Cara Delevingne’s debut album ‘Not Normal’ pairs art-pop with electronic distortion to explore addiction and recovery. Our review
Celebrity debut albums tend to arrive with an unspoken question: why this, and why now? Cara Delevingne‘s answer on ‘Not Normal‘ is that music was there first. Released Sept. 25 via Warner Records, the 12-track album is the former supermodel’s first full-length record, a diaristic and often abrasive set that she co-wrote from top to bottom and co-produced with BJ Burton. It does not always land, but it is unmistakably her own, which already puts it ahead of most famous-person detours into pop.
The backstory explains the urgency. As a child, Delevingne learned drums and piano, filled notebooks with angsty lyrics and was briefly signed by Spice Girls manager Simon Fuller, who wanted to mold her into a conventional pop star. Modeling took over instead. After stepping away from the fashion industry in 2015, she spent years struggling with alcohol and drug addiction before getting sober in 2022. In between came scattered guest appearances with Fiona Apple, MGK and St. Vincent, sketches of a career that never quite started. That gap between the dream and the detour shapes the whole record.
A Diary With Distortion
“This album is a diary of the last few years of my life,” Delevingne said on release day, and the songs bear that out. They circle addiction and dissociation, pairing tender art-pop melodies with sudden bursts of harsh electronic distortion. Burton, whose credits include Bon Iver and Charli xcx, is a smart partner for that approach. His specialty is taking a clean song and letting noise tear at its seams. It is a sound that refuses to let the listener settle.
That contrast is the album’s engine and its limit. When the distortion arrives at the right moment, it mimics the experience of losing your footing, the way a calm thought can suddenly fracture. When it arrives on schedule, it starts to feel like a texture applied from outside rather than something the song needed. Across 12 tracks, both versions appear. The best moments make the case for the method.
Singles, Mentors and Collaborators
The rollout told the story in pieces. Delevingne launched in June with the interconnected ‘I Forgot‘ and ‘Out of my Head’, followed by ‘Need It’, written with her friend and musical mentor Fiona Apple. August brought ‘Crazy, Baby’, paired with a video she co-directed with Bradley J. Calder, starring Samara Weaving in a romance that slowly reveals itself to be something darker.
Apple’s presence matters. Delevingne had already turned up on Apple’s ‘Fetch the Bolt Cutters’, and ‘Need It’ carries some of that record’s plainspoken bravery. It points toward Delevingne’s strongest instinct as a writer: saying the uncomfortable thing directly, without decoration. On those songs, the celebrity disappears and the songwriter steps forward. The more the album trusts that instinct, the better it gets.
Proving It Live
Delevingne has also done the unglamorous work of testing these songs in public. Her summer headline tour ran across Europe, the U.K. and the U.S., including a festival slot at Primavera Sound in Barcelona, and wrapped with sold-out shows in Los Angeles and Brooklyn. Celebrity side projects often exist only as streaming curiosities. This one has been road-tested.
‘Not Normal‘ is not a revelation, and it does not need to be. It is a sincere, risky debut from someone returning to a dream she was steered away from as a teenager, now with sobriety, scar tissue and a producer willing to make things messy. The rough edges are part of the point. For a first chapter, that honesty is enough to make the next one worth waiting for.
