Charli XCX Charli
The five years since Charli XCX’s last studio album, Sucker, have seemed to flex in and out of time and space. In 2014, the British songstress was moving steadily from the fringes of pop music into full-blown superstardom, pulling two of the year’s biggest hits (Sucker’s “Boom Clap” and the Iggy Azalea collab “Fancy”) with magnetic apathy. She held the unmistakeable poise of an icon in the making, fully aware of the trends she was expected to follow but unwilling to play by anybody’s rules but her own. As she approached universality, she was forced to reckon with a dilemma as old as the industry itself: is the star that Charli was becoming the star that she wanted to be?
Her response was 2016’s Vroom Vroom, an extended play that aligned her vision with that of the critically contested PC Music collective. Up to this point, the industrial bubblegum of masterminds A.G. Cook and SOPHIE had clumsily straddled the line between novelty and next-big-thing, but Charli knew exactly what it took to push the movement in the right direction. In fact, Vroom Vroom gave PC what it was missing so desperately, a face onto which the collective could tether its polarizing aesthetic. The EP itself proved a formative, though underdeveloped, stepping stone in the paths of both Charli XCX and PC Music, even if these paths wouldn’t converge entirely until 2017’s Pop 2. Pop, which was marketed as a mixtape, remains Charli’s soaring opus, a fully-realized vision of popular music in the year 3017 and an unmistakably human transmutation of PC’s cold-blooded sugar rush.
In the scope of such an evolution, it seems bizarre to frame Charli as the singer’s first “official” release since 2014’s Sucker. It’s an unquestionably polished effort, aiming for cohesion where Pop 2 reached for unpredictability. But its greatest success is its focus on vulnerability, a feat that would seem much less rewarding without context. Sucker sported a punk-wise veneer, one that masked the growing pains of a star-in-the-making unsure of her direction. Charli, however, wears its most difficult emotions on its sleeve, a luxury that comes only with resilience. Highlight “Gone” (which features a predictably stunning turn from Christine and the Queens) reads like a direct reflection on her struggle though the pressures of fame: “I have to go, I’m so sorry/But it feels so cold in here.”
Charli is a pop album through and through, packed to the gills with hooks and show-stopping features. But it’s all on Charli’s terms - if the five year wait suggests anything at all, it’s that Charli is a labor of love, a decidedly mainstream manifesto from one of music’s most valuable left-fielders. There are certainly forays into the radio-ready here: lead single “1999” pairs Charli with Australian pop star Troye Sivan, and “Blame It On Your Love,” a dancehall-tinged reimagination of Pop 2’s “Track 10,” features a strung-out verse from it-girl Lizzo. But the most successful tracks here stray further from the beaten path. Most of Charli’s big name features (which include Sky Ferreira, HAIM, CupcakKe, and Clairo, among others) feel like the product of genuine friendship and admiration rather than concessions to record label pressures. Accordingly, even the album’s brightest contributions feel like communications of the same vision, like transmissions from a future where everyone is a bad bitch and A.G. Cook provides the soundtrack.
The most striking points here, however, put the spotlight directly on Charli. Album centerpiece “White Mercedes” feels almost intrusively personal, a diary entry of song that finds universality in the deepest corners of the mind. “Silver Cross” is finds unbridled catharsis on the dance floor, and “Thoughts” settles into rage and mania like they’re comfortable feelings. Of course, these moments of clarity are anchored by Cook’s masterful production work, which gives even the project’s darkest moments a gorgeous sheen. But Charli’s greatest success is its offering of self in magnanimous proportion. Even in its less successful moments, the album is remarkably open, a feat that puts a career’s worth of searching and refinement into towering perspective. C+