The Most Interesting Thing About Starrgirl Is Ayra

Ayra Starr has spent years becoming a star. Starrgirl feels like she is finally telling us who the person is.

I love when an artist reaches that point in their career where the lyrics stop sounding like things that fit the beat and start sounding like things they actually needed to say.

I fear Ayra Starr has reached that point.

And before anyone starts, I’m not saying Ayra has never had lyrics. Obviously she has. I’m talking about LYRICS.

The point of view. The specificity. The little lines where you suddenly understand how an artist thinks. When the music starts telling on them a bit.

That is what I hear all over Starrgirl.

We have known Ayra Starr for years now. We know Sabi Girl. We know the confidence. The mini skirts. The celestial being. The girl who will tell you she is the prize before you even get the opportunity to question it.

But Starrgirl feels different because I actually feel like I know Ayra more by the end of it.

Not just her brand.

Her.

And there is a difference.

The easiest word people are probably going to use for this album is “mature”.

I don’t even think that fully explains it.

To me, she sounds more decided.

There is a difference between trying to prove you are grown and simply moving through the world as somebody who has grown.

Ayra isn’t constantly announcing womanhood on this album. She just sounds like a woman who knows what she likes, knows what she doesn’t like, knows she wants money, knows she wants to be desired, knows she can get her heart broken and knows she is still going to get up the next morning.

Look at how Dangerous opens the album.

“Starrgirl, I don’t play around.”

Then it’s money. Contracts. Ten figures. Being impossible to hold down.

We’ve heard artists flex a million times, but I think the interesting part is what happens across the rest of the album.

The flex becomes context rather than the whole personality.

By the time we get to Dance, she can simply say:

“Feels good to be who I am.”

And I think THAT is the album.

Not “look at me”.

Not “prove them wrong”.

Just, I actually like being me.

That is a very different type of confidence.

Another thing I like about this album is that Ayra isn’t scared of desire.

And I mean proper desire.

Amazing, Pressure, Midnight in New York, even parts of Ms. Paper are very clear about the fact that this woman likes sex. She likes attraction. She likes chemistry. She wants to be touched. She initiates. She chooses.

There is no need to disguise it as some grand romance every single time.

Sometimes a man is simply fine.

And I actually think this matters when we’re talking about her becoming her own person because sexuality on Starrgirldoesn’t feel like Ayra trying to prove she’s no longer the teenage girl we first met.

She’s not doing “LOOK GUYS I’M SEXY NOW”.

She just... is.

On Midnight in New York, she’s outside. Wine. Dress. Heels in her hands. No plans. No phone. Just chemistry.

On Amazing, she is extremely clear about what she wants in bed.

Then on Ms. Paper, I love the collision between desire and independence.

You can turn her on, cool.

She still has money to make.

Both things can exist.

And that feels like the bigger story of Starrgirl. Ayra isn’t choosing one version of herself anymore.

This is where the album gets interesting.

For all that confidence, Ayra is actually quite emotionally vulnerable on here.

Where Do We Go is literally about returning to somebody you probably know you shouldn’t be returning to.

Friends don’t know.

It’s after hours.

She’s going back.

She’s following somebody who hasn’t given her clarity.

Then suddenly we’re at:

Where do we go after I dry my tears?

Oh.

So Miss Starrgirl is not above nonsense either.

Welcome sister.

But jokes aside, I think that contradiction makes the writing feel much more human.

She can tell us she’s the girl everybody wants to be on one song and then admit she followed somebody blindly on another.

Neither cancels the other out.

Confidence does not make you immune to being stupid in love.

And I think younger artists sometimes get trapped by the persona that made us love them. Once the audience decides you’re “the confident one”, “the bad bitch”, “the heartbreaker”, whatever, suddenly every song has to maintain the mythology.

Ayra lets herself ruin the mythology a little bit here.

Good.

Because people are contradictory.

The song I keep coming back to is Misunderstood.

Because suddenly we get this description of somebody who is simultaneously:

“little miss unbothered”

and

“little broken-hearted”.

There.

That’s her.

Or at least that feels like the version of Ayra we meet across this album.

What I REALLY like is how she begins the song almost observing this girl from outside herself.

“She was a black sheep...”

“She was a lone wolf...”

“They told her...”

And then eventually the language moves closer to I.

That shift got me.

Because Starrgirl almost feels like Ayra looking at the character the world has been watching for years and finally going, okay, let me tell you what it’s actually like being her.

People have opinions.

People misunderstand her.

People doubt her.

She has been hurt.

She prays.

She bends.

She refuses to break.

And crucially, she doesn’t seem desperate to correct everybody anymore.

“If they all gon’ talk, give ‘em something to talk about.”

That’s growth.

Because sometimes becoming yourself is not about finally getting everybody to understand you.

It’s being okay when they don’t.

This is another part of Ayra’s writing that I think makes the album feel distinctly hers.

For all the sex, money, partying and ego, God never feels particularly far away.

Even on Dance, while she’s outside enjoying herself, she talks about using the moves God gave her.

Then Misunderstood has her on her knees praying that she stays herself.

And by Letter To God, faith becomes deeply personal.

She is basically asking God to protect something fragile from outside noise.

There are rumours. Anxiety. Other people’s opinions. But underneath all of that is this belief that what is destined for her cannot simply be taken away.

I love that because again, it’s contradictory.

She’s cocky and prayerful.

Sexual and spiritual.

Independent and deeply romantic.

Unbothered and broken-hearted.

Global superstar and somebody still asking God questions.

That is a person.

It isn’t suddenly using bigger words.

It isn’t writing twenty metaphors into a verse.

It isn’t “real music” versus pop music either. I hate that conversation.

It’s when the songs start creating a fuller picture of the person singing them.

Ayra has always known how to make a hook.

But on Starrgirl, there is increasingly a person inside the hook.

I understand her ambition better.

Her relationship with money better.

Her relationship with desire better.

Her faith.

Her ego.

Her sensitivity.

Her need to be loved.

Her willingness to walk away.

Her ability to still go back when she absolutely knows better.

The girl is becoming dimensional.

And maybe that’s why calling the album Starrgirl feels right.

Because Ayra Starr has already proven she can be a star.

I think this album is more interested in answering a different question.

Who is the girl?

And for the first time, I feel like she’s properly letting us find out.