British pop band Little Mix released a new album, “Between Us”, on Nov. 12, 2021, which is a collection of their hits over the past decade, from 2010-2020. Little Mix is made up of three members, Jade Thirlwall, Perrie Edwards, and Leigh-Anne Pinnock (former member Jesy Nelson left in 2020). The standard version of the song includes twenty-two songs, and the deluxe edition has an additional four songs, making the total twenty-six. Overall, this album covers a wide variety of song genres and features many other celebrity artists, such as Lizzo, MGK, and Nicki Minaj.

The first song in the album, “Shout Out to My Ex”, is a bright, peppy song with a deeper meaning of getting over your ex. The chorus was beautifully sung as all the member’s voices blended perfectly. Perrie Edwards sings “Forget that boy, I’m over it” with a perfect amount of attitude that adds a layer of self-healing to the song. This song is great as a quick pick-me-up, and one of the more attitude songs in this album.

Another song in the album, “Women Like Me”, features Nicki Minaj. This song blew up on TikTok recently, but the single first released in 2018. To this day, this song is still gold even after three years and leans towards the rap side of music. The instrumentals in this are kept quite simple, to accentuate the singers’ vocals, which works very well. Minaj’s part is integrated seamlessly into the song and adds a different style, which is refreshing to hear.

“No More Sad Songs” feat. Machine Gun Kelly definitely lives up to its name. The song itself is a bop, a cheery song but not too bright that it is annoying to listen to. Machine Gun Kelly’s vocals cut through the chorus of Little Mix, adding a different but interesting interlude to the song. This is a perfect blend of pop and a little bit of rap, which makes this one of the better songs on the album.

The titular song, ‘Between Us’, is a slower song compared to the others in the album, adding a different genre to the album which is nice to listen to, as listening to rapid happy songs gets annoying after a while. Overall, the song is alright, but it doesn’t stand out in a particular way. It has slow instrumentals and harmonization like most other songs, and it also has the element of scale progression and regression. I feel like there were many more noteworthy songs in the album, like ‘Black Magic’, but this song is alright to listen to, just that it is a tad boring.

“Sweet Melody’ in part is a sweet melody. The instrumentals in this song are far too loud and diminish the effect of the vocals. Again, this song has a lot of harmonization and the chorus felt a little too long to taste. If there were a couple of minor key notes thrown in, I feel that could add a lot more interest to the song. This felt like every other song and was boring to listen to. The song’s name is Sweet Melody, but the melody itself wasn’t pronounced enough in this song.

Overall, this album is a good compilation of all of Little Mix’s hits. The celebrity artists that were featured in this album definitely added rather than hurt the tune of this album, and added the much-needed variety to this album. This album has many pop songs, but only has one slightly slow song, ‘Between Us’. I feel like there should be a wider range of styles in the selection of the songs, as it is a bit boring to listen to almost an hour of nonstop pop.

Fans of Ariana Grande and/or Taylor Swift as well as anyone who likes pop songs, in general, should definitely listen to this album.

8/10