Visible Light

Visible Light is the eleventh studio album by British recording artist Alesha. It was released on 7 August 2020, by Fusion Records and Holy Trinity Music Group. Largely written and recorded in lockdown during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Alesha remotely collaborated with producer Henri Mohammed. It marked her first album to feature an additional producer in over a decade. Visible Light eschews the genre-spanning style of Alesha's previous release, The White Album (2016), for a sound gleaning 2000s French house music and wider disco influences.

Musically, the record is structured like a DJ's set. The songs are sequenced and blended so that they are played continuously without any gaps. Songs on the album sample and reference the music of European house DJs and producers like Daft Punk, Etienne de Crécy, Mauro Ferrucci, Simon Marlin, and Cristiano Spiller, as well as Alesha's own 2000s output. The album's lyrical topics include collectivism, liberation, and relationships.

Visible Light received generally positive reviews from music critics, many of whom complimented it as a return to form for Alesha, however, some critics were divided on its production. Commercially, Visible Light proved to be successful, peaking at number one in most major music markets. The first single, "Dove", leaked a month before its release but managed to become the best-selling single of 2020. Alesha released two more singles from the album, "Walk on Water" and "Sanctuary", and staged a livestreamed concert Asylum.

Background and development
Alesha first met with Algerian-French record producer Henri Mohammed after performing at Parc Olympique Lyonnais in Décines-Charpieu, France, during her Ceremony world tour. Mohammed was performing a DJ set at an official afterparty show. Alesha invited Mohammed to join her entourage for the rest of the tour, which concluded in December 2017. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Alesha and Mohammed used their home studios to record and virtually collaborate throughout lockdown. The first three songs that were written for the album were "Dove", "Bluest of Seas", and "Life Belongs to Us". In an interview with Billboard, Alesha commented that the recording process was a give-and-take situation. According to her, Mohammed used to stay up all night working on the songs. This was helped by the fact that he is a DJ and is used to staying awake all night. This gave Alesha the chance to work on other aspects of the compositions. She noted the fact that she and Mohammed had opposite characteristics, which helped in their collaboration. It was produced in six weeks, from April to May 2020, a sharp contrast to Alesha's older material. Mohammed specified that four of those six weeks were devoted to mixing. Visible Light is Alesha's first music to feature a producer other than herself since her sixth studio album Bigger Than God (2009) a decade earlier.

Alesha decided to incorporate elements of dance in her songs while trying not to remake her music from the past, instead choosing to pay tribute towards Eurodance and French house. The songs reflected Alesha's thoughts on the world in a more hopeful tone, hence the title Visible Light. It was the complete opposite direction of her previous studio effort, The White Album (2016), which meditated on climate change, the migrant crisis, political turmoil, and inner unrest. However, Alesha decided to take a different direction with this album. Regarding the development, Alesha commented: "When I wrote much of The White Album, I was very agitated by what was going on in the world around me, [...] I was angry. I had a lot to get off my chest. I made a lot of political statements. You know, I don't think many of us leave that mind set permanently in this day and age. But now, I just want to be hopeful. I want to do more and be better. At the same time, I want to have fun; I want to dance; I want to feel buoyant. There's a lot of madness in the world around us, and I want people to be happy and free."

Music and lyrics
Visible Light is primarily a dance record, with elements of disco, funk, hi-NRG, and house. It is structured like a nightly set composed by a DJ. Described by Alesha as a "dancercise class," she took inspiration from the music of the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s to create a sound that felt familiar and brand-new at the same time. Alesha and Mohammed bonded over a mutual love of turn-of-the-millennium French house, also known as French touch or disco-house. References to European dance artists and producers, including Daft Punk, Etienne de Crécy, Simon Marlin, and Cristiano Spiller, were used on the album.

The album's structure includes "sticky-sweet choruses" and catchy pop hooks, while it has "campy productions" consisting of disco strings, funk bass guitars, house-influenced piano chords, rubbery basslines, and robotic backing vocals. Described by Dave Seaman of Mixmag as a "socialist dance album", Visible Light speaks to the transformative nature of themes like collectivism, equality, empowerment, liberation, and romance.

Critics notes similarities between the tracks on Visible Light and the works of Cassius, Daft Punk, Jamiroquai, Kylie Minogue, Moloko, and Toro y Moi. Neil Z. Yeung of AllMusic described the sound of Visible Light as "'70s disco, '80s funk, and '90s club jams." Pitchfork's Anna Gaca viewed it as "a collection of sophisticated, hard-bodied disco-house that gives way to slick pop-funk." Mesfin Fekadu from ABC News regarded the album as "a collection of upbeat, dance-flavored gems."

Songs
In the album's first song, "Dove", Alesha sampled Italian artist Moony's 2002 hit "Dove (I'll Be Loving You)", which was produced by Mauro Ferrucci and Frankie Tamburo. While the songs share a title, Alesha built an entirely new song around specific elements of the original. "Dove" ponders what life would be like if humanity overcame adversity and achieved unity. The music of "Ruby Fruit" recalls 1970s disco, described by Q as "Boney M-via-Madison Avenue." The album's title is derived from a lyric in "Half Life": "I know the world we live in can be so combative / Sometimes I swear I can see a visible light." Alesha sings in falsetto atop "swirling disco strings." "Sanctuary" received acclaim from critics. In a positive review, Philip Sherburne, writing for Pitchfork, called "Sanctuary" a "dance-music aficionado's record par excellence, a collage of hallowed tropes: moody Reese bass, flashing piano stabs, gospel-house vocal harmonies, even squirrelly little synth riffs reminiscent of Isolée." Critics observed that the lyrics could be perceived as a subtle statement on the ongoing migrant crisis.

"Daydream" samples the 2016 song of the same name by Etienne de Crécy; the song emphasizes one's will to live and maintains that "everything will be alright tomorrow" in spite of uncertainty. "Artificial Paradise" is a "slinky" nu-disco love song about creating escape. "Walk on Water" heavily recalls 1990s Eurodance, speaking to the lengths one would go to for their lover in its melody-heavy chorus. The Jamiroquai-inspired "Supersonic" incorporates elements of disco and funk music and reminisces on intangible times in which the narrator feels happy while urging a societal reset. "Fragility" was described by Billboard magazine as "a quiet storm of pensive post-disco." The lyrics speak to the effects of male fragility through fabled lore.

"Bluest of Seas" is a French house song with elements of Balearic beat, invoking a summertime quality. Though the instrumentation has a euphoric sensibility, the lyrics are those of a narrator crying out for the love they lost. Described as "an anthemic, string-laden nu-house track" by Q, "Life Belongs to Us" contains an interpolation of "Lola's Theme" (2004) by the Shapeshifters. Its lyrics are an urgent call-to-arms, corralling the listener to "sing a new song" and "take back the power." The album closes with a disco reimagining of the Rolling Stones' bluesy-gospel "Salt of the Earth" (1968), described as "a salute to the working class."

Promotion
Alesha appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine's 2020 issue, marking her sixth cover appearance. A concert film, Live, was released to movie theaters for a limited time to coincide with the album's release. The film was primarily shown at drive-in movie theaters in North America. Teaming up with Adobe and Live Nation, Alesha announced an online competition with a $10,000 cash grand prize, where participants had to design and illustrate "what 'visible light' means to them", using Adobe creative apps. On August 5, 2020, Alesha announced she would host every Friday of August a radio show on Apple Music, called Alesha Radio, in which she will talk about her inspirations for the album and present exclusive DJ mixes in each edition. The first guest was producer Henri Mohammed. Alesha later appeared in print publications L'Officiel, Madame Figaro, and W, as well as guesting on Jack Stevens' Close Encounters Podcast.

Live performances
Alesha's first performance promoting the album was part of a Zoom party, called Paper x Club Quarantine Presents: Alesha's Visible Light Fundrager, to benefit the Marsha P. Johnson Institute. In December 2020, Alesha performed "Sanctuary" with an interpolation of her 2016 single "Winter" at the Christmas Chart Show; it marked her first televised performance in four years. Following the performance, Alesha announced the livestreamed concert Asylum, to be held on January 23, 2021. The concert was filmed and broadcast live from a soundstage on Alesha's estate in Paris, where she spent the majority of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On March 13, 2021, Alesha performed a medley of "Sanctuary" and "Dove" at the 1st Urapopstar Critics Choice Awards, which she also co-hosted with longtime collaborator Shell Ruin. Recorded at the Paris Bourse, the performance involved an elaborate glass maze with an emphasis on projection mapping and lighting.

Singles
"Dove" was released as the album's lead single on July 31, 2020, a month after it originally leaked onto the internet. It received positive response from music critics, who compared it favorably to the singer's earlier works. Commercially, it was successful in spite of the leak, spending two nonconsecutive weeks at number one. As the fastest selling single of 2020, it was certified silver in its second week of sales, gold in its fourth, and platinum in its sixth. The song did not have an official music video, but its animated lyric video was viewed hundreds of millions of times on YouTube. The song ultimately ended its chart run as the best-selling single of 2020, with just shy of 800,000 copies sold. It received a nomination for Song of the Year at the 1st Urapopstar Critics Choice Awards.

The second single from Visible Light, "Walk on Water", was released on October 9. It entered the charts at number four and rose to number two the following week. It remained in the top twenty for a number of weeks, ultimately reaching platinum certification with over 600,000 copies sold. Alesha released "Sanctuary" as the third and final single from the album in January 2021. Coupled with new remixes by Henri Mohammed and Alesha's Asylum concert, the single peaked at number one on the official charts.

Critical reception
At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, Visible Light has an average score of 79 based on 25 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Album of the Year collected 28 reviews and calculated an average of 77 out of 100. Aggregator AnyDecentMusic? gave the album 7.6 out of 10, based on their assessment of the critical consensus.

Jason Lipshutz of Billboard dubbed the album a "summer [escape] of the highest quality". Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic gave the album a four-out-of-five rating and called it "a comeback album from an artist who has never gone away". He added: "Maybe she's lost her appetite to be a weird provocateur, but she has learned how to sharpen and stylize her attack, and that focus makes Visible Light one of her most consistent and satisfying albums." Patrick Gomez of The A.V. Club gave the album a "B", writing that although it is "at times frenetic and disjointed", the songs are generally strong and varied. In a positive review from Variety, Jem Aswad wrote that the album has "consistency and sonic unity, even as the songs wander thematically and melodically all over the map" as well as calling it a "rock-solid foundation for the next phase of [Alesha's] remarkable career". Hannah Mylrea of NME gave a positive review calling the album "pure joy" specifically calling the record's production "glossy."

Furthering with positive reviews, Nick Smith of musicOMH concluded his review by saying: "There may not be anything really new here, but why mess with this formula when it can produce such engaging slaps and dancefloor empowerment?" Kory Grow from Rolling Stone thought that "mostly, Alesha has focused Visible Light ' s spectrum on the kind of body-moving music that comes naturally to her" and said that "her pop renaissance couldn’t come at a better time." The Telegraph ' s Neil McCormick wrote that "Visible Light offers Alesha at her most energetic and forceful, and that is something to behold."

In a mixed review from Slant Magazine, Sal Cinquemani wrote that Alesha "continues to mine the same territory, both musically and conceptually, suggests the empress truly has no clothes." Simon K. of Sputnikmusic also gave a mixed review writing that it is a "solid" return but is too "indecisive." Jeremy J. Fisette from Beats Per Minute gave the album a 64 out of 100 rating, and said that the production "becomes a bit samey by record's end, leading to a dull predictability", although "Alesha's vocals [...] save the day much of the time." Dan Weiss from Spin highlighted some of the songs with "slam dunk" hooks, but overall criticized the music for being "unnecessarily disciplined", and called it "her least sonically diverse album ever."

At the 1st Urapopstar Critics Choice Awards, Alesha won awards for Best Female and Best Album Cover Art, in addition to nominations for Artist of the Year, Song of the Year, and Outstanding Art Direction for an Album Campaign.

Commercial response
Visible Light entered the albums chart at number one, shifting 90,505 copies in its first week of sale. It was the lowest selling first week for an Alesha album in over a decade, perhaps due to the success of the lead single "Dove", although it enjoyed higher sales in later weeks. The album held steady at number two for two weeks as it reached silver status. It spent an additional four weeks in the top ten and just one week outside of the top ten before rebounding with the release of "Walk on Water".

In its eleventh week on the chart, Visible Light returned to number two with its best sales week to date, selling 117,311 copies, followed by another week at number two (96,396 copies). The album spent another week in the top five. After just fifteen weeks of release, sales of Visible Light surpassed one million copies. Following the release of "Sanctuary", the album's third single, Visible Light was certified diamond.

Track listing
All lyrics by Alesha except where noted; all music by Alesha and Henri Mohammed.


 * 1) "Dove"
 * 2) "Ruby Fruit"
 * 3) "Half Life"
 * 4) "Sanctuary"
 * 5) "Daydream"
 * 6) "Artificial Paradise"
 * 7) "Walk on Water"
 * 8) "Supersonic"
 * 9) "Fragility"
 * 10) "Bluest of Seas"
 * 11) "Life Belongs to Us"
 * 12) "Salt of the Earth" (Jagger, Richards)


 * Notes
 * "Dove" features elements of "Dove (I'll Be Loving You)" by Moony (written by Monica Bragato, Francesco Giacomello, Mauro Ferrucci, Tommaso Vianello).
 * “Daydream” samples the song of the same name written and performed by Etienne de Crécy.
 * "Life Belongs to Us" contains an interpolation of "Lola's Theme" by the Shapeshifters (Simon Marlin, Karen Poole, Max Reich), which itself samples "Love Me Tonight" (Gianni Bini, Fulvio Perniola) and "What About My Love" (Patrick Moten).