via Pitchfork

If you’re unsure of why Lykke Li named her third album I Never Learn, the last four songs leave nothing to the imagination: “Love Me Like I’m Not Made of Stone”, “Never Gonna Love Again”, “Heart of Steel”, “Sleeping Alone”. The titles alone feel like disclaimers—are you willing to live life on these terms? It’s worth noting, then, that Lykke Li moved over 5,400 miles from her native Sweden to Los Angeles at the age of 28 after the most painful breakup of her life. It hardly matters that almost none of us will experience anything like that; what is important is that many of us have endured the kind of heartbreak that made it feel like your old self is halfway across the planet. But if you’ve ever just secretly hoped your life could inspire such romantic ideals of romantic failure, wish fulfillment doesn’t come more potent than I Never Learn.

I Never Learn is both spartan and expansive; it’s Li’s most ambitious and shortest album, at nine songs and 33 minutes. This is widescreen drama meant to hit with direct and precise impact, so the operative term for advance singles “No Rest For the Wicked” and “Love Me Like I’m Not Made of Stone” has been “Spector-esque.” It’s a fair comparison, as Li plays a winner-take-all game of “He loves me, he loves me not” accompanied by a host of string players and drums that beat and thump like a flawed human heart. Li relies on classic emotive archetypes as well—excepting “I Will Always Love You”, torch songs don’t get much more literal than “Never Gonna Love Again”, and as with most of I Never Learn, its incapacitating sense of impending emptiness is closer in spirit to “I Have Nothing”.

The power ballads are just what the tag implies: ballads that require an enormous amount of exertion and are about power itself, whether it’s helplessly putting in the hands of another (“Love Me Like I’m Not Made of Stone”), taking ownership of your culpability (“No Rest For the Wicked”), or watching it disappear in a moment of passion (“Gunshot”). Rather than evoking a specific decade of music, though, Li approaches this style of songwriting as musical theater that should be created by something other than a proper band—either by professionals just off-screen, or some kind of studio magic.

I Never Learn utilizes the simplest tools of confessional songwriting: uneasily strummed acoustic guitars and resonant piano chords enlarged for texture and dramatic flair, like they’re appearing from behind a just-raised curtain, or from a radio as you sing to yourself. Thanks to the cavernous production, the enduring mental image of I Never Learn isn’t Li slumping over a glass of whiskey, but rather letting fresh wounds breathe, soundchecking alone in an empty arena.

Note the word “arena”, because even if these are stark, personal songs, there’s a tacit acknowledgment here of Li’s status as a pop star on the verge. She drops a lot of the ingratiating and occasionally grating mannerisms of Youth Novels and Wounded Rhymes that could be viewed as defense mechanisms—coyly sung melodies, the coquettish humor, and the booming beats and handclaps that endeared her to many but could also did little to dispel the idea of her as a benefactor of “Young Folks”’ cottage industry of meet-cute indie-pop. The onyx-and-gray, dead serious, striking cover shot of I Never Learn isn’t fronting on you; Li hangs around David Lynch, collaborates with A$AP Rocky and admires Beyoncé, Drake, and Rihanna, all of whom commingle celebrity and artistry to serve as avatars, people through whom we can imagine how our idealized selves might sing, dress, fuck, or hurt.

Li is not a tabloid fixture nor a force of nature, and I Never Learn takes advantage of that by emphasizing the rawness of her lower registers and utilizing negative space to keep things from getting too far out of proportion. At times, the record resembles a pocket version of Adele’s eternal 21. Yes, “Love Me Not I’m Not Made of Stone” does American teenagers a disservice by showing up a couple weeks late for prom season, but right when Li chokes on the line, “Even though it….hurts,” she negates any idea of this being makeout music; it’s more like getting told “let’s be friends” in the middle of a slow dance.  

The artillery-riddled, burnished metal of “Gunshot” was helmed by Greg Kurstin, best known as a collaborator of P!nk, Kelly Clarkson and Katy Perry—but he’s also the guy who produced Tegan & Sara’s Heartthrob, another record that commingled teenaged emotions with adult situations and vice versa while nudging a beloved, modest act in a way that led to a polished, radio-ready album that reflected their real-life popularity.

“Gunshot” is I Never Learn’s fist-pumping climax and a total outlier, as longtime producer Björn Yttling still handles the majority of I Never Learn, his trademark, treble-harshed reverb making each lovelorn lullaby sound like it’s smeared with Li’s own tears and ruined makeup. That lends a crucial, tactile reality in Li’s sadness, since very few of her lyrics are going to remind people of things their significant others have actually said to them—“Every time the rain falls, think of me.”  “Baby wait a lifetime before you find somebody new”, “Every time I pay the price for a heart that can’t be broken.” Maybe you’ve thought these things, and hearing them out in the open ensures I Never Learn isn’t an admission of defeat; there’s an unspoken uplift to be had, that you can only hurt this badly after loving way too hard. A chorus of Lykke Li’s sing the title of “Never Gonna Love Again”, whereas the gospel choir does the same with “Heart of Steel”, either taunts or acceptance of a fate where grand, sweeping sulks are just a natural and welcome state of being. We’re used to breakup albums that assume you just want to crawl into a hole and die, but I Never Learn is for the times when heartbreak is so life-affirming that you want to share the feeling with the world.

By Ian Cohen for Pitchfork