Cassidy Paris - BITTERSWEET - Review
- The Joker
- Nov 24, 2025
- 6 min read
Bittersweet, the brand new Cassidy Paris CD came through my letter box on Tuesday.
Nothing ever happens on a Tuesday, so it was somewhat of a surprise. The press release reads like a hostage note from someone who genuinely has Stockholm syndrome: "Stepping confidently into her own identity as an artist." That phrase.
That's the one that has you reaching for a shot before hitting the play button, because you know exactly what's going to follow: another beautifully executed museum piece, another young artist convinced that will and Fender endorsements can CPR a corpse back to life.
"Butterfly" gets things going with no subtlety whatsoever. This is the guy that lights a fuse 'cause he wants to see what happens. Big drums, bigger guitars and Paris wailing like Pat Benatar just caught her boyfriend with her sister. The chorus hits with the power of intravenous Morphine and goes right into the bloodstream. You want another hit immediately even though you know this isn't sustainable and quite probably isn't even good for you.
"Nothing Left To Lose" keeps the onslaught going with riffs that seem like they were scientifically engineered in some mad scientist lab whose only research materials were Def Leppard's Hysteria and a vision board made entirely of studded leather. Paul Laine's production sheen coats everything; every guitar squeals in perfect pitch, every drum hit lands with surgical precision.
Then "Finish What We Started" happens. It's not pastiche or some cynical cash-grab angling for middle-aged men with disposable incomes and dysfunction. Paris genuinely believes this stuff matters. You can hear it in the way she attacks the verses, almost as if each word is a personal vendetta against everyone who told her rock was dead. There's something touching about that level of delusion. Or conviction. At this point, same thing.
Enter "Wannabe" all confident and knowing she looks good in leather pants. This is pure adrenaline and Aqua Net. The kind of track that has you driving too fast while being emotionally available. This is the type of song Michael Starr probably would try to sleep with. I mean that as a compliment, though I'm not entirely sure to whom though.
On "Getting Better," you're all in or you've already thrown your laptop out of the window; middle ground does not exist. It's an obnoxiously optimistic song, even for 2025-which is to say it's the aural equivalent of getting a hard on at a funeral. But Paris sells it with enough raw conviction that for three and a half minutes, you almost believe things actually do get better. They don't, but it's a nice three and a half minutes of lying to yourself.
"Give Me Your Love" brings the tempo down. That's where the album either earns your respect or loses you altogether. Paris strips away some of the production gloss and just sings, her voice cracking in places that feel unrehearsed, human. It's as if she forgot cameras were rolling. It's the kind of vulnerability that shouldn't work in a genre built on leather and lies.
"Can't Let Go" is the one place that "diary of my life" marketing copy finally makes sense.
There's some real pain there. The kind that no matter how good your vocal coach is you simply can't fake. Paris sounds like someone who actually lost something that mattered rather than just acting out the concept of loss for artistic credibility. It's uncomfortable. You feel like you're eavesdropping on something private, which is what good art should feel like before you remember you paid money for the privilege of voyeurism.
"Undecided" tries to kick back into the anthemic stuff, but can't shake that emotional hangover from the last couple of tracks. Competent, catchier than it has any right to be. You can just feel Paris struggling to put the armour back on after having taken it off. Weirdly human. Or am I just projecting?
"Sucker For Your Love". That's all one needs to say, really. It's OK. It's filler.
"Brand New Day" tries for another uplift, another "things will be ok" moment. You're by this point either buying what Paris is selling or you're not. It's immaculate production, with scientifically designed hooks to burrow into your brain and set up camp, but the weariness is creeping in - both in the performance, and in you the listener, beginning to realize that perhaps thirteen tracks was an editorial decision made by someone who didn't have to listen to them all in sequence.
"Is Anybody Out There" cuts through the fatigue. This might be the best track in here. That moment where everything briefly lines up instead of crashing into itself. Ms. Paris sounds genuinely lost, posing a question to which she has no answer. For once, the production serves the emotion and not smothering it. You wanna answer her. You wanna say "yes, we're all out here, equally lost, equally pretending we have our shit together." But you don't, that would be weird. Also, you paid for the album, not therapy.
"Turn Around And Kiss Me" is pure fantasy-the kind of song that exists in the space
between "this would never actually work" and "but what if it did?" It's sexy without being sleazy, confident without being arrogant. It's the musical version of making eye contact with someone across a crowded room and actually walking over instead of just tweeting about it later.
"Stronger" closes things out with a triumphant finale that really should feel manipulative but somehow doesn't. Paris has earned it through sheer attrition-you've spent fifty-some minutes with her, watching her work through the emotions like someone doing reps at a gym that only exists in her head. Building and building, the layers piling on until it feels genuinely epic.
The kind of closer that makes you immediately want to start the album over, which is either great songwriting or actual Stockholm syndrome. Probably both. I'm still deciding.
Bittersweet is annoyingly good. Not "good for what it is" or "good if you like this sort of thing." Just good. Which shouldn't be a controversial statement, but in 2025, making unapologetic rock music is basically the musical equivalent of still believing in Santa Claus- adorable, misguided, and destined to end in disappointment. Cassidy makes music for an audience that, for the most part, doesn't exist anymore. She does so with the kind of earnest
conviction that would be embarrassing if it weren't so goddamn pure-which, trust me, is not a sentence I expected to type today.
She plays in schools. She fights bullying. She actually believes rock music can change lives, which is either the most naive thing you've ever heard or the only sane response to a world that's given up on believing anything matters.
This album sounds expensive, because it is. Laine's production is shiny enough that Mutt Lange might nod approvingly-or roll his eyes. Hard to know with these guys. But under that gloss, something real lies-something you can't fake, no matter how big the recording budget.
Cassidy actually cares about this stuff. You can hear it in every performance, every lyric, every decision that favors sincerity over irony. In a musical landscape largely dominated by algorithm-friendly playlist filler and artists who treat their careers like SEO optimization problems, Paris is out here making music like it's 1987 and none of the intervening decades happened.
This should be quaint, a curiosity, something to be respected from a distance before moving on to whatever's actually relevant. But it's not. It's necessary in a way that's impossible to explain without sounding like you've just come back from some kind of religious epiphany.
Which, is exactly how all great rock music is supposed to make you feel. Or did. I forget which?
Rated ★★★½ Available wherever people still buy actual albums, and not just stream the two songs TikTok told them to care about.
Three and a half stars feels reductive. I'm trying to assign a number to faith, or love, or any of those other things that can't be counted. Bittersweet is precisely what it purports to be: an album of rock songs that believe in themselves with cult-like fervor. Whether that's enough in 2025 is the question each listener has to answer.
Whether heroically naive or the only one in the room brave enough to say it, Rock music's death has been greatly exaggerated. She makes records as if they matter, because for her they do. A conviction so rare now, it's almost alien. Like watching somebody still send letters, or believe in the inherent goodness in people. Quaint. Possibly insane.
Will it change anything? Probably not. Will this album convince anyone not already primed to believe that power chords and leather pants constitute a valid artistic statement? Not likely.
But for the rest of us still holding out hope that rock music can be more than a nostalgia trip, that it still can mean something beyond marketing demographics and reunion tours.
Me? I stopped knowing the difference. But I know good music when I hear it, even when it's dressed up in spandex and attitude, even when it shouldn't work, even when every logical part of my brain says this is doomed.
Frontiers Music s.r.l.
Release: 21 November 2025