Charli XCX has emerged again. It’s been five years since her last studio album, two since her last mixtape, and she grounds herself with her new record Charli (2019). Through self-titling the album, Charli invites the audience to immerse themselves in her tangible introspective process.
In her latest album, Charli breaks free from the blaring, surface-level, and, at times, raucous pop that shot her into fame through notable collaborations, like Icona Pop’s “I Don’t Care,” and her own songs like “Boom Clap.” While all of the tracks on Charli sit at the 3 to 4-minute mark and many retain the relentless energy of her earlier work, their sound has evolved through Charli adding an intentionality to her lyrics. This allows the album to be the vessel through which she shares her stories. This growth enables her to ascend towards an electro-pop feel, and she emphasizes her shift by collaborating with established electro-pop artists like Christine and the Queens and Troye Sivan as well as less familiar names such as Clairo. While over half of the songs on the album feature another artist, these tracks are concentrated in the beginning and the end of the tracklist. Charli’s priorities lie in leaving room for herself to grow, and she does so successfully.
Her collaborations achieve a difficult, rarely reached balance. In each one, the influence of the guest artist is noticeable, but Charli doesn’t give up space or have to make room for them. Much of the album art and collab publicity images include Charli XCX and the featured artists with a wavy, metallic material attached to their bodies, flowing over their skin and curving around their bodies, joining them together. The music they created together perfectly supports this image. It is clear that the audience is listening to Charli’s album and living through her world, but she’s comfortable enough in her work that her presence is not threatened by having more voices and influences joining her.
“Next Level Charli” opens the album with non-stop motion. Each verse and chorus ends with the words “go forever and ever and,” the last, open-ended “and” establishing the song’s tone of eternity, emphasized by the lyrics, “I go hard I go fast / And I never look back.” The words are accompanied by a repeating synth riff as well as the sounds of an occasional, distant string of angelic voices. Altogether the song produces a mental image of Charli “speedin’ on the highway” until she transcends the world inhabited by other people into a realm of her own. The next track, “Gone”, uses this realm as its starting point: here she is focusing entirely on herself, reclaiming control and beginning a new journey.
In the next four songs, Charli assumes an out-of-body perspective, analyzing herself: her desires, her growth, her present and her past. In “Gone”, she excuses herself, suddenly realizing “I have to go, I’m so sorry / But it feels so cold in here.” After Charli picks up the pace, singing “I feel so unstable,” Chris AKA Christine and the Queens breaks in with her lightly accented, wiry voice: “I see myself and I look scared and confused.” In a Freaky Friday moment, Charli seems to be seeing herself through Chris, and as they merge in the chorus, their individual voices become almost indistinguishable from each other.
Then comes “Cross You Out” (feat. Sky Ferreira) which enters with a Billie Eilish-esque set of metallic vibrations, lightening once Charli arrives with her bright monosyllabic lyrics. The bridge nods to Charli’s growth as she and Ferreira exhale the words “I’ve become someone better.” The following track, “1999” (feat. Troye Sivan), doesn’t reach the nostalgia mark one might expect, but will win anyone over with the stand-out line, “I just want to go back, sing ‘Hit me, baby, one more time.’”
“Click” (feat. Kim Petras and Tommy Cash) reflects Charli’s exploration of abstract sound. The metronomic repetition of the word “click,” random yells and whoops, alarm rings, and the music-box melody, among other noises, layer on top of the vocals. Charli re-emphasizes her fearlessness to experiment in “Shake It” (feat. Big Freedia, cupcake, Brooke Candy, and Pabllo Vittar) by distorting her voice, making it sound both high-pitched and robotic and then as though she’s underwater. A fast breath starts keeping the beat. At first the two songs sound jarring and misplaced on the album, but they bookend Charli’s smooth middle section of healing, marking the singer’s ability to span multiple genres.
Dividing the album between the first and middle section is “Thoughts” which marks the transition from the high energy, fast paced collaborations and introduces Charli’s more personal, ballad-like solos. Charli croons, “I can only think ’bout you, you / Everlasting pain and it weighs on my brain, like you.”
The solos are only interrupted by Lizzo, a modern self-love icon, who is featured in the track “I Blame It On Your Love,” in which Charli shows her free-spirited side. She is okay with not having the control in love: “I blame it on your love / I can’t help it, I can’t stop,” and exclaims a drawn out “I do.”
“Official” begins the transition back out of the solo middle section. The twinkly, fluttering melody accompanied by Charli’s low and clear vocals anticipate a new beginning. Charli reaches out, drawing herself back out to society. Several times she surfaces alone, the backup and synth stripped down, and reaches her conclusion, “These are the things that could make us official,” connecting herself to another person, ready to emerge from her period of introspection and return to the world inhabited by other people.
Charli ends with “2099” (feat. Troye Sivan). A thumping heart beats through the song, pulling Charli back to her physical body. Yet at the same time she calls the song “2099,” declaring that after making it through the past, she looks ahead to the clout awaiting her in the future. Charli returns to earth, pulling out all the stops, and having remembered that she’s in control. Troye backs her up as she repeats the mantra “I pull up, roll up, fuck up / Don’t make decisions for me, you don’t know nothin’ / I’m Pluto, Neptune, pull up, roll up, future, future, ah.”
Charli XCX takes a leap with Charli. Her new music reaches untouched crevices of her creativity, and she leans into this exploration both in her collaborations and in her solo pieces. Charli is unafraid and in control. However, she chooses to close the album with a flatline pitch; she’s made it to the afterlife and has become “Next Level Charli.”
Voice’s Choices: Thoughts, White Mercedes, Cross You Out (feat. Sky Ferreira)
