''Free Spirit'' is the second studio album by American singer

Khalid Khalid (variants include Khaled and Kalid; Arabic: خالد) is a popular Arabic male given name meaning "eternal, everlasting, immortal", and it also appears as a surname.

RCA Records RCA Records is an American record label currently owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside RCA's former long-time rival Columbia Records; also A ...

. It is the follow-up to his 2018 EP ''

Suncity ''Suncity'' is the first extended play by American singer Khalid. It was released on October 19, 2018 by RCA Records. It was supported by the single " Better". The EP debuted at number eight on the ''Billboard'' 200. Singles The EP was supporte ...

'', and includes the single "

Talk Talk may refer to: Communication * Communication, the encoding and decoding of exchanged messages between people * Conversation, interactive communication between two or more people * Lecture, an oral presentation intended to inform or instruct ...

". Khalid also announced a short film directed by

Emil Nava Emil William Capper Nava (born 29 March 1985) is a British music video director. After leaving school at 16, Emil started his career as a chef. He shot to fame after directing Jessie J's song " Do It Like A Dude". He has since directed over 1 ...

to accompany the album, which was released on April 3. The album debuted at number one on the US ''Billboard'' 200 and received mixed reviews from music critics.

Background

Khalid announced the title on social media on February 28. He had previously shown the van pictured on the cover in various posts.

Short film

A short film accompanying the album was released on Khalid's YouTube channel on the same day of the album's release.

Singles

" was released on February 7, 2019, as the album's lead single. "

Right Back In the sport of association football, a defender is an outfield position whose primary role is to stop attacks during the game and prevent the opposition from scoring. Centre-backs are usually positioned in pairs, with one full-back on either s ...

" featuring A Boogie wit da Hoodie was released on August 2 as the album's second single.

Promotional singles

On March 7, " My Bad" was released with the album pre-order as a promotional single. "Self" was released on March 29, 2019. On April 3, "Don't Pretend", featuring

Safe A safe (also called a strongbox or coffer) is a secure lockable box used for securing valuable objects against theft or fire. A safe is usually a hollow cuboid or cylinder, with one face being removable or hinged to form a door. The body and ...

, was released with the launch of Free Spirit Radio on Beats 1.

Other songs

The album also includes the singles " Better" and " Saturday Nights" from Khalid's 2018 EP ''

''.

Critical reception

''Free Spirit'' was met with mixed reviews. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 58, based on 15 reviews. Reviewing for ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', Alexis Petridis found the album less original than Khalid's previous work, with the singer having little new to add to the theme of anxiety explored in other "fretfully self-examining R&B", instead showing "a tendency to fall back on cliche". With regards to its musical aspect, the critic complained of a lengthy, "somnambulant pace", but observed some "great pop songs", like "Alive" and "My Bad". More positive was

Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...

, who wrote in his column for ''

Vice A vice is a practice, behaviour, or habit generally considered immoral, sinful, criminal, rude, taboo, depraved, degrading, deviant or perverted in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character tra ...

'' that while Khalid's new "privileges and woes" may be foreign to most listeners, he "retains the gift of expressing his feelings in songs that cut star-time inevitabilities down to human scale", observing

truism A truism is a claim that is so obvious or self-evident as to be hardly worth mentioning, except as a reminder or as a rhetorical or literary device, and is the opposite of falsism. In philosophy, a sentence which asserts incomplete truth conditio ...

s in lyrics such as "Couldn't have known it would ever be this hard", "I didn't text you because I was workin'", and "If the love feels good it'll work out". Christgau also pointed out that "because Khalid now enjoys access to pricier musical materials than when he was in high school, the hooks pack more

texture Texture may refer to: Science and technology * Surface texture, the texture means smoothness, roughness, or bumpiness of the surface of an object * Texture (roads), road surface characteristics with waves shorter than road roughness * Texture ...

than tune, making this the rare album that comes fully into its own when you up the volume."

Commercial performance

''Free Spirit'' debuted atop the US ''Billboard'' 200 with 202,000

album-equivalent unit The album-equivalent unit, or album equivalent, is a measurement unit in music industry to define the consumption of music that equals the purchase of one album copy. This consumption includes streaming and song downloads in addition to traditi ...

s (including 85,000 pure album sales) in its first week. It is Khalid's first US number-one album.

Track listing

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Decade-end charts

Certifications

References

{{Authority control 2019 albums Khalid (singer) albums Albums produced by Al Shux Albums produced by D'Mile Albums produced by DJ Dahi Albums produced by Hit-Boy Albums produced by Murda Beatz Albums produced by Stargate