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.

srsly it's like Charli and Finn Keane studied this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxI-uuu9aMk

Arranger Gareth Murphy is bringing aleatoric writing back to pop arranging and I’m here for it. Seriously this is very inspiring and awesome and humbling

Also the fact that the orchestration vacillates between chamber group, orchestra, quartet, MIDI, it’s mono and then it’s stereo then it’s filtered then it’s digitally reverb’d then it’s a spring— it’s effervescent and so creative

Skye and Charli singing in my ears hard panned left/right just now and my heart is exploding, wow

Yeah that leapt out at me well, that hard pan -- in a good way. And thanks for these extra details on the string side of it, fgti. A lot of striking variety in a little over half an hour!

Hah I was thinking as I was listening “if I were to annotate this it’d be a 50 page document at least”, so much happens and it’s all so wonderful

it’s Charli baby

Album's really good. The music worked well in the movie, too. She has a very coherent sonic idea about the material but allows a big range of approaches within it. (I agree not unlike Lux, although also I love Lux.)

Is there a thread for the movie? I'm surprised if there isn't much talk about it here. People are losing it on social media.

I don't think so. I just posted about it on the Emerald Fennell thread.

did moodles mean the Fennell movie or the Charli movie

Ah well that doesn't have a thread either.

i just saw The Moment. i like the idea behind it, but it's not quite biting or funny enough to work as a mockumentary. almost felt like a more restrained Safdie film? Alexander Skarsgard is having fun, tho.

This soundtrack deserved a better movie.

the XCX soundtrack or the AG soundtrack

both, imo.

The Charli soundtrack is really blowing me away, I love it.

I don't think the stuttering beat quite hits, but I am otherwise a HUGE fan of Funny Mouth. Almost a Twin Peaks quote to begin, and that building dread! Chills.

i really like my reminder, especially the crazy vocal effect in the verses of big reverb + heavy gate that cuts off both the vocal and the reverb as soon as the singing ends

Charli XCX going rock

Two years ago, pop’s ultimate grafter became a global household name, beloved by ravers and politicians, thanks to #Brat, this decade's most talked-about album. Now – newly married, with movie roles pouring in and set to release Brat’s follow up – #CharliXCX is ready for a rock… pic.twitter.com/U9euVUdxa2

— British Vogue (@BritishVogue) April 16, 2026

https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/charli-xcx-british-vogue-interview

“It’s Fun To Flip The Form”: Charli XCX Lets Vogue In On Her Rock Reinvention

Two years ago, pop’s ultimate grafter became a global household name, beloved by ravers and politicians, thanks to Brat, this decade’s most talked-about album. Now – newly married, with movie roles pouring in and millions of fans in her thrall – Charli XCX is ready for her rock makeover. By Laura Snapes

Charli XCX going rock, what more collabs could be lined up? last year we had John Cale

Any one fancy Charli XCX teaming up with Jaz Coleman

As an unreconstructed Sucker fan, I'm intrigued. Guess it depends what she means by "rock," but I trust her instincts.

re: what she means by "rock, maybe a hint from last year: Siouxsie and the Banshees

charli using Spellbound by Siouxsie and the Banshees for her ig story oh tasteli xcx......

— DIGI (@DiGi__Official) May 7, 2025

I would like a 21st century JuJu with a unique Charli XCX twist

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/siouxsie-and-the-banshees/juju/

i love sucked too, but i don’t really get why she feels the need to do some expectations subverting pivot. don’t overthink it, just make brat 2 imho

*sucker

next album being a rock album will be interesting, she's still working with ag cook and easyfun on that so i'm looking forward to hearing what their take on rock will sound like. brat was her third great hyperpop album so it's fine if she's going to keep broadening her horizons. i'm sure this one will be better than sucker at least.

if she's learning sword fighting then she's gotta do a music video with a sword fight, that's the rules

the one thing is that she better have the coolest distorted guitar sounds

i'm sure this one will be better than sucker at least.

fp

if she's learning sword fighting then she's gotta do a music video with a sword fight, that's the rules

― ufo, Friday, 17 April 2026 00:54 (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Can someone dig up that rtc post about pop bitches dreading having a hit because they’ll be driven out to the desert for their next video clip

I'm still mad she didn't release "Allergic to Love"

which hyperpop artist was it who did the cover of Smashing Pumpkins "Today" and is it possible that's what she means by rock

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09PbJSRkEFQ

that was ag cook who is co-producing the rock album

I’m a bit baffled by the speculation about whether CXCX gets “rock” after her last album kicked off with one of the most brutal rock climaxes in pop history.

Rock's always been part of her vocabulary. It'll just be interesting to see what she means by "rock" in 2026.

kicked off with one of the most brutal rock climaxes

stumped by this mixed metaphor

I want at least one song with the same backing band as her "No Fun" cover: Lee Renaldo, Sim Cain, Sal Maida, and Matt Sweeney

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OjHnpMgYGs

xp it occurred to me also, but for me the album peaks with track 1, no metaphors necessary