The music Charli XCX has released since 2014’s Sucker forms a remarkable archive of a young woman figuring out who she is and what kind of artist she wants to be—one who’s unafraid to show her work. Early in her career, Charli’s prodigal skill at crafting hits like Icona Pop’s “I Love It,” Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy,” and her own “Boom Clap” made her an ideal cog in the pop-music machine, a songwriter who could churn out potential smashes not just for herself, but other artists. But, from lyrics about independence on Sucker’s “Break the Rules” and a sneering reference to winning Dr. Luke’s validation on the album’s title track, to her decision to cancel part of her U.S. tour so that she could get back into the studio, the singer has always seemed determined to carve her own path forward.
Charli’s initial post-Sucker experiments seemed pretty discrete: The bone-jangling, Sophie-produced “Vroom Vroom” is nothing like the popping-bottles bounce of “After the Afterparty,” in turn bearing little resemblance to the smoky swagger of “5 in the Morning.” But where her 2017 mixtapes Number 1 Angel and Pop 2 felt like works in progress, the sound on the artist’s long-awaited third album, Charli, feels more resolutely hers. Charli’s ear for melody is rendered all the more sharp by primary producer A.G. Cook’s bold, refractive electronic soundscapes, and featured artists like Sky Ferreira and HAIM seem to be part of a more cohesive, shared vision than Charli’s past collaborations.
That’s not to say that she has it all figured out. If there’s anything that binds Charli’s songs thematically, it’s the singer’s candidness about how much she still has to work through. The car imagery of which she’s so fond is used as a metaphor on tracks like “White Mercedes,” “Next Level Charli” (“I go speeding on the highway/Burn rubber, no crash”), and “February 2017,” on which she examines the consequences of some of her worst behavior.
Charli undermines the party-girl persona she’s been cultivating over the past few years on the muscular “Gone,” which could be as much about coping with social anxiety as it is about navigating an industry that wants artists to be something they aren’t: “I feel so unstable, fucking hate these people/How they’re making me feel lately.” The isolation she craves, of course, also prompts anxiety of its own: “Did I lose it all? Did I fuck up?/Are my friends really friends now?” she worries on the aptly titled “Thoughts.”
The result is a collection of sad bops masquerading as bangers, just as perfect for the club as for a solo bedroom dance party. Like much of pop music, Charli’s lyrics favor broad strokes over more specific narratives, leaving her songs open to interpretation. One thing’s for sure though: The world of Charli is full of contradictions—of rolling up to the party only to immediately bounce, of never looking back only to yearn for a time past, of going faster and then too fast—and those contradictions are very much a part of the ride. The album might not be the end destination, but the road is Charli’s, and she’ll drive down it as fast as she likes.
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