Singer, songwriter, movie star, and multiple award winner Cynthia Erivo recorded her second solo album I Forgive You around the time she finished filming Wicked and it’s allowed her to step out of Elphaba’s magical shoes with 20 personal tracks that range from tender to sexy. Following up 2021’s Ch. 1 Vs. 1, the first track she dropped was “Replay,” a stripped-down R&B-meets-Britpop song that shows her in a new light. “It’s very different to the way a lot of people have heard me sing previously, it’s like a palate cleanser and it’s kind of a reintroduction to who I am,” she tells Apple Music’s Hattie Collins. One of the album’s themes sees Erivo admitting her flaws through her unashamedly vulnerable songwriting. “I think people see a picture of me and expect no imperfections, but I wanted people to know that I’m human, that I’ve gone through heartbreak, sometimes caused heartbreak, I’m not perfect and I’m trying to figure things out as well,” she says. The title I Forgive You speaks to “people who’ve hurt us and sometimes ourselves.” She originally had a different name lined up, but changed her mind. “I just thought: ‘What’s the overarching message in this? What are we trying to say?’ And the words ‘I forgive you’ came out. For the heartbreaks, for the hearts we have broken, for the hard things we’ve had to say and the hard things we’ve had to hear.” As she touches on the end of a relationship in powerful heartbreaker “Worst of Me” and finds joy in passion on “She Said,” Erivo found it was important for her to use female pronouns in her love songs. “I wanted to share more of me as a queer woman in there,” she says. “There are songs like ‘She Said’ and ‘Play the Woman’ that have the word ‘she’ in it instead of ‘he’ on purpose, because I also want to let people know that I’m proud of that part of myself. And I think sometimes we don’t hear it very often.” The album wraps with “Grace,” Erivo’s tribute to a very special young fan who was terminally ill and wanted to see Wicked while she still had time. After striking up a friendship and FaceTiming her, Erivo headed straight to the studio. “I thought, what if I write something about the goodbyes that can feel untimely, but they still leave you with a little bit of joy because of the person? And they leave you with something that you can pass on to someone else.”