Review: The Push & Pull Of Pop Songwriting On Mali's 'Where Was I?'

There is no need to guess what Mali is singing about on her sophomore album 'Where Was I?'. With opening lines like "It's something peculiar // The smell of four new walls // And turpentine in the hallway // Never the same view" or "You said I remind you // Of a time and place you'd rather forget // And I am not defined by // The memories that burn inside your head", the themes across most of the 10-track album are grasped easily.

The first half of the album features a literal form of writing that draws more from a personal diary before Mali switches to a book of poems for the last four – rhymes get compromised for more free-flowing confessions, and for clever metaphors like "Tried my luck at the wheel of fortune // Spun it till the point of exhaustion."

Frequently written topics of moving to a new place, ignoring signs of toxic relationships and revisiting crumbled romances are expressed over frequently used arrangements of guitars, bass, drums and, just sometimes, their electronic counterparts of synths and drum machines. There are no new artistic frontiers entered. These are well-explored musical grounds associated with some of the most pervasive canons, represented most popularly by the Taylor Swifts and Olivia Rodrigos of the world.

Ultimately, the worth of the 10-track release is in execution than invention – in how deeply and directly the specifics of Mali's outpourings connect with the listener, the emotional depth she can bring into the simplest of lyrics with the arrangements and, at times, how the charm of a catchy chorus can balance the heavy meanderings of the verse.

Thankfully, for the Mumbai-based singer-songwriter, who does teeter on the thin line between highly relatable/accessible songwriting and run-of-the-mill songwriting, such achievements keep coming frequently enough to keep the album afloat.

The opener 'Back to the Beginning' is as simple as an instructional pamphlet, describing learning to turn new locks and to forget old PIN codes to "focus on the open road ahead", but in its outro, like the orchestral high notes in a movie sad scene telling you exactly what to feel, it gives its mundane lyrics a triumphant grandiosity befitting a Disney soundtrack. The efficiency here is undeniable even when I am not a Disney fan.

Instead, I prefer the grittier methods of 'Flight Mode', where Mali challenges the saccharine palette of the album with distorted guitars and aggressive drums. They add a sense of badassery to what is otherwise another very unadorned capture of thoughts while taking a flight. Over Mali’s soaring vocals, a recreation of the pilot’s flight commencement announcement becomes a metaphor for being ready for what life throws at you. Moments like these turn around the whole impression with their wit and charm, saving the songs from seeming infantilising and too surface-level.

On ‘Saviour Complex’, the extremes are pulled in for the balanced pop songwriting Mali had previously shown herself to be capable of on standout singles like 2023’s ‘Semi Automatic Butane’, sandwiching confessional depths between catchy refrains. It’s a trick she revisits on ‘Roundabout’, a guitar ballad that wanders farthest from the rest of the album with its vintage 80s shimmer to contain possibly the album’s best vocal performance.

Between these two songs is where we go the longest without the songwriting being helped by such redeeming moments, and then again on ‘Somewhen’. By this point, the album has already offered a fairly complete picture of its strengths and shortcomings. But Mali switches things up for the final stretch.

The cinematic emotionality returns on the warm synths and string lines of ‘Spaceship’, the horn beds of ‘One Last Bow’, and the guitar (contributed by Blackstratblues) jams on ‘Just Like This’, but this time unanchored by pop structures. We are truly in the dynamic flows of writing for musicals now, just devoid of a set and stage actors (though the descriptive songwriting does leave an impression of both).

I can write mixed things about ‘Where Was I?’ when looking at it as a standalone piece of work, and so far I have: where the first half has musical brilliance, the songwriting can stay reluctant to dive deeper, and where the songwriting attains depth in the latter half, the musical polish begins to give way, with the compositions lacking the focus of the first half. But I can’t deny that serious heights of both are present on the album, alongside flashes of them coming together.

Mali describes the album as being inspired by returning to Mumbai after the pandemic and rebuilding her life there. It’s interesting to hear her describe this phase as distinct, because as a longtime follower of her work, I’ve always felt that something clicked for the singer-songwriter around then. From ‘Semi Automatic Butane’ and the Tamil song ‘Anniku Raathiri’ in 2023 to more recent collaborations with tv dinner, Easy Wanderlings and Yung Raja, and now these ten tracks that come together as a complete album, Mali’s self-assuredness about what she wants to sound like hasn’t faltered in the last 3 years.

‘Where Was I?’ may not always land, but it is ultimately the most complete artistic statement by a singer-songwriter who is arguably India's most ready entrant into the canon of pop singer-songwriters occupied by Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo. This album offers the clearest picture yet of what that means.

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Images by Aarish Bhathena

Words by Amaan Khan