Charli XCX is a pop star? This question has haunted the British artist ever since she wrote a report on Icona Pop’s “I Love It” in 2012. Musical critic Steven Hayden combined media coverage of the topic into a thread. in 2019; she was “the imperfect pop star”, “the pop star of the future”, and “the most bizarre pop star”. What keeps resurrecting this question is that Charli makes music that is undeniably pop but doesn’t chart. The fact that she writes pop music must mean she’s aiming for mainstream stardom, right? In Charlie’s case, the answer was never clear.
On Charlie’s fifth studio album, Crash, released on Friday, she’s playing the part of the pop star who’s been dancing around her for a decade. She told Rolling Stone magazine last month that the album is her “highlight pop girl moment,” a month after she tweeted “Imagine if this entire album campaign was just a comment about navigating the major label system and the sadistic nature of pop music in general.” (What is she quickly followed with “another thought: what if I just love pop music and want to be super famous?”). Playing at the end of the show and even playing Saturday night live, Charli Crash’s promo tour has all the elements of a pop star package.
Seemingly forgotten here is that Charlie already had a “pop girl highlight” moment. Having released some of the biggest hits of her career with Iggy Azalea’s “I Love It”, “Boom Clap” and “Fancy”, 2014’s Sucker seemed poised to launch her into the stratosphere. But Sucker’s sound did not at all reflect the artist that Charlie would become, or even the electropop she experimented with on her 2013 debut album True Romance. By contrast, Sucker was a guitar-driven, flashy pop-punk. In 2017, she told Q magazine that she “made rash decisions” with her second album. Highlighting Sucker’s hit “Break the Rules”, she said, “It was so bad. I hate this. I wrote it at a writer’s camp… and I thought, “Whoever sings this song is an idiot.” She told The Guardian in 2018 that parts of Sucker “feel fake” when looking back. “It was definitely a confusing experience after Fancy when things didn’t go the way I wanted them to. I did not become, for example, such a huge artist or someone else. It was definitely tough on points.”
While her stance on Sucker softened (“we all know Sucker wasn’t my best,” Charlie said in comment on instagram early last year, “but she had a few moments”), there’s a reason she hasn’t released another album that sounds like Weezer. On her recent tours, she hasn’t played the album’s biggest hit “Boom Clap” or any of the Sucker songs except in her festival or opening act appearances. Despite being her best-selling record to date, it is no longer the sound she is known for. For savvy pop fans, Charlie has been inventing some of the most exciting music in the genre for years, and they’re not waiting for people who only know her as the girl who wrote the song from The Fault in Our Stars to catch up. .
Enter Crash, Charlie’s latest attempt at appeasing the mainstream pop machine, but this time with music more in line with her post-Sucker release. Crash is synthetic and sultry, complemented by a dark glamorous aesthetic, like the choreography of the undead Charlie in the “Good Ones” music video. But that doesn’t mean Crash doesn’t compromise. After Sucker, Charlie began working with PC Music, an influential collective of electronic musicians. PC Music founder A.G. Cook became her creative director and most frequent collaborator, and the late hyperpop pioneer Sophie released her first follow-up to Sucker, the electric Vroom Vroom EP that completely changed the trajectory of her career. On “Crash”, Cook wrote only two tracks, “Crash” and “Every Rule”, while Dylan Brady of PC Music-inspired duo 100 Gecs wrote “Used to Know Me”. The rest of the album is largely credited to Charlie and the many journeyman writers and producers who have worked with big name pop artists like Halsey, Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande and their ilk. There are other interesting names in the mix, including the prolific Ariel Rechtscheid, who was in all the great True Romance, while George Daniel co-produced “Crash” with Cooke in 1975, and the result sounds much more 1975 than PC Music. .
While Crash’s sounds work within the electropop space that Charlie has inhabited for most of her career, it’s not as bold as her music often is, giving a mixed result. “Used to Know Me” and “Rina Sawayama’s “Run for You” feature inserts of classic club anthems, Robin C’s “Show Me Love” and September’s “Cry For You” respectively, which are fun but don’t offer much. taking the source material. “Yuck” could be Dua Lipa’s B-side, while “Every Rule” is a tender ballad that’s disappointing given the high expectations of Charlie, Cook and Oneohtrix Point Never’s collaboration. Elsewhere on the album, there are highlights of their own: “Lightning” stands out for its fantastic use of vocal distortion that explodes into a big chorus, while “Baby” is classy and catchy. The “constant repeat” also comes to life in the chorus thanks to Charlie’s ability to crochet.
The album is enjoyable, but it lacks urgency. As Charlie fluctuated between full-length releases released over the course of several months and small-scale spur-of-the-moment projects, she more consistently shone on the latter. Going back to her Tumblr days when she posted the mixtapes that would form the bulk of True Romance, to Vroom Vroom, to the 2017 Number 1 Angel and Pop 2 cassettes, to her quickly released album How I’m Feeling Now, released at the start of lockdown. , Charlie excelled at spinning gold from the stream of consciousness. There’s a life to songs like “Anthems”, “I Got It” and “Roll With Me” that are intense and exhilarating and hard to replicate on a big pop album curated for months by different artists. Work. Even 2019’s Charli, who had some great songs, suffered from the handling of the album and came out distracted. On Crash, songs like “Move Me” and “Twice” just seem inert compared to her best work.
Despite the sound change, Crash makes the same mistakes as Sacker. Both records are solid records that don’t do the best job of capturing what makes Charlie an interesting artist. Paradoxically, her music is louder when she works in close circle with a trusted circle of employees who have caught the spark of inspiration. So what’s the point of playing pop star? She’s a major label pop artist at least for now… so there are expectations, and Charlie was aware of it all. “I’ve always been interested in the idea of what a ‘sale’ is in pop music today, and if it even exists,” Charlie told Rolling Stone of Crash. “I’ve been signed to a major label since I was 16. I think I’ve had a rather atypical path as a major label artist, so it’s interesting to work within that framework. I believe this post and images are in part a commentary on this.” But there is still an acknowledgment that music can be watered down in the process: “Here’s the thing: if beg for u continues to grow and become mainstream, it will give rina & ia a platform to bring more avant-garde music to the mainstream” . Charlie tweeted after “Beg for You” was released, “then the charts and all minds will be filled with bop like xs and vroom vroom… which is sort of the end goal.” Given that the mainstream has never offered much to Charlie’s music, it doesn’t seem like the sacrifice is worth it.