If you’ve ever wanted proof that Black girls don’t just bend genres, they can build entire universes out of glitter, nerves, and cosmic-level imagination, then look no further! Hemlock Springs’ debut album,The Apple Under the Sea, arrives like a kaleidoscope prophecy.
Hemlocke Springs, who first rocketed into the spotlight with her delightfully unhinged TikTok hit “girlfriend,” fully leans into her reputation as pop’s resident eccentric genius. Drawing on her religious Nigerian-American upbringing and her love of theatrical world-building, she’s crafted a concept album that feels like an epic fable of self-discovery. The loose narrative follows a wandering protagonist who stumbles upon a red apple, unlocking a journey of identity, rebellion, and liberation. Each track is a new experience for the listener, and the album as a whole is emotional, chaotic, spiritual, and low-key hilarious.
With co-producer BURNS helping shape the sound, Springs blends 80s sparkle, electronic jitters, and the kind of melodic curveballs only a proudly weird Black girl would dare to throw. Some critics are already praising Spring’s for the album’s boldness, but it really hits different when you’re part of the community that’s been carving out space for Black alt expression long before it was trendy.
Across ten tracks, Springs turns anxiety, curiosity, and self-reinvention into something danceable, theatrical, deeply Black in its refusal to shrink or conform.
The album’s introductory track, “the red apple,” is haunting and ethereal as Spring’s describes her feelings of moving away from her religious upbringing. Whereas “the beginning of the end” and the frantic “head, shoulders, knees, and ankles” turn real-life anxiety and overthinking into energetic pop explosions. “W-w-w-w-w” offers a softer, dreamy domestic moment that reflects Spring’s uncertainty about adulthood and intimacy before “sever the blight” drags the album into a dramatic, darker, and moodier territory. In this turning point track, the “blight” represents fears, expectations, and inherited beliefs, especially those tied to her religious upbringing. The “sense is” duo towards the end of the album serves as a nostalgic interlude, complete with playground ambience that feels like an attempt to reconnect with childhood innocence and who you were before the world tried to edit you. By the end, The Apple Tree Under the Sea stands as a surreal, self-aware, joyfully strange debut. It firmly places Hemlocke Springs in the lineage of Black artists who make their own worlds and invite the rest of us to get weird with them, proving that she’s not just in the alt lane, she’s tearing it up. Just like a certified Alt Darling should.