of the bands covers. All proceeds from the VIP pass went to the Mermaids charity supporting transgender and gender variant children and their families, and the Black Cultural Archives. On 17 September, a day before the album's release, Cook released the fourth single from the album, "Beautiful Superstar", alongside a music video, directed by Prosper Unger-Hamilton and Cook himself. Music Apple is a experimental electronic, pop, and hyperpop album that features elements of trance, indie pop, electropop, rock, trap, eurodance, pop punk, lo-fi, eurotrance, synthwave and deconstructed club. Album opener "Oh Yeah" has been described as an homage to the Smashing Pumpkins and "as radio-friendly as Cook has ever been" with its "warm synth and trickle of brass." Cook's vocals were praised as "a leveled-up version of one of Daft Punk's best vocoder moments." "Xxoplex" is an experimental track that incorporates various electronic music styles "from stomping beats and abrasive whirrs of supersaw to its '90s trance synths and mid-'00s, Crazy Frog-reminiscent polyphonic aggravations". "Beautiful Superstar" is a rock-influenced song that references Cook's previous singles "Beautiful" and "Superstar". "Airhead" has been described as "a slice of downright euphoric electro-pop" and "a piece of bubblegum goodness" inspired by the work of Aphex Twin. "Jumper" "calls back to 00s pop-punk classics". "Lifeline" is an "icy melancholic" take on 1980s power ballads. Cook also cited "classic songwriting" as something he was thinking about during the record-making process, listing artists like Shania Twain and Dolly Parton as influences. "I've been pretty directly inspired by the strands of Americana that have sometimes defied that category — Shania Twain is a really good example," Cook said. "[She] defines what pop is and what Americana and country are by actually jumping between those. To actually break those rules, you sorta have to build them up a bit. I definitely think about that quite a lot." Critical reception Apple has received generally positive reviews from music critics, with many critics considering the condensed runtime to be an improvement to the "daunting" 7G. Kayleigh Watson of The Line of Best Fit said "in the way that 7G meticulously unpicked Cook's innards so fans could see the master's mind at work, Apple weighs out the specifics and pours them into the melting pot". Joe Vitagliano of American Songwriter said "Stepping back from the maximalism that is usually associated with the style, Apple presents a new way to think about what