With Don’t Click Play, Ava Max’s upcoming third album following 2023’s Diamonds & Dancefloors, she’s offered up a wide array of “sound palettes”—or “sonic landscapes,” if you prefer—thus far (with some calling this her “most chaotic era” yet just because she can’t seem to “stick to a sound” [yet lately, neither can Beyoncé—it’s just that she keeps such “schizophrenic” stylings to themed albums now]). Among them being the second single from the record, “Lovin Myself” (sandwiched between “Lost Your Faith” and “Wet, Hot American Dream”). A song that, yes, sort of comes off like Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé’s “Feeling Myself” in title. But the braggadocio of the latter isn’t what gets conveyed in Max’s song, so much as the sentiment she described in characterizing the writing process behind it: “[It’s] the most honest I’ve been in a song in a long time. It came out of a period where I was really learning how to stand on my own, not just as an artist, but as a person. I realized that loving yourself isn’t some cliché, it’s a survival skill. This song is about choosing yourself, not in a selfish way, but in a healing way. I wanted it to feel like an anthem for anyone who’s learning to be their own anchor.”
This explanation, too, majorly channels the sologamist energy of Miley Cyrus’ 2023 hit, “Flowers,” during which Cyrus declares, “I can love me better than you can.” In 2025, Kesha also adopted this “I am my own soul mate” energy for a single called “The One” from her first independent album (of Dr. Luke, and released on her label, Kesha Records), Period. Granted, Max unleashed “Lovin Myself” a month prior to Kesha’s similarly-themed track. But even if she hadn’t, it wouldn’t have changed the fact that both women have their own unique perspective to offer on the perks of “aloneness” (and, more to the point, relishing what it means to be okay with being alone). With Max’s variation on the same theme assuring, “I don’t need nobody, I’m lovin’ myself/Tonight it’s all about me, yeah, it’s good for my health/And I know how to please me, I don’t need no help [here, it starts to briefly border on the Divinyls’ “I Touch Myself” territory]/Nobody, nobody can lo-lo-love me like I’m lovin’ myself.” Or, as Kesha says, “I’m what I’ve been chasin’/I’m the one I’ve waited for.”
Incidentally Pink Slip, the producer of “Lovin Myself” (and not to be confused with Anna Coleman’s [Lindsay Lohan] band of the same name in Freaky Friday), also worked with Kesha on the Period songs “Yippee-Ki-Yay” and “Attention.” But it seems that Pink Slip was less inspired by the sound of Kesha and more by the sound of Lady Gaga for this particular anthem (as if Max’s frequent comparisons to Gaga on the physical front weren’t enough). This apparent in the thumping bassline reminiscent of Gaga’s own self-acceptance anthem, “Born This Way” (which itself notoriously sounded a lot like Madonna’s “Express Yourself”—something the Queen of Pop wasn’t shy about calling out [#reductive]). Though that’s not the only aspect of “Lovin Myself” that channels Gaga on “Born This Way.” There’s also the way Max talk-sings, “Baby, c’est la vie” in a manner that sounds like Gaga urging, “Don’t be a drag/Just be a queen.” Then there’s Max’s pop culture-oriented name checking in the form of, “I give myself butterflies, Donatella on my eyes/Marilyn until I die, shout out Chanel No. 5.” For, lest one forget, Gaga not only has a song called “Donatella” (from Artpop), but she also centers the Born This Way track, “Government Hooker,” around the idea of Monroe prostituting herself to JFK (all without ever needing to mention her name)—a construct, mind you, that doesn’t exactly align with “self-love.”
To complement the empowering “Born This Way”-esque rhythm, Max created a visual world, in conjunction with director Claire Arnold (who also directed Max’s first single form Don’t Click Play, “Lost My Faith”) to, as she told Rolling Stone, “feel like a celebration of self.” Ergo, the presence of Max’s very own self-branded energy drink (called, what else, Maxx Energy—in Electric Cherry flavor), which she sips while wearing a white mask and coordinating white shorts and top for an overall “angelic aesthetic.” Max further added, “I wanted it to be bold, bright, and joyful! I’m dancing in the streets and on rooftops because that’s what it feels like when you finally stop living for other people’s expectations and start honoring yourself.” And yes, speaking of rooftops, this is a primary aspect of what lends the visual accompaniment such 00s music video cachet (see: Nelly Furtado’s “Say It Right” or, always most famously, Lindsay Lohan’s “Rumors”). In addition to that trope, other “00s touches” include Max wearing a sleep mask that reads, “Ava Max sucks” and a t-shirt with the words, “Heartbreak survivor” (something she says in the song as well), as well as the sartorial choice she makes while dancing in the streets of Los Angeles (namely, outside of the Moonlark’s Dinette on S Broadway).
As for another moment on the rooftop, which features a billboard of Max’s Don’t Click Play album cover, the sight of her own image burning in effigy is more than slightly reminiscent of what Charli XCX did for her long-awaited “party 4 u” video (indeed, the billboard of her image burning is the entire crux of the “narrative”). And yes, there’s even a dash of Charli’s newly-made bestie (thanks to the “Girl, so confusing” remix), Lorde, in Max’s lyrics that tout self-love. Specifically, when Lorde asks on “Man of the Year” (her second single from Virgin), “Who’s gon’ love me like this?/Oh, who could give me lightness?/Let it flow down to me/Love me like this.”
The answer is, of course, only oneself. As Max is keen to remind with her own hymn of self-value. Knowing full well that the only person that can treat you as right—as queenly—as you deserve is, well, yourself.
