Isolation is the debut album by Kali Uchis. She had debuted in the music scene with her 2012 mixtape Drunken Babble. She followed that up with her first EP Por Vida (2015). In 2018, she released Isolation as her debut album, becoming one of my favorite albums for that entire year.

Isolation has a total of 15 songs and runs for a total of 46 minutes. Isolation has garnered plenty of praise before I had gotten the chance to listen to it. It didn’t go under my radar, to say the least. However, I was a little worried about listening to it because my expectations were high. The album had been praised by critics and fans alike, I was afraid I was expecting too much. So I held it off for as long as I could, but I finally came around and listened to it in late 2018 and I could’ve kick myself for not listening to it sooner. The album is just as good as the critics and fans said it was. It easily became one of my favorite albums from 2018.

My Favorites:

Your Teeth In My Neck

• My favorite song from the album.
• Kali sings about people appropriating her art and vision, especially people in the music industry.
• Still love the song just as much as I did the first time I listened to it.

Flight 22

• Kali Uchis sings about her enjoying being with a boy. She doesn’t care wherever this flight is destined to go as she’s enjoying being with him now.
• This song is titled Flight 22, because it refers to the 1967 mid-air collision with Piedmont Airlines Flight 22.
• Love her airy her voice sounds in this song in particular.

Killer

• Killer is the oldest song on the album, Kali wrote it when she was 17.
• She wrote it while she was living out of her car at the time, due to a rocky relationship with her father that resulted in her being kicked out of the house. She was also in a toxic relationship from ages 15 to 19.
• The song is about how she overcame that difficult time in her life.

Dead to Me

• Kali sings about a past lover that she no longer needs, in fact he/she is dead to her.
• The production on the track is truly amazing.
• It blends nicely with sweet Kali vocals.

Feel Like A Fool

• You know what I said about Your Teeth in My Neck being my favorite song from the album, scratch that. This is my favorite song.
• Kali sings about a man cheating on her, but being unable to let him out of her life.
• Kali’s voice reminds me of Amy Winehouse’s here, (one of my all time favorites) but this song is definitely hers and hers alone. I genuinely love it.

Listen to Kali’s latest single with Free Nationals and the late Mac Miller.