FLETCHER – Would You Still Love Me If You Really Knew Me?

Label: Island Records
Released: 18th July 2025

FLETCHER has never exactly hidden. From ‘Undrunk’ through ‘Girl Of My Dreams’ to ‘The S(ex) Tapes’ and beyond, she’s made a career of laying heartbreak and messy desire bare, often soundtracked by euphoric pop catharsis. But with ‘Would You Still Love Me If You Really Knew Me?’, there’s something rawer, more exposed – and more quietly radical – at play.

For an artist whose songs have almost exclusively chronicled relationships with women, this album is FLETCHER’s coming-out of another kind: she’s fallen in love with a man. Nowhere is this clearer than on launch single ‘Boy’, a luminous yet heavy-hearted track where she wonders, almost apologetically, if her audience will still see her the same way. Given the rampant bierasure and entrenched assumptions around queerness, that tension is heartbreakingly understandable, and also feels like the album’s beating heart: a plea for space to evolve without having to erase where you’ve been.

Sonically, ‘Would You Still Love Me…’ trades some of her past big pop bombast for something more stripped-back and intimate. ‘Party’ is both confessional and defiant, gently telling fans this isn’t the break-up anthem party they might expect. Elsewhere, ‘Hi, Everyone Leave Please’ bristles with frustration, while ‘Chaos’ slips into vulnerable talk-singing as she mourns the parts of herself lost to the character of FLETCHER.

One undeniable highlight is ‘The Arsonist’, where she delivers one of her most gutting lines yet: “I was the bitch who burned everything, over and over, I’m tired, I guess the arsonist ran out of fire.” It’s a moment of searing self-awareness, the bravado stripped away to reveal pure exhaustion.

Still, there’s hope here, too. ‘All of the Women’ soars as she embraces every past version of herself with tenderness and pride. The album never fully resolves its questions – the title itself ends with a question mark, lingering – but that feels fitting. FLETCHER is still learning, still reaching for truth, still figuring it out.

‘Would You Still Love Me If You Really Knew Me?’ is a messy, honest lesson in choosing yourself, even when it might mean disappointing others. It’s about fighting assumptions, embracing change and remembering you’re allowed to be both complicated and contradictory; it’s part of being human.