''Free Spirit'' is the second studio album by American singer Khalid, released on April 5, 2019, through

RCA Records RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside Columbia Records (its former longtime rival), Arista Records and Epic R ...

. It is a follow-up to his 2017 and 2018 releases '' American Teen '' (2017) and '' Suncity '' (2018). and includes the single " Talk". Khalid also announced a short film directed by

Emil Nava Emil William Capper Nava (born 29 March 1985) is a British music video director. After leaving school at 16, Emil started his career as a chef. He shot to fame after directing Jessie J's song " Do It Like A Dude". He has since directed over 1 ...

to accompany the album, which was released on April 3. The album debuted at number one on the US ''Billboard'' 200 and received mixed reviews from music critics.

Background

Khalid announced the title on social media on February 28. He had previously shown the van pictured on the cover in various posts.

Short film

A short film accompanying the album was released on Khalid's YouTube channel on the same day of the album's release.

Singles

" Talk" was released on February 7, 2019, as the album's lead single. "

Right Back In the sport of association football, a defender is an Glossary of association football terms#O, outfield player whose primary role is to stop attacks during the game and prevent the opposition from scoring. Defenders fall into four main categ ...

" featuring A Boogie wit da Hoodie was released on August 2 as the album's second single.

Promotional singles

On March 7, " My Bad" was released with the album pre-order as a promotional single. "Self" was released on March 29, 2019. On April 3, "Don't Pretend", featuring

Safe A safe (also called a strongbox or coffer) is a secure lockable enclosure used for securing valuable objects against theft or fire. A safe is usually a hollow cuboid or cylinder, with one face being removable or hinged to form a door. The body ...

, was released with the launch of Free Spirit Radio on Beats 1.

Other songs

The album also includes the singles " Better" and " Saturday Nights" from Khalid's 2018 EP '' Suncity''.

Critical reception

''Free Spirit'' was met with mixed reviews. At

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has an

average In colloquial, ordinary language, an average is a single number or value that best represents a set of data. The type of average taken as most typically representative of a list of numbers is the arithmetic mean the sum of the numbers divided by ...

score of 58, based on 15 reviews. Reviewing for ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'',

Alexis Petridis Alexis Petridis (born 13 September 1971) is an English journalist. He is the head Rock music, rock and pop music critic for ''The Guardian'', and a regular contributor for ''GQ''. In addition to his music journalism for the paper, he has written ...

found the album less original than Khalid's previous work, with the singer having little new to add to the theme of anxiety explored in other "fretfully self-examining R&B", instead showing "a tendency to fall back on cliche". With regards to its musical aspect, the critic complained of a lengthy, "somnambulant pace", but observed some "great pop songs", like "Alive" and "My Bad". More positive was

Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and later became a ...

, who wrote in his column for ''

Vice A vice is a practice, behaviour, Habit (psychology), habit or item generally considered morally wrong in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character trait, a defect, an infirmity, or a bad or unhe ...

'' that while Khalid's new "privileges and woes" may be foreign to most listeners, he "retains the gift of expressing his feelings in songs that cut star-time inevitabilities down to human scale", observing

truism A truism is a claim that is so obvious or self-evident as to be hardly worth mentioning, except as a reminder or as a rhetorical or literary device, and is the opposite of a falsism. In philosophy, a sentence which asserts incomplete truth con ...

s in lyrics such as "Couldn't have known it would ever be this hard", "I didn't text you because I was workin'", and "If the love feels good it'll work out". Christgau also pointed out that "because Khalid now enjoys access to pricier musical materials than when he was in high school, the hooks pack more

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than tune, making this the rare album that comes fully into its own when you up the volume."

Commercial performance

''Free Spirit'' debuted atop the US ''Billboard'' 200 with 202,000

album-equivalent unit The album-equivalent unit, or album equivalent, often shortened to just unit, is a sales metric in the music industry that defines the number of streaming media, songs streamed and music download, songs downloaded equal to one Record sales, tradi ...

s (including 85,000 pure album sales) in its first week. It is Khalid's first US number-one album.

Track listing

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Decade-end charts

Certifications

References

{{Authority control 2019 albums Khalid (singer) albums Albums produced by Al Shux Albums produced by D'Mile Albums produced by DJ Dahi Albums produced by Hit-Boy Albums produced by Murda Beatz Albums produced by Stargate