Charli XCX

i really have no idea what to make of this album, like even whether i'm enjoying it or not

i feel like i'm on the brink of being completely YESSSSS THIS IS RESONATING DEEPLY WITH ME but i can't...quite...get...there and it's the kind of thing where if you're NOT on board emotionally it's kind of functionally useless

"you're the one" is a bit of a monster though

albeit i think i might like "you're the one" better if it didn't plunge shamelessly into its cheesy chorus?

the brooke candy verse on this is disappointingly terrible

have't heard the album but from the singles can attest that if you're on board emotionally they are the best ever

there's a vagueness that keeps me from being emotionally on board "you're the one" but that curving bass

really love the lingering the verses do on "you (ha ha ha)" too

Does she have her own "I Love It" on this? I am still curious to hear what she would have done with it instead of Icona Pop.

I'm into this newest single "what I like". she has a knack for cadence

streaming over @ pitchfork advance

This has very big Alisha's Attic vibes writ large all over it. It's a modern pop album that seems designed for people who grew up in the 90s, which is probably either really cute and endearing, or naff and silly, depending on your taste for talky-sung verses in the style of Siobhan Fahey when in Shakespeare's Sister.

Charli XCX herself seems very much a pop starlet for the twenty-something crowd, in the way she nonchalantly swears and sings about sexual encounters but it's all framed in this goth-pop cuteness with easy melodies and simple vivid imagery. I can see this album's relationship to 90's r&b being comparable to the way Anniemal took 80's disco and made it sound very pop but very chic, even though this is a lot more obviously dark and menacing.

aka the awful song with Brooke Candy made me nervous but I even don't mind that in the context of the album and You (Ha Ha Ha) is actually better than I remembered and the rest of it is great. The first three singles are still the best stuff here especially Nuclear Seasons but this is a pretty wonderful pop album.

as extravagant as charli's overload of stylistic reference points is, i don't think it's what's preventing this clicking for me - basically just don't think her songwriting is quite there yet. it's a bit overstuffed but the problem is less that and more her lack of a really distinct songwriting voice

or just, interesting words, or something

i think i'm the only person in the world that doesn't hate the brooke candy song. the second-to-last one "how can i" would be the dud if i had to pick one

You're not alone. Cloud Aura is one of her best. That said, True Romance is a let-down for me largely due to the production. My favorite track is What I Like, but even it has it's problems. Like why start of with a great intro that gets you all hyped up, only to never reference it anywhere else in the song? Still love it, but that's just one example of the many opportunities missed by this album. I expected it to be much more in the vein of Dance 4 U and Velvet Dreaming but the album's first half is like a 90's rehash of what Little Boots was doing with 80's pop.

I've been cool on her other singles but "What I Like" is marvelous.

this is awesome; the two-year-old songs thread in pretty seamlessly

weird but so far i prefer the album tracks to most of the singles (except "what i like" which wow). "like roses" and "take my hand" especially

black roses*

Really, really, really good record.

after seeing her live last week this album is finally seriously beginning to click for me

in a way i'm glad the singles never quite did it in isolation because i get to feel the rush of "YOU'RE JUST ELECTRIC BLUE" now instead

CUZ I CAN TASTE YOUR LIPS ON MY LIPS
YOUR KISSES TAKE ME OUT OF CONTROL
AND I CAN FEEL MY BLOOOOOOOOD
IT'S CRAWLING THROUGH MY VEEEEEEIIIIIIIINS

somewhere, shirley manson feels proud

brooke candy's rap on "cloud aura" is so so bad but the rest of it is so good

WHY YOU WANNA GO TO SLEEP
DON'T GO TO SLEEP
DON'T GO TO SLEEP
LET'S GO OUUUUUT

hmmm i gave this album a couple spins last week but i only actually liked about half of it (mostly the front half, but some later too), the rest just became this amorphous blur of whatever

it's taken me about a month and about...8 or 9 plays, i guess, to click

YOU'RE JUST ELECTRIC BLUUUUUUE is wonderful. all of this is wonderful.

except for brooke candy

Is "cloud aura" the same as on last year's mixtape?

yeah no changes as far as i can tell

"set me free" is ENORMOUS and shoulda been the lead-off single instead of "you"

I still don't get why "I Love It" didn't get the praise this is getting, I know it's noisy and brash but that's kinda the point?

This keeps getting better on repeated listens, it's not so much that it's a grower as

something else that I was thinking of how to explain before I hit enter, oops. It's like it's really simple but sticks way more than the disposable pop she clearly adores.

I love that mixtape so much but "Cloud Aura" wouldn't be the tune I'd carry over from it.

i never heard the mixtape - how does it compare to the album tim?

"i love it" is just completely rotten imo

I haven't heard the album so I can't compare - but the mixtape is shimmering cloud-R&B which by that description should be awful but actually is excellent - "Cloud Aura" is pretty indicative of the overall sound but there's some more discoid and/or balladic stuff on there and there's no other raps.

There are some songs down the end of Super Ultra that could have slotted in fine, on here but for the most part the album is much stronger, which of course it was always going to be given that it has all those pre-release singles on it.

I'm a big fan of "I Love It" (which has had plenty of praise, btw - perhaps not on ILX but certainly elsewhere), but it's not something that would gel with the rest of this record at all; too daphne & celeste / bananarama. it's pummelling, brash, throw-your-hands-up-in-the-air-sometimes sort of stuff; none of the songs on true romance even remotely approach that kind of aggression.

and yes there is a stray comma in that first sentence, oops

Yeah, "I Love It" would sound totally out of place on this but I think it's strange that there's so much dislike for it on its own.

"i love it" did really well on the ilm poll despite not being overwhelmingly praised here (and met with boos and hisses during the results rollout)

yeah i'd be interested to learn what is quite so rotten about "i love it" - as was mentioned upthread, obviously it's loud and obnoxious - but that's the whole purpose of the track, to convey that feeling of just not giving a fuck

I don't _love_ it as much anymore, but I like it in the same way I like Shampoo. And it's not like Icona Pop didn't sound more or less like this for years, so it's not like they "sold out" or whatever accusation you want to level.

at any rate this album is amazing. and yes, "Set Me Free" is massive but it doesn't seem to be the direction Charli XCX wants to go with her singles. alas.

(incidentally, the "Set Me Free" producer's best known for working with _Meds_-era Placebo, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Nicola Roberts and Sohodolls, which is as good a triangulation [uh, with "tri-" replaced with "quad-" as necessary] of this album as you'll find anywhere.)

"i love it" feels clumsy and contrived and, crucially, totally unfun to me. i like don't-give-a-fuck music but it just repels me.

(katherine - picking up something i half-saw on twitter last night if i may, which is prob relevant here - your dislike of "tumblr" as a signifier. i'd say tumblr - regardless of the pockets of tumblr where this isn't the case - signifies decontextualisation above all to me, whether that's endless images/quotes plucked from the ether or the social justice kids or whatever...)

oh, and GREAT review btw

http://www.mtvhive.com/2013/04/23/charli-xcx-true-romance/

haha, that was actually prompted by reading a bunch of metacritic reviews of this very album. the thing is... tumblr is a huge site, with a huge and varied userbase; it's like how people say designs "look like Geocities," as if a site with millions of uses could be somehow aesthetically consistent in a way that isn't "this is how entry-level HTML from cookbooks in 1999 is probably gonna look."

my beef I think is that a lot of time it gets invoked as a kind of shorthand to sneak in pejoratives. like, if someone is trying to say that "this charli xcx album sounds like a thing teenage girls would love," then they should just say it -- and then think about why this is such an important thing to mention. or "this charli xcx album sounds trendy" -- how? why is that bad? etc.

(also, thanks!)

Ugh not feeling this at all, there's an underlying clumsiness to almost everything here and she's just not an enjoyable or engaging on-record presence. Awful voice too.

Agreed, and I even like some of her mixtape material. I just can't with this unfinished-sounding album.

I wish it was longer

xp agreed, it kind of sounds like it was based on a T4 ident or something (channel 4 youth tv)

it's giving me "unless it's kicks"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCMIVbNDFnY

(not a bad thing lol)

if we get an album that sounds like "rock music" but with better songs then i'll be quite pleased

This is fine but I would prefer to get a sequel to Night Time My Time

Also Charli switching to stupid rock so soon after the True Romance vibes and movie soundtrack tie-in of Wuthering Heights kinda feels like she’s speedrunning her original career arc.

I think that might be the dullest CXCX track I've heard since the self-title.

Sounds like lil yachty “Poland”

Yah yachty and like porter Robinson

https://www.instagram.com/p/DYHn1kBuauZ/
mv to 'i keep thinking bout you every single day and night' b-side

wow
i’m really banging my head
i’m really hurting my neck

i like that that lyric doubles as a sarcastic riposte to the song itself (whose commitment to the rock bit seems a bit ironic)

the cigarettes in the music video kind of gross me out tbh. also just me or she is not a very natural smoker? charli a social smoker?

This is like a skit (def feels like one, at that length). The video with mountains of cigarettes, her smoking about ten at a time, the limp drummer, the whole 90s gap/Calvin Klein etc look of the thing, it makes me think this might be an actual advert itself for the album or a piss take of one. Made me lol. Wonder if the whole album will be her sending up rock tropes. Maybe she's been listening to frank zappa.

it’s rock music but specifically based off of the flintstones riffing on “rock music”

Bug music!

I said Yeah Yeah Yeah
She said Yeah Yeah Yeah
They said Yeah Yeah Yeah

The Way Outs and Beau Brummelstones were good at least.

And of course Ann-Margrock.

Don't sleep on "The Bedrock Twitch"

Wait, Rock Roll was voiced by Hal Smith, who played Otis the Drunk on The Andy Griffith Show? Thread derail delivers!

"i keep thinking bout you every single day and night" is even less serious than "rock music"

it is a better tune though

if people think this seems slight in some way I would suggest to you its because the lil yachty inspo is actually the hook & ppl who have not internalized that as a creative breakthrough arent processing the comforting familiarity / thrill of the gesture

Charli XCX announced as a global brand ambassador and investor at Nothing a London based Smartphone Company, that also sell audio products (headphones and earbuds) and smartwatches.

NOTHING (CHARLI XCX)

Our first Global Brand Ambassador and latest Shareholder, Charli xcx brings her genre-crossing instincts to our new partnership. Together, we’re changing how things are done – with music and tech for a new generation.

“When I’m creating, I’m always thinking… pic.twitter.com/KUgIpxfA6a

— Nothing (@nothing) May 12, 2026

Charli xcx is joining Nothing as our latest Shareholder and our first Global Brand Ambassador.

This isn't a traditional endorsement deal. Charli is investing in Nothing and helping shape what we build from here.

The campaign today is just the start. Charli is the first of more… pic.twitter.com/kTMorITK4N

— Carl Pei (@getpeid) May 12, 2026

my earbuds just got a lot cooler lol

phones are neat looking buut that's about all?

if people think this seems slight in some way I would suggest to you its because the lil yachty inspo is actually the hook & ppl who have not internalized that as a creative breakthrough arent processing the comforting familiarity / thrill of the gesture

― ok (D-40), Monday, May 11, 2026

yah I love this track

The track feels like a teaser, which I guess is why it's the promo single. I like it fine but I want to hear what it's setting up. The flat intonation on "I'm really banging my head" is pretty funny. Ceci n'est pas un headbang.

go on girl give us nothing xxxp

Sometimes a headbang is just a headbang

Really, really love to watch her

lol ivy.

https://global.discourse-cdn.com/boingboing/original/3X/9/1/91a790f177bfc55948f5d247e6698509f07890cb.gif