If love is the most written-about circumstance in pop music, it has good reason to be. It can push, pull, destroy, and make one whole again, and as we enter more years of feeling things very deeply, some of our best songwriters can help us understand our own emotions. WITHERED, the debut studio album by twenty-year-old TikTok rising star d4vd, tracks a particularly devastating breakup through a set of vibey, well-produced, but not particularly interesting songs.

WITHERED is a mix of the friendly indie pop and alternative R&B that dominates social media, particularly TikTok, guiding the listener through pleasantries rather than making any lasting impact. You can’t really blame d4vd for heading this way — his breakout hit, “Romantic Homicide,” is a crooning, lovesick ode by way of Rex Orange County or Harry Styles. And while much of WITHERED is similarly dramatic, with grand, sweeping chords or melodies, it’s not music that really sticks in your brain too long. Its platitudes of heartbreak are nice for the time being, and dv4d comes across as someone hung up on this love, unable to look past it — obsession’s never been so shrug-inducing.

It can’t be said for most up-and-comers’ projects, but WITHERED certainly has soul. These songs aren’t hollow, but even some clumsy lines suggest the young adult behind its process: “Everybody says I need a lover, but I need a friend,” “Tried to stay the same for you / But you changed on me,” “I used to be her everything / And now she doesn’t answer me.” Its relative cleanliness shows that someone is still, at least, trying.

WITHERED doesn’t really have any climactic moments where you snap to attention — save for an irritating conversation of an interlude and a Kali Uchis duet that strives to emulate both her discography and Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ “Die With A Smile” — most of the album is sleepy and inoffensive. It’s not ideal for any album, but certainly not for a debut that lasts 46 minutes. The lovesick boy comes through the most on “Crashing,” a rare moment where his voice cuts through the record’s dreamy instrumentation. “I don’t wanna be useless, I don’t wanna be stupid / But, baby, I’ve been going through it all alone,” he warbles.

d4vd, for his part, plays the lovesick narrator well. He’s crushed and hopeless and singing his heart out, reminiscing about a girl who left (that she left him first is repeated many times). The problem is that the music just doesn’t match this intentionality — it’s sunny TikTok pop engineered to be preferable to silence. WITHERED, like one of its songs, is just “Somewhere In The Middle.” Maybe it’s time to choose a side.

order WITHERED by d4vd HERE