★★½

Just over a year since her departure from girl group Fifth Harmony, Camila Cabello has finally released her much-anticipated debut album. Unfortunately, the end result was slightly underwhelming.

Cabello's self-titled release is something that has clearly gone under much alteration since its initial release announcement. Firstly, the project wasn't even set to be self-titled at all--it held the working name The Hurting. The Healing. The Loving. I won't go into too much detail about how this was a rip-off of the chapter titles of Rupi Kaur's poetry collection Milk and Honey. It could be merely a coincidence, but Cabello seems like a Rupi Kaur-kinda girl, so I'm inclined to highly doubt it.

So perhaps the title scrap was a good thing. The clear change in the album's direction, however, is what makes the project fall short of its expectations.

Cabello released a slew of singles shortly after the album announcement: "Crying in the Club," "I Have Questions," "OMG," and of course, "Havana." While I hadn't held any sort of expectations for Cabello's solo endeavours, I remember hearing her music and surprisingly, enjoying it. If these songs embodied the sound of her full-length album, then this was great!

But alas, this wasn't the case. The project appears to have been hastily rebuilt around the unexpected "Havana" success--a great song, but also one of the only great moments on the album. For this kind of effort to be successful, it would have required a much more developed focus than it had.

The album's beginning is when it's at its strongest: her opening track "Never Be the Same" is also her newest single, and it makes the best out of breathy autotuned vocals layered over a synth beat and an overused your-love-is-like-a-drug lyrical hook. "All These Years" is more simplistic in its texture but is lyrically more complex and profoundly personal, and is one of the album's better tracks. "Havana" also appears in the album's first half, and some backing tracks reminiscent of its Cuban-infused rhythms are recognizable in other tracks like "Inside Out," but nothing remotely makes as great a use of them as "Havana" does.

She is at her strongest when she is either going to an vividly emotional place or when Latin-inflected musical themes are incorporated to celebrate her heritage: perhaps because it is all too clear that this is when her music is most authentic. The rest is all static acoustic ballads or bland aimed-at-radio pop.

I think a narrative around her immigrant background is a hugely missed opportunity for this album. I suppose she always has the next one, but you only have one debut, and what better way to introduce yourself to the world? It would have caused her to re-analyze her relationships with greater depth, and those mediocre ballads could have obtained more poignance--as we saw with "I Have Questions," Cabello is capable. But only time will tell whether she takes this turn in her musical career.