Despite Red being tipped as a "breakup album," this one is all love-struck optimism, a setting she's worked well in before.

Spin Magazine called it "the breakup album of the year."

They called it "One of the all-time great breakup albums, not to mention one of the era's surprise success stories."

The singer described the album as "a breakup album".

The album was written during Laswell's divorce from his wife; he stated: "It's basically a breakup album...but the biggest surprise has been when you resurface out of the dark little studio.

The title alludes to the David Bowie album "Heroes" and also to a loose theme of the album as a "big breakup album".

If a breakup album as potent as 21 led you to imagine Adele as a delicate wallflower, eternally wounded by lost love, this concert disc was the corrective to that.

"Bare," an anguished, introverted breakup album, is just as lavish.

Compared with "The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most," his great 2001 breakup album, this one sounds a bit tame.

Describing the album as a breakup album, Rolling Stone music critic Jody Rosen writes, "Kanye can't really sing in the classic sense, but he's not trying to.