Holy Fvck by Demi Lovato isn’t necessary for the world, but we might as well listen to it and enjoy it

Pop-punk is quite the thing again, especially among rising young solo woman artists.

Its queen, Avril Lavigne, has returned to her

realm in triumph. No surprise, then, that Demi Lovato, who flies from genre to genre with the enthusiasm of one for whom bandwagoneering is a kind of sport or art form as much as a career move, has hurled herself on board.

Does the world need a Demi Lovato pop-punk album? Not one bit as much as Demi Lovato needs a Demi Lovato pop-punk album.

And yet. There’s something about Lovato that transcends the obvious cynicism of such a move. Something about the way she goes all in, brings so much commitment to the affair that you end up taking it on its own terms.

Those being: there’s a lot of crackling fun to be had here.

Each song ticks a particular stylistic box, ranging right back to the mid-Nineties – Queen Avril: check; Princess Hayley of Paramore: check; Dame Courtney Love: check. Plus there are nods to pop-punk’s neighbours in nu metal and light industrial (Marilyn Manson may be rightly cancelled, but The Beautiful People continues to inspire imitations).

Following Britney’s Law – a onetime child star’s eagerness to appear trangressive is in direct proportion to their former wholesomeness – Holy Fvck is as sweary and surly and carefully borderline blasphemous as its title, possessed of the so-far-but-no-further unruliness that is the hallmark of its genre. Of which it’s a bracing latter-day example. The songs are clever and crunchy. Demi is at once zingy and surly.

The world may not need it – but it might as well enjoy it.

Demi Lovato’s Holy Fvck is out now.