I think I’ve got a fucked-up face.” But the song, as much as it deals with grappling with insecurity, dwells less on the lack and more on the sweet victory of overcoming it. “And that thought used to haunt me,” she continues immediately after, “‘Til I fell in its sweet embrace.” Acne might be a bitch, but it goes away. And who cares if she’s pretty if she’s Phoebe — who we Friends fans know is amazing? It totally works. I find this song uniquely empowering. It’s impactful because it feels genuine — no long-winding sermons, no overly corny platitudes, just the solid acceptance of who she is. She knows that the right guy — wherever he is — will love her when he gets to know her, so what’s the point in stressing? It’s a damn beautiful perspective. My own personal mantra from now on is “And most of these days I feel the dull ache, but then I say stop, and then I feel great,” because it really is all in the mind.

Silver Jubilee

I listened to “Silver Jubilee” for the first time and immediately thought: “Well, that’s the song of my 20s.” Please, just once, can I scream this song the freeway with the top down? To me it’s giving Avril Lavigne’s “Here’s To Never Growing Up” with a dash of Kesha, the perfect girlhood remix of the 2010s party anthems I listened to as a pre-teen, but even more special because of this era of my life I’m claiming it in. I really do feel like I’m in my prime, where every night feels like a “blink and you could miss it” moment, and “Silver Jubilee” encapsulates that feeling of being young, carefree, and despite everything, hopeful. It’s the perfect finalé to a perfect album — a bright, bubbly, head-rush of a parting note.

Who’s The Clown?

I don’t care if you think I’m glazing this album too hard. I mean every word. For the past few days since its release, “Who’s The Clown?” has been on repeat through my wired headphones (I have to commit to the bit) and every listen has been nothing short of a religious experience. I see so much of myself in this record, and there’s this sense of kinship I feel with Audrey Hobert, whose blend of comedy and hard-hitting self-awareness is a breath of fresh air. I think, above anything, it’s the giddiness I feel when I play some of these tracks — I feel so connected to a younger version of myself that would have loved blasting this in her pre-teen bedroom and directing Video Star music videos. I have half the mind to paint my walls teal and purchase some jelly sandals for the hell of it.

Thanks, Audrey. Really. Consider me touched.

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Angelica Mendoza is based in Orange County, California. She’s the part-time blogger — and by part-time she means twice a year if you’re lucky — behind Lingering In Doorways, a personal essay collection documenting her early twenties. On Instagram you can find her on @lingeringindoorways for writing updates.