Cara Delevingne – “Looking for You”

I'll admit it: seeing Cara Delevingne attached to a new pop record made my finger hover over play slightly longer than usual. Fair or not, extreme fame comes with its own set of musical trust issues. Curiosity eventually won, which is fortunate because “Looking for You” doesn't need celebrity grading on a curve. It just needs a good pair of headphones and BJ Burton doing BJ Burton things.

Burton's résumé runs through Charli xcx, Bon Iver, Miley Cyrus, The 1975, Nine Inch Nails and enough other interesting corners of music to make his presence here its own endorsement. “Looking for You” puts that adventurous production instinct to excellent use. Cara keeps the lyrical premise beautifully direct: lying awake with somebody occupying the head, body and heart until the line between dreaming and wanting starts to blur. Synths bend, details twitch at the edges and her vocal holds the center while everything around it gets increasingly playful. Everything is slightly off-kilter and exactly where it belongs.

“Looking for You” arrives on Cara's debut album, Not Normal, and perhaps the title tells us something about why this clicked. There's enough traditional pop architecture here to grab onto, but plenty happening around the edges to keep the song from settling into anything predictable. Familiarity gets distorted. The edges get weird. The hook still hooks. Cara Delevingne made a pop song worth making room for.