Debby Friday - The Starr of The Queen of Life
Royal Mountain Records
Released on August 1st, 2025
Debby Friday has established herself as a force to reckon with in the Canadian music scene — and increasingly in the international music landscape. The Nigerian-born Toronto-based polymath has steadily released music since 2018 with EPs such as BITCHPUNK (2018) and DEATH DRIVE (2019). Notably, she was awarded the 2023 CBC Polaris Music Award for her first full-length album, GOOD LUCK (2023)
Since GOOD LUCK’s release, Debby Friday has been on a path to international starrdom with cover pages in NME Magazine and Range Magazine as well as spotlight at stages for SXSW, Pitchfork Music Festival CDMX, Osheaga, Pukkelpop, Lost Village Festival, among many others. I cannot overstate that this is well-deserved, as Debby Friday is a calculated artist whose philosophical and psychoanalytic insights allow her to articulate herself musically with precision.
The Starr of The Queen of Life comes as a work of redefining and challenging stardom into Friday’s subversive sense of starrdom. The real-life impact of touring and constant creative output took a toll on Friday leading up to a stress-induced shingles diagnosis after she left ill during all the motions. This new album offers a glimpse into how Friday has recentered herself and her creative vision to embody radical honesty in the aftermath of this episode. There is a gentle glamour to how Debby Friday carries herself in this new album as opposed to the industrial bass harshness of GOOD LUCK. The album draws from the forms of pop-to-come found in hyperpop-adjacent musicians and producers such as Eartheater, A.G. Cook, Hannah Diamond, Charli XCX, Shygirl, Nikki Nair, Imogen Heap, among many others.
The album begins with the single “1/17” where an ethereal wave of synth pads and arpeggiators open up the sonic space for Friday’s attempt at deciphering of a lover — lyrically she leans into the intangible ecstasis that all signs and metaphors built around this lover stand for with references to the oracular speech of the Pythias of Delphi and evocative images of being stripped down to gentle vulnerability until the track drops into a sidechained dance anthem. Accordingly, “All I Want to Do Is Party” and “In The Club” lean into what Friday describes as an apocalyptic hedonism of club music over an instrumental production that will have clubs bumping for days to come. Along the way there are more gentle takes on tracks like “Alberta,” “Higher,”and “Leave.” — all of these tracks have something that make them stand out on their own, for example the yearning aura of “Alberta” with the refrain “I see your heart” or the vocaloid chorded vocals a la Imogen Heap from “Leave.” The album closes with “Darker The Better” which features a pop track by way of new wave instrumentals with chorus-driven Johnny-Marrsque guitars, a steady rhythm section, and swelling brass pads that create this gothic club banger bringing some of Debby Friday’s most intensive punk vocals in what otherwise has been a softer album than prior releases.
With The Starr of The Queen of Life, Debby Friday’s has fleshed out a depth of creative maturity and personal insight that allow her to embody the starr that she ultimately is. With this album, Friday deserves to take her place at an international level among the giants of pop and experimental pop today. Not only is this the best Canadian release in 2025 so far for me, but it may be a contender for such a title at an international level.
