In 2018, Nao found a fun metaphor for reinvention in Saturn’s return, the astrological notion that every three decades, people undergo radical personal transformation. The London singer, then 30, had made her name as a prophetess of synth funk, teaming up with electronic producers like Disclosure, A.K. Paul, and Mura Masa for retrofuturist cuts full of liquid basslines and deep grooves. On Saturn, she traded the dense funk for ventilated R&B that spanned Afropop, neo-soul, and quiet storm. The looser arrangements, full of space, centered her striking and nimble voice, which can ascend to the heavens or rumble in her throat.
Literal space became one of her primary lyrical devices on that album, dilating her tales of romance and heartbreak into cosmic epics about the pleasures of proximity and the pains of distance. She returns to that stargazing mode on Jupiter, which she’s called the “sister album” to Saturn. But the writing and performances lack the luster of her previous work, and are sometimes noticeably derivative and muddled. Where her past records confidently navigated the many strains of past and present R&B that inform her style, Jupiter is adrift.
The album has a light theme of healing and gratitude. Nao spent six months in Los Angeles recording it, a change of environment that helped her recover from a debilitating autoimmune disease. Channeling that experience, she spends the record spreading sunny vibes and domestic cheer over warm melodies and swaying rhythms. The mood is pleasant but anonymous. “Living like happy people/Living a life more peaceful,” she sings on the upbeat “Happy People,” espousing a vague vacation idyll. “Know I’m all in with my friends/’Cause we make it in the end,” she chants on the highlife-inspired “We All Win.” Who is we? The end of what? Peek beneath the rosy surface of the songs, and there’s often no substance to the bliss.
That’s especially true when Nao leans into cosmic imagery, which has become a crutch. While she nails “Light Years,” a space-themed ballad with a soaring hook that builds to a fireworks pop of synths, the conceit more often produces clunkers. “Closer when we’re far apart like/Milky Ways and hazy stars,” she says of an estranged loved one on “Better Days.” On the title track, love launches her “somewhere in the sky above Jupiter/Like I don’t ever wanna come back to Earth,” a distance that sounds more like teleportation. Hyperbolic analogies are a staple of R&B, a genre smitten with stormclouds and rainfall. But these devices tend to muddle Nao’s ideas. Instead of big and powerful, her emotions feel indistinct.
Many of the more grounded songs also fail to launch. The playful nu-disco of “Poolside” aims for steamy fun with the awkward come-on, “Come play in my poolside.” (In the poolside?) “Just Dive” seems to encourage risk-taking and conquering fears, until the aquatic imagery gets confusingly mythological: “We could be like mermaids, keep it twilight,” Nao says of, um, taking a plunge. Her supple singing and the lively production keep Jupiter from being a slog, but the hazy symbolism sours the experience.
It’s telling that “All of Me,” the one song not mired in metaphor, is the record’s most affecting. Floating over bass kicks and hi-hat flutters, Nao spells out her fantasies as she scales her register. “All of me on you,” she purrs on the pitched-up hook, oozing desire. It’s one of the few lines on Jupiter that thinks of space not as a setting or state of mind, but as a relation between bodies—one that’s being negotiated, in real time, on a dinky little planet called Earth.
