【搬运】【译】叉婊Pitchfork评Camila Cabello 2018年出道专辑《Camila》

搬运自：微信公众号【评论搬一堆】（在原文基础上添加了英语原文与排版调整）

翻译：Kristen

校正：Cyana Lu/Alice Song

When an enterprising member of a pop group dares to dream about solo success, they have to reintroduce themselves to the world. If they have the vision, chops, and nerve to survive beyond their hit-making machine, they can blaze a new trail for themselves on their own terms; if they come up short, they’re relegated to history’s dustbin. Camila Cabello’s sultry, salsa-inflected “Havana” is a keystone for a superstar origin story: Striking out on her own after a bitter split with her bandmates in Fifth Harmony, Cabello realized her creative ambitions with a smash that celebrated her Cuban heritage and helped define a year in which Latin music was ascendant.

当一个流行乐团中有进取心的成员敢于追求个人成功的时候，他们必须重新向世界展现自己。如果他们有远见，有能力，有勇气抛开他们团队的光环去开拓发展，他们就可以用自己的方式开辟一条崭新的道路;但万一做得不够好，他们就会被时代抛弃。撩人的萨尔萨风歌曲“Havana”是卡妹崛起的基石：在与“五美”成员产生分歧并单飞之后，卡妹以这样一支带着古巴韵味的热单实现了她的创作抱负，这也进一步表明了拉丁音乐在这一年中的崛起。

Of course, pop careers rarely come into being with that kind of elegance, and Cabello’s own rise to the top of the charts was a little more complicated. “Havana” began its run as a humble summer promotional single, one lacking the support of label execs and radio personnel alike. It was tossed onto streaming services a few months after her first attempt at a grand debut, “Crying in the Club,” fizzled out just inside the Top 50. And “Crying in the Club” failed to meet expectations because it sounded like Cabello was tracking, note-for-note, a demo pulled from between Sia’s couch cushions. It lacked the qualities that gush out of “Havana” like steam: history, personality, charisma. The tension between Cabello’s two potential futures—a spot in pop’s upper echelon or a decade spent churning out anonymous EDM collaborations and thankless soundtrack work—is what animates Camila, her debut solo album.

当然，流行音乐很少会带有这种优雅，而且卡妹自己登上排行榜榜首的过程也略微复杂。“Havana”一开始只是一个不起眼的夏季宣传单曲，它缺乏唱片公司高管人员和电台工作人员的支持。几个月前，她的首张单曲“Crying in the Club”才刚刚进入前50名，就被流媒体音乐平台甩了出去。“Crying in the Club”没有达到其预期效果，因为它听起来就像是卡妹敷衍地创作出的一个试用版样带，一帧一帧毫无关联。它缺乏在“Havana”里源源不断迸发出来的特质:史诗感、个性和魅力。等待她的是两种不同的未来，这使得卡妹身处一种紧张的局面——在流行音乐高领域中占据一席之地，或者花费数年时间隐身为他人制作音乐和那些费力不讨好的作品。而这一局面恰恰是她首张个人专辑《Camila》的动力来源。

Cabello’s flair for the dramatic has always been her greatest strength. It was never difficult to pick her out within Fifth Harmony and when given the chance, she chewed scenery like an overeager character actor. (Listen to her rip through the bridge of weightless trop-house ditty “Write on Me.”) Her performances on the duets that first flagged her as a breakout candidate—the Shawn Mendes sleeper “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and Machine Gun Kelly’s soggy “Bad Things”—verge on histrionic, and that isn’t a bad thing; the emotional intensity of her singing makes up for the volume and density her voice lacks.

卡妹的戏剧天赋一直是她最大的优点。要在“五美”中认出她从来都不是件难事，只要有机会，她就会像一个过于热情的演员那样吸人眼球(听她唱的“Write On Me”就能意识到这一点)。她在合作曲中的表现让她第一次成为黑马——和萌德合唱的“I Know What You Did Last Summer”，以及与MGK合作的“Bad Things”——虽然都有些装腔作势的表演感，但这并非是一件坏事;她演唱时充沛的感情弥补了她的嗓音在音量和音质上的不足。

Camila shines when it’s light and breezy, giving Cabello the space she needs to cook. “All These Years” and “Real Friends” are gentle and largely acoustic with a hint of Jai Paul’s liquid zip, and Cabello sings with real delicacy about lost love and loneliness. (The fluttering vocal runs she unspools midway through “All These Years” are stunning.) “She Loves Control” is an apt mission statement for a star who soured on girl group life because she couldn’t “explore [her] individuality,” and it shows Cabello can navigate a reggaeton rhythm with the same ease that characterized “Havana.” She effortlessly toggles between English and Spanish on the sun-kissed, steel drum-flecked “Inside Out.” It’s on these songs that Camila makes its strongest argument for Cabello as a unique force, one who can churn out pop hybrids that perfectly suit a shifting pop climate and a changing country.

《Camila》熠熠生辉的同时，也给了卡妹一些自由发挥的空间。“All These Years”和“Real Friends”都是清新流畅且温和的，藏着点Jai Paul的音乐风格，她吟唱着“已逝而不可追的爱与孤独”。（“All These Years”中她颤动的声音令人着迷。）“She Loves Control”是一个因无法“探索［她的］自我个性”而对女孩群体产生不满又富有使命感的宣言，这也表明了卡妹可以轻松驾驭雷鬼风格的“Havana”。在“Inside Out”中，她毫不费力地在英语和西班牙语之间切换。《Camila》的这些歌曲，为卡妹的独特能力提供了最有力的证据——她能够创作出紧跟不断变化的流行风向同时又混合不同国家风格的流行音乐。

When the album falters, it’s because it loses sight of this compelling identity. She growls and hiccups her way through new single “Never Be the Same,” but its reliance on a love-drug conceit suggests a novice writer who has room to expand her range. (Cabello worked with a production team led by veteran Frank Dukes, but her writing credit on every song suggests a fertile Notes app.) The overwrought one-two punch of “Consequences”—which sounds a little like her attempt at something like Rihanna’s “Stay”—and “Something’s Gotta Give” slow the album to a crawl. And when Camila interfaces with trends in the larger world of pop, the results are varied. The frothy, flirty “Into It” finds a delightful sweet spot within a Lorde-Carly Rae Jepsen-Ariana Grande Venn diagram, but “In the Dark” is the kind of generic trap-pop you’d expect from any number of B- and C-grade stars. It’s a Bebe Rexha deep cut.

专辑存在瑕疵是因为人们忽略了其中很重要的一点。她在新单曲“Never Be the Same”中咆哮，但这首歌展现了她对爱情毒品依赖，也表明她是一个有足够创作空间的新手。(卡妹曾与Frank Dukes领导的制作团队合作，她熟练的作词技巧仿佛是用了一个专门的写词软件。)“Consequences”——听起来有点像她在尝试Rihanna的“Stay”的那种风格，“Something’s Gotta Give”也是如此，这两首歌倒让整张专辑的音乐都舒缓了下来。当Camila与世界范围内的流行趋势接轨时，结果就不同了 。轻浮的“Into It”在Lorde，Carly Rae Jepsen和Ariana Grande中找到了一个很好的切入点，但“In The Dark”是你能从任何B级和C级明星那里看到的普通的把式，就像是Bebe Rexha的风格。

None of these songs are abject failures; a half-decade in a group like Fifth Harmony is an extended pop boot camp, one that can’t help but equip you with basic proficiency. If they’re frustrating, it’s because they’re juxtaposed with tantalizing glimpses of a next-generation star, the kind of artist with the presence and charm to carry pop forward into a new decade. Perhaps that’s the greatest compliment you can pay Camila: It throws off enough sparks to justify expecting more.

这些歌曲没有一首会被称为惨烈的败笔;在“五美”的五年里，她仿佛是进入了一个提升自我的流行音乐训练营，除了提升基本的专业技能外别无他求。如果她们倍感辛劳，那是因为人们将她们也归入新一代明星来互相比较了，而这些艺人的存在和魅力将把流行音乐带入一个新的十年。这也许就是我们能给予的最好的赞美了。