Revisit of the Week: Remi Wolf - Big Ideas (2024)
Why isn't Remi Wolf a global superstar yet?
We shouldn't compete women in music against another, the concept of a "Big Pop Girl" in 2026 is as nebulous as the metrics are, yadda yadda... but why isn't Remi Wolf's name on everyone's lips while her less interesting peers are riding similar waves with lesser tricks? In 2023 Wolf's success felt like it would have been written on the stars: "Cinderella" was released right as summer began and it sounded an easy shoe-in for the Song of the Summer, and the incredibly repeat-ready video is an ode to Wolf's effortless, glorious charisma. The album was released, critics loved it, I loved it... but it left from public consciousness as soon as it arrived, despite Wolf charming everyone on the promo route. It's almost unfair, because what lies here is such a treasure.
Big Ideas is one of the most exciting pop albums that the 2020s have brought to date and has done nothing but get better with age. Wolf's debut Juno (2021) was as rich in personality as it was rough around its edges, with Wolf throwing herself into being a star even as she wasn't yet sure how exactly she would go about that. Big Ideas is the perfect follow-up. If anything, her charm, cunning and talent are displayed even more prominently, but at the same time as a piece of music it's sharper and positively more refined, hungry to take on the world but also ready to show the rest what it's got. It stretches far in its stylistic reaches but hits the goal each time: the carefree abandon of "Cinderella" and "Toro", the dynamic "Soup" which has an intensity that catches you unawares, the loud and raw rock cuts "Alone in Miami" and "Wave", the smoothly waving "Motorcycle", the psychedelic daydream textures of "Cherries & Cream"... the utterly absurd bonus track (a couple of decades earlier this would've been a sneaky hidden track) "Slay Bitch", which with its vocal filters sounds like Zoobe bunny took a trip through the Drag Race song machine. Everything Wolf goes for she does it with aplomb, switching from cheeky and snarky to vulnerable and angry in an instant, morphing her approach with the music - her incredible voice tying all this together with a grand, evocative bow. Big Ideas is such an apt title, but all these different ideas still work together as a coherent, consistent entity - and that's some skill.
This is such a great album for the summer, even as it's winding down here in the UK (but thank heavens for the rain after the recent heatwave); because my partner's a big fan as well, it's been easy to play it in the car or in the living room as well, jamming out to these songs together. I only wish it had a bigger audience but... perhaps one day the audiences will finally discover her. She's about to ready her third album, out in October - now is a good time as any to jump on the Wolf wagon.
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