''Not In Chronological Order'' is the debut studio album by American singer-songwriter

Julia Michaels Julia Carin Michaels (''Birth name, née'' Cavazos; born November 13, 1993) is an American singer and songwriter. She has received six Grammy Award nominations, including twice for Grammy Award for Song of the Year, Song of the Year and Grammy A ...

, released on April 30, 2021, by

Republic Records Republic Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group (UMG). Based in New York City, it was founded by Avery Lipman and Monte Lipman as an independent label in 1995, and was acquired by UMG in 2000. Republic was initially ...

. The album's subject matter centers on themes of

love Love is a feeling of strong attraction and emotional attachment (psychology), attachment to a person, animal, or thing. It is expressed in many forms, encompassing a range of strong and positive emotional and mental states, from the most su ...

, self reflection and ideal womanhood. Upon its release, ''Not in Chronological Order'' received generally positive reviews. However, the album became Michael's lowest charting release on the ''Billboard'' 200, where it reached number 183; Michaels blamed Republic's lack of promotional support for the album as the cause of its lack of success.

Background

Michaels released her debut single " Issues" in 2017, followed by three

extended play An extended play (EP) is a Sound recording and reproduction, musical recording that contains more tracks than a Single (music), single but fewer than an album. Contemporary EPs generally contain up to eight tracks and have a playing time of 1 ...

s (EP), ''

Nervous System In biology, the nervous system is the complex system, highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its behavior, actions and sense, sensory information by transmitting action potential, signals to and from different parts of its body. Th ...

'' (2017), '' Inner Monologue Part 1'' and '' Inner Monologue Part 2'' (both 2019). In 2020, she released the single "Lie Like This", followed by "All Your Exes" and "Love Is Weird" the following year. On April 9, 2021, ''

Women's Wear Daily ''Women's Wear Daily'' (also known as ''WWD'') is a fashion-industry trade journal often referred to as the "Bible of fashion". Horyn, Cathy"Breaking Fashion News With a Provocative Edge" ''The New York Times''. (August 20, 1999). It provides i ...

'' announced that Michaels would release her debut studio album on April 30. She confirmed this on April 14, along with the album's name as ''Not in Chronological Order'' and its artwork.

Critical reception

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 score of 70 out of 100, which indicates "generally favorable reviews" based on 5 reviews. '' Clash''s Randy Radic thought ''Not in Chronological Order'' is soft in certain parts and "thick with sinew" in others, and equally allows Michaels to showcase her songwriting talent and "charismatic, oh-so-expressive voice". Alexis Petridis of ''

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 ...

'' considered the album enjoyable and a display of Michaels's talent, but lacking in star quality. Writing for ''

NME ''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming and culture website, bimonthly magazine, and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a "Rock music, rock inkie", the ''NME'' would be ...

'', Hannah Mylrea was favorable of its depiction of romance and Michaels's signature one-liners, adding, it "confidently chronicles every dizzying high and crushing blow that love brings – affairs of the heart have, after all, long been Michaels’ specialist songwriting subject".

Track listing

Personnel

Musicians *

– vocals , background vocals * JP Saxe – guitar *

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

– programming *

The Monsters & Strangerz The Monsters & Strangerz are an American production and songwriting team from Miami, Florida. The team features The Monsters: Alexander " Eskeerdo" Izquierdo, Stefan Johnson, and Jordan K. Johnson and The Strangerz: Marcus "Marc Lo" Lomax and Cla ...

– programming , guitar , keyboards * John Ryan – background vocals, guitar, keyboards, programming ; drums, synthesizer programming * David Campbell – string arranger *

G Koop Robert Mandell, professionally known as G Koop, is an American Grammy Award-nominated record producer, songwriter and musician. Early life G Koop is originally from Boston, Massachusetts. His father had a large collection of albums, and his moth ...

– guitar * India Carney – background vocals * Mario Jose – background vocals * Michael Pollack – background vocals, keyboards * Pierre Luc – guitar * Matt Zara – guitar * Chris Null – guitar Technical *

Randy Merrill Randy Merrill is an American mastering engineer who has worked with international artists including Blink-182, DAY6, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Maroon 5, Harry Styles, One Direction, Adele, Imagine Dragons, Beck, Liam Gallagher, Jonas Brothers, Muse ...

–

mastering engineer Mastering is a form of audio post production which is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the Audio mixing (recorded music), final mix to a data storage device called a master recording, the source ...

Serban Ghenea Serban Ghenea () is a Canadian audio engineer and mixer. He has been nominated for a Grammy Award a total of 45 times and has won 21 times. Early life and education Ghenea was born in Romania, and in 1976 he moved to Montreal with his family. H ...

– mixer * Ben Rice –

engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...

, vocal producer * Steve Churchyard – engineer * John Ryan – engineer, vocal producer * Jeff Gunnell – engineer * Stefan Johnson – engineer , vocal producer * Michael Pollack – engineer, vocal producer * Gian Stone – vocal producer * The Monsters & Strangerz – vocal producer * Bo Bodnar – assistant recording engineer

Charts

Release history

References

{{Julia Michaels 2021 debut albums Julia Michaels albums Albums produced by the Monsters & Strangerz Republic Records albums