Summer Walker’s newest album arrives as the conclusion to an unintended trilogy after 2019’s Over It and 2021’s Still Over It. Now with Finally Over It, Walker insists she’s moved past her heartbreaks. Still, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that we’ll find ourselves listening to Definitely, 100% Over It (For Real) in a year or two.
Walker concedes that moving on is harder than expected. Even if you get over something, there are always new challenges and heartbreaks on the horizon. With that outlook, it’s no surprise she sees herself as a tragic romantic, embodied in her dressing up as the late Anna Nicole Smith on the album art.
To match her newfound resolve, she’s split the album into two discs of nine songs each: ‘For Better’ and ‘For Worse’. On the first, she recognises she’s the only one who’s going to love herself completely; and on the second, she gives up on expecting unconditional love from others.
Many of the songs on this record are straightforwardly beautiful, carefully paced stories of lost love. The lushness of the instrumentals makes them all the more potent now that the production matches the beauty of her voice. But Walker’s music is at her most endearing on the songs where she rolls her eyes, sighs deeply, and sings in a matter so offhand, you know you’re hearing her at her most brutally honest.
Like on ‘Robbed You’, where she wishes she’d had the presence of mind to hurt her ex-partner the way he hurt her. On ‘No’, her partner uses up the petrol, then asks what’s for dinner, and she simply isn’t having it. Then on ‘FMT’, you feel the sum of her palpable exasperation at falling for the same tricks over and over again.
Regarding features, Doja Cat and 21 Savage earn their guest verses by matching her in wit, but there are simply a distracting number of guests and Summer appears to inexplicably wander in and out of her own album at will. Similarly, while Walker’s best quality is her detailed understanding of R&B, her reliance on samples and references is beginning to seem more of a curse than a blessing, as this often limits her songwriting to the ceiling of her source material. Finally Over It is a lush conclusion to this chapter of her life, but I know she’s capable of so much better.
“Summer Walker – TCUS Logo-2” by thecomeupshow is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.
