"I probably shouldn’t do it, but I’ll do it for the song," Malcolm Todd says, and you hear the proposition as a promise: he will follow the music even when the calculus of fame suggests otherwise. That line, lifted directly from the track "Breathe," is the first clue to what Todd offers on his new 2025 album Do That Again — a record built from small, exact moments rather than stadium-sized gestures.
Do That Again collects the tuneful, genre-blurring pieces Todd has been shaping since his 2024 mixtape Sweet Boy. The album moves between breathy bedroom pop, R&B-tinged grooves and indie-confessional edges: "Jean Skirt" pins sweaty clothes-on-the-floor imagery to watery guitars; the ballad "Free99" turns on quiet reflections about fading innocence; "Difficult Love" rides a plush, hip-hop-tinged bounce. On "I Saw Your Face" he sings, "Life’s not a movie/I’m not a movie star," a line that keeps the record grounded in ordinary discomfort even when the melodies soar.
Todd’s voice — a sweet, lilting tenor that can sound close enough to read a grocery list or distant enough to haunt a chorus — is the unifying instrument. He is based in Los Angeles and has worked in rooms with artists who blur indie and R&B textures; his work sits comfortably alongside names like Omar Apollo, Mk.Gee and Steve Lacy. Listeners familiar with his earlier output will recognize recurring personal details: the playful, referential "Malcolm in the Middle" nods to the early-2000s sitcom on which his father wrote and on which Todd appeared as a child, even offering the line, "if you can’t tell a word I say then I won’t make a sound." The intimate, slightly ironic image that anchors "Lonely Song" — "My doorbell only rings when my food is at the door." — sums up the listener’s vantage on the record.
The album arrives with a practical problem folded into its triumph: two years ago a track from Sweet Boy, "Earrings," caught fire on TikTok and climbed into the Top 10 on the Global Spotify chart, giving Todd a sudden, platform-driven audience. That visibility has real consequences for how new music is heard. Todd insists he is not writing to chase viral moments; the refrain from "Breathe" is as much a credo as a confession. Yet Do That Again reads like an attempt to translate that viral momentum into a coherent artistic identity rather than to manufacture another breakout snippet.
There is friction in that posture. A song discovered on social platforms asks for hooks and immediacy; Todd prefers slow reveals and lines that land on embarrassment, longing and small domestic details. The record’s strongest moments are the ones that refuse easy categorization — the soft-voiced admission in "I Saw Your Face," the sly twilight of "Free99" — which suggests Todd is betting on listeners who will stick around beyond a single soundbite.
Do That Again matters today because it is Todd’s choice about what he wants his music to do next. He could let algorithms define him by the loudest moment; instead he has made an album that deepens the plainspoken voice that drew attention in the first place. That decision is the clearest answer to the album’s central question: will the TikTok crowd be enough, or will Todd’s audience arrive by slower, more ordinary routes? Do That Again tests that answer by offering songs built to last in playlists and in hearts, not just in feeds — and that, for an artist who keeps saying he’ll "do it for the song," is exactly the wager he seems prepared to make.
