Little Mix’s latest album Confetti is, if anything, quite possibly the best distraction in my life right now. As 2020 ends and minutes take hours to pass, I’ve found it’s easy to slip into a despair, and Confetti yanked me out of that sorrow on the first listen.

At first glance to any Little Mix album, my initial thought is always “these women can sing.” Whether it is a ballad with only a piano backing like “My Love Won’t Let You Down,” or a made for the radio pop song like “Happiness,” they always take the time to show off their vocals. No member sings more than the other, and you get the feeling that each album is truly a team effort, not a start-off point for a solo career.

In their nine years as a band, Little Mix has perfected taking elements from mainstream pop and turning it into something that’s solely their own. “Sweet Melody” is almost meta, a song about sweet melodies that a lover used to sing even as they cheated. The second verse is filled with references, both to their own songs and others, but the stand out part of it is “He would lie, he would cheat, over syncopated beats” while syncopated beats play in the background. In a syncopated beat, displaced beats throw off the main rhythm, paralleling how the lover in the song cheats in his relationships. The depth of this line is almost shocking. When I compare it to the elementary writing of their first album, it shows how much they’ve matured while maintaining who they are.

I know I’ve emphasized how captivating this album is to me, but it does take work to be able to fully enjoy it. The opening track “Break up Song” is okay, and the next track “Holiday” is forgettable, but I stuck with the album and I’m glad I did. “Confetti,” the album’s titular track, should have been the opener. It’s about the success they’ve achieved in the music industry, and the sound perfectly sets up the tone of the album.

“Gloves Up” is by far my favorite on the album. The beginning feels exactly like “Salute,” a feminist single from their second album, but much more mature. Where “Salute” felt basic and a little performative, “Gloves Up” is earnest and ambitious, a song about fighting for what you want. It is a feminist song, but not in a tacky “Disney Channel Original Movie” way.

In the past, Little Mix has been criticized for not writing cohesive albums, meaning that none of the tracks seem to fit together. Confetti solves that problem with with little callbacks to other songs, like the repetition of “On and on and on” in both “Break Up Song” and “Sweet Melody.” The sound is consistent, but not to the point where each song blends into each other.

I tend to go for melodramatic sad songs, but Little Mix has always been my weakness in making me want to actually have fun in an untainted way. The sheer joy and confidence that Confetti exudes made me wish there wasn’t a pandemic; I wouldn’t be doing anything anyways, but the album makes me feel like I could.  No matter what you’re doing while you’re listening to it, for a full 41 minutes Confetti turns you into who you want to be.