The daughter of pastors at the Bridge Church in Woodford, England, Naomi Scott spent her teenage years practicing the honeyed vocal runs on Mary Mary’s 2002 Christian R&B triumph Incredible and learning the basics of harmonies during church performances. At Bridge Church, she was discovered by British singer Kéllé Bryan, who ushered Scott into her first acting role at Disney Channel UK. From there, Scott’s life filled with casting calls and auditions, and the piano she once played with childlike abandon spun farther and farther out of view. When Scott hit a quarter-life crisis at 27, it wasn’t because her life was in disarray; married and enjoying a prosperous acting career, she instead had too much stability—the kind that makes people grieve for another life still unlived.
In the late 2010s, she dusted off her piano and began to reminisce about the atmospheric ’80s and ’90s music that lived in her father’s Windows Media Player. She called up her lodestar, Dev Hynes of Blood Orange, and hunkered down in a studio in Norway with producer Lido, known for his work with Halsey and Aminé. She was just beginning to pen the log lines of her exemplary alt-pop debut, F.I.G. What she ultimately dreamed up smoothly stirred blue-lit soul, sophisticated R&B, and warm, syncopated rhythms à la Quincy Jones. It’s an homage to early ’80s pop that fans of Hynes will gleefully rinse: heavy on new wave and masterful, soul-baring soft ballads without creeping into pastiche.
Banking on the public’s enduring Y2K obsession might have been a safer bet, but it’s a delight to listen to Scott coo over some funky basslines from the MTV decade. She safely skirts the tackier references, cherry-picking from the suave, timeless hits of the early ’80s. “Losing You” and “Rhythm” are clear Lionel Richie studies, with the fuzzy guitar licks, cascading harmonies, and Carribean-influenced percussive details that made his songs anthems. If you close your eyes on one of the album’s true ballads, “Best Kind,” the gated reverb snare sprayed atop Scott’s windswept soprano could very well be a Control-era Janet Jackson. And when the outro gloriously fades into Auto-Tuned mumble rap, it demonstrates the variety of Scott’s palette. There’s a pointedly modern feel to the pulsing deep house beat on standout “Cherry,” which sounds almost like Kaytranada at his peak powers, while “Cut Me Loose” is the kind of pandemic-era nu-disco that kept us sane while stuck in the house.
Scott’s vocals, once trained to channel the manicured, girlish confidence of her roles as Mo Banjaree in Lemonade Mouth and Jasmine in Aladdin, have lost their Disneyified sheen, becoming sufficiently well-rounded to sink into every emotional crevice. At turns her voice is rich and deep, capturing the rough hems of limerence, at others panty and delicate, spinning out over the delicious high of another body pressed against hers. F.I.G isn’t autobiographical; its lyrical inspiration springs from the famous fig tree scene in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. In it, a woman imagines plump green figs dangling from branches, each representing a different life path—in one she sees herself as an esteemed poet, in another she lives a happy domestic life with a handsome family. On F.I.G, Scott imagines herself as Jared Leto’s all-knowing character in Mr. Nobody, each song a fig symbolizing another possibility.
There’s one fruit threatening to shrivel up and blacken in “Bound,” where a lover hovers just out of reach: “How many times have I missed you/In all of the places I don’t see?/How many lives have I held you close?/And who would I be to let go?” The narrator of “Sweet Nausea” reminisces about the one who got away, even though they know full well it’s time to move on: “I’m coming down with something/Got sugar stuck in my throat/Pacing the fun fair playing some age I’ve overgrown.” Scott’s writing details ordinary human experiences—heartbreak (“Bliss”), yearning (“Rhythm”)—with a keen analytical eye and the maturity of someone who knows that ordinary doesn’t always mean easy.
For the most part, these profoundly affecting songs are paced to incite little more than a two-step, meaning they’re prepared to tour with the subdued drama of a stool and microphone. Much of F.I.G reminds me of a riveting section of Janet: Live in Hawaii, the 2002 HBO special, in which Janet Jackson, outfitted in a simple black costume, finally takes a seat after swinging her hips around for half an hour, and relishes in deep pauses and eye contact as she sings “Let’s Wait Awhile” to an enraptured audience. I’m imagining the jangly guitar part on “Sweet Nausea” playing out in a similar way, and I expect people—many of them too young to remember Windows Media Player—will be singing along.
