Album Review: Sarah Klang - 'Beautiful Woman'
Sarah Klang is raw and honest on her stunning new album Beautiful Woman.
The Swedish artist’s fifth studio album has arrived, and it is every bit as fantastic as her previous releases.
Klang has collaborated with several folk artists, such as fellow Swedes First Aid Kit, and her debut full-length record Love In the Milky Way was released in 2018. She has been incredibly busy since then, as she’s on album number five already.
Even though she’s fast at putting out albums, that is not to say in any way that they lack in quality, and especially not Beautiful Woman.
Opening with the title track, which is a piano-based ballad, the record is off to a sensational start. It is a song about misogyny, and the societal pressure that is piled on women when they are young. “When I grow up/I wanna be a beautiful woman” she sings. For me, songs like that are very important, because so many women have shared experiences of struggling with insecurities, yet it’s not something that you hear about in songs too often.
Speaking on the album, and that song, Klang said: “Ultimately, this entire album is a celebration of womanhood and girlhood. This album doesn’t really have a lot of love songs; it’s not focused on a specific guy. This is an album about the awkwardness of being a child, a teenager and about understanding your relationship with your body and self in a patriarchal world.”
I think that perfectly sums up the album as a whole, and she does an incredible job of delivering on that.
Next up is a track that is also a single, and a highlight of the record, Go to the Sun. It’s about trauma, escaping, and living your life. The production is just perfect throughout, with lovely, soft electric guitar and a gorgeous melody. The structure of the song is typically country, and it works very well. “If I’m sad at home/I’ll be sad in LA” Klang sings candidly. An ideal choice for a single.
Haze is a beautiful track sonically, with a tempo and melody that worms its way into your ear and stays put. The chorus is soaring and incredible vocally, pairing up with the production nicely and you get a wonderful blend of country/indie-pop.
Then we have two more singles, Last Forever ft. Fruit Bats, and Other Girls, both very different. The former is a slower, acoustic led song about the fragility of love, and the latter is similar to the title track in tone and theme. Other Girls is heartbreaking and relatable. “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels/I was told when I was young” Klang sings in the opening line. It’s autobiographical and about growing up in the 90s, when girls were told that they should look like models no matter what. “There was always an air of competition – it was exhausting.” She said of this time. “I just wanna be like the other girls are/I just wanna be liked” she sings achingly.
All I Want is a track that caught me off guard in a good way. It’s another song that is really very sad, but because it’s wrapped up in such pretty production, you don’t notice straight away; it gets under your skin. “I wish we could be more than friends/Sleeping on the same side of the bed” she sings, full of longing for someone that she can’t be with.
Then we have possibly my favourite track on the album, and it’s not just because he’s one of my top artists; Jackson Browne. It's actually about LA, which Klang personifies on the song. “I always had this idea that I would completely hate LA and then I went out there and felt the total opposite, I fell in love with it.” She said. You can definitely feel that love throughout this track, and the production too, which is dreamlike and special.
Overall, Beautiful Woman is an album that says deeply important things, and visits places that a lot of artists won’t.
Words by Lucy Skeet
