Tinashe's New Album 'Popstar': Tracklist, Features, Producers, and Everything You Need to Know

Two years ago, Tinashe went from being a critics' favorite to a genuine presence on the charts. "Nasty" gave her her first solo Hot 100 entry, and a year later the Disco Lines remix of "No Broke Boys" went even further, climbing into the top 40.

Now she's trying to go bigger. On September 25, she'll release her eighth studio album, fittingly titled Popstar. The title signals a new era: it's her first album through Atlantic Records, alongside longtime partner Nice Life and her own Tinashe Music imprint, and her first major-label album since 2018's Joyride.

Here's everything you need to know about Popstar.

Popstar is Tinashe's eighth studio album, and technically the final part of a trilogy that began with 2023's BB/Ang3l and continued with 2024's Quantum Baby. Both of those earlier albums came out through Nice Life and her own Tinashe Music imprint. Popstar adds Atlantic to the mix.

It's also a bigger swing. Popstar has 16 tracks and runs nearly 40 minutes. By comparison, Quantum Baby had just eight songs and ran 22 minutes, and BB/Ang3l clocked in at about 20.

Tinashe recently appeared on the Call Her Daddy to talk about the album, saying her goal was to make something cohesive. "I don't subscribe to like one particular sound, one particular genre," she said. "I've made records on this project that feel like dance records, like hip-hop records, like pop records, like R&B records… And I wanted to bring that question or like bring that conversation to the table of what does it mean to be a pop star?"

Tinashe being Tinashe didn't just post the tracklist. On September 17, she shared a video of herself flipping through a stack of magazines, each with its own cover and a masthead named after a song on the album. She then set the zines up on a newsstand and posed in front of them. The caption simply read "Popstar," along with the release date.

Here's the tracklist:

1. "Sunglasses"
2. "Too Easy"
3. "Melatonin"
4. "Empty Stadium"
5. "Flashbacks"
6. "Overdramatic"
7. "I'd Rather Be Alone"
8. "Crash Out"
9. "Pillow Fight"
10. "Nobody Wants To Dance Anymore"
11. "Twentyfive Eight"
12. "The Show Must Go On"
13. "Popstar"
14. "Brainrot"
15. "Cloud 9"
16. "Heavy Weight"

Tinashe has released five songs from Popstar.

"Too Easy": She previewed the lead single during her Coachella DJ set at the Do LaB in April, then officially released it on June 5, with the video following a day later. Built on a minimal but pulsating beat, the song sits somewhere between 2000s R&B and modern K-pop. The video matches its energy: a frantic, tongue-in-cheek spoof of pop-star life.

"Crash Out": The second single, "Crash Out," arrived on July 16. It's a meaner record than "Too Easy," a synth-heavy trap song reminiscent of "2 On," her 2014 hit with DJ Mustard. The choreography-heavy video was directed by 91 Rules, with Tinashe serving as creative director.

To tease the single, she teamed up with content creator Christian Vierling, who posted a video of Tinashe taking a sledgehammer to a BMW. Catching him watching, she asks, "You wanna get a couple hits in?" Vierling took her up on it, handing her his phone to film while he took his swings. It's about as literal a crash out as it gets.

"Melatonin": Released on August 13, "Melatonin" is the most experimental of the singles: a frantic techno track produced by Ricky Reed, Zack Sekoff, and Nightfeelings. The accompanying video, once again directed by 91 Rules, features Tinashe really embracing her dancing background.

"Pillow Fight" and "I'd Rather Be Alone": Tinashe released these as a double single on September 10. Driven by piano, "Pillow Fight" has an airy, almost '90s sound, and its video was directed by Zac Wiesel. "I'd Rather Be Alone" is a sparer, more emotional electro-ballad, featuring the iconic bed squeak Lil Jon popularized on Trillville’s "Some Cut.”

Tinashe hasn't been shy about building buzz for Popstar. Beyond Call Her Daddy, she's sat down with outlets like Rolling Stone and Stereogum.

She first started talking about the album in March. At the iHeartRadio Music Awards, she told The Hollywood Reporter she'd been working on it for six months to a year, calling it "cutting-edge, innovative," and "something new," and saying it blends R&B, pop, electronic, and dance music in ways that are hard to label.

Speaking with Stereogum, she stressed that the album is meant to be heard in full, not in pieces. "We go on an adventure throughout the album," she said. "It starts very confident and in your face, and then evolves and gets a bit more introspective…I think it's nice to end with this touch of nuance to the whole concept."

With Rolling Stone, she talked about the cover, an unglamorous close-up of her face, and pushing back against the pressure to chase the viral moment. "To be a true artist, you have to be able to transcend that and push against that," she said. "We're so much more layered than a thumbnail or a soundbite…The cover is not what you would expect in terms of the flashiest, most pop-star-esque visual. That is, to me, the key, because it makes me think there's more to the story."