Single of the Week: Camila Cabello’s “Shameless”
By Haydn Hickson
Dropping two songs is odd.
I mean, everyone’s given it a crack. Beyoncé did it with Single Ladies and If I Were A Boy. Nicki Minaj did it with Barbie Tingz and Chun Li. But, this is Cabello’s third time doing it, and the gimmick is wearing off.
It made sense why Cabello opted for this release strategy in the past. When she dropped I Have Questions and Crying in the Club, it felt like both those songs gave us an insight into the real Camila Cabello, a person we’d only seen glimpses of within the girl-power force that was Fifth Harmony. One track was a heartbreaking ballad and the other was a club anthem. Both good and both serving different purposes.
When she did it a second time, again, it made sense. Cabello had left Fifth Harmony and was gunning for global domination. OMG, fit with a Quavo feature, was ready to tackle urban radio, and Havana was ready to tackle Latin radio. Little did they know, the force was the latter. The sheer force that Havana had basically shunned OMG into the shadows. It quickly became clear that she didn’t need to have dropped two songs, she had her Crazy in Love, the label just didn’t back her.
Lesson not learned evidently.
Ahead of her sophomore LP, Camilla Cabello has just dropped two songs, Shameless and Liar.
However, unlike the aforementioned four songs, both of these songs don’t have much else to offer from their counterpart.
Liar takes on board the same Latina flavour that Havana had, but in a more pop friendly way. Unfortunately, with this transition into more potent pop, we start to lose the things that we learned to love from Camila in the first place. As she adopts a Billie Eilish-esque way of singing in the verses, her Camila-isms start to fade into the background. Having said this, Liar is phenomenally written. The Fourth Harmony-stolen flow (adopted in the verses) and an Ace of Base-like chorus make you question if you’ve heard this song before. And given the way sampling has been abused in recent pop music, this kind of makes sense.
Regardless, Shameless is the better of the two.
With Shameless, it’s clear Camila isn’t here to fuck around.
The song is incredible. The rock-inspired track shows you different sides of Camila, as she shifts from the sinister verses to the pleading chorus, leaving you ultimately shook when that thumping drop hits. And as Camila switches to her notoriously angelic vocals in the bridge, you can’t help but be utterly impressed with the amount of emotion she’s shown you in one song. Halsey’s Nightmare walked so that Camila’s Shameless could run.
It’s unclear why her label didn’t opt to release one single. Are they playing it safe? Are they hoping to tap into different markets? Who knows! But what we do know is that Shameless is far superior. Let’s just hope that Liar doesn’t fade into the background.