Heartbreak has become a pop language of its own: the yearning, the overthinking, the desire to be chosen. On Instinct, Angèle seems less interested in waiting around for someone to love her back. Across thirteen tracks, the Belgian singer moves between rave-adjacent electronics, euphoric pop and unexpected tenderness, making room for desire without insisting it must lead to devotion.
The heartbreak is there, but it rarely brings everything to a halt. Instead, it becomes something to move through, sometimes on the dance floor. After years of wanting to prove she could write, compose and produce everything herself, Angèle allowed herself to work with others on the album. On Instinct, independence isn’t necessarily about doing everything alone.
The album is at its most compelling when its production feels slightly unpredictable. Trop, made with electronic duo Soulwax, carries the hazy energy of a late-night bar spilling into a rave, while Justice’s presence on What You Want suits its confident, sexy and faintly sinister atmosphere. Love Triangle, featuring Caroline Polachek and SebastiAn, is a highlight: restless instrumentals and a sound hovering between electro and hyperpop make it difficult to sit still. “Baby, all I want tonight is both of you” sounds less like a confession than a declaration of appetite. Angèle is comfortable with wanting more than one thing at once, and the track makes desire feel playful, excessive and gloriously difficult to contain. Yet Instinct isn’t simply a victory lap for sexual confidence. Its most affecting moments arrive when that confidence meets uncertainty.
On Au revoir, an ethereal, melancholic opening gradually gives way to something lighter and more expansive. Angèle has described the song as a farewell to emotional dependency, reflecting on how she sometimes preferred imagining a future with the wrong person to facing being alone. The shift in production seems to mirror that movement: the sadness doesn’t disappear so much as loosen its grip. Letting go becomes less an act of defeat than a possibility for something else. On verra is more exposed, its piano melody and harmonies lending weight to the details of a relationship coming apart. On Je compte, missed calls and the possibility of someone returning suggest a heartbreak that has not entirely disappeared. These songs resist turning sadness into spectacle. Angèle can still want someone, remember what was good and wonder what might have been without making those feelings a reason to stand still.
On NYC Blues, the sweetness of the melody seems to contradict its title. Angèle captures the peculiar loneliness of loving a place you can no longer experience in quite the same way, yearning for a city and perhaps for the version of yourself that existed there. Snippets of conversations between friends surface in the closing track, giving the song the feeling of a memory you can briefly step back into but never quite recover. New York becomes more than a backdrop: returning somewhere doesn't necessarily mean returning to the person you were there. Une seule vie brings this ambivalence closer to home. “Only love can fill the void”, Angèle sings, before admitting she’s afraid of losing herself too quickly. Elsewhere, Dis-le reflects on the difference between being and having. Knowing what you want doesn't mean knowing what comes next; independence doesn't cancel out loneliness.
The push and pull between wanting love and holding on to yourself may resonate with queer listeners, though it’s hardly exclusive to them. It’s a tension that also runs through Troye Sivan’s music: the desire for intimacy alongside the fear of losing yourself in someone else. Angèle’s F4ck 4ever approaches a similar contradiction with a more playful, dancefloor-ready energy. Rather than choosing between connection and independence, Instinct lets both desires coexist.
There’s something quietly liberating in that refusal to settle on a single answer. Where yearning can turn desire into a confession, Angèle makes it feel like an act of self-possession. Not every electronic flourish lands with the same force, but when the production and emotion meet, the album makes a convincing case for pop that refuses to choose between vulnerability and pleasure. Angèle doesn’t promise that you’ll find what you’re looking for. She suggests that you can want it anyway, and that wanting someone doesn’t have to mean surrendering yourself to them.
