It\u2019s not easy to follow up on the massive pop-culture moment that was Charli XCX\u2019s Brat<\/i>. It, and the remix Brat And It’s Completely Different But Also Still Brat<\/i>\u00a0<\/b>(much my favorite of the two) dominated tween, teen, and older wanna-be teen social media and top 40 spaces in 2024, and into early 2025.<\/p>\n
Charli, who had been a pop\/hyperpop darling since her emergence in 2008, hit some kind of zeitgeist moment where her exuberant dance club mixed with rapturous hooks that many of us didn\u2019t think we either wanted nor needed. Remember Brat Green? It was captivating enough for SNL to make her both host and musical guest in November, 2024. Where we learned that she was quite funny and \u201cthe olds\u201d realized that she was indeed more than a TikTok meme, another manufactured pop star.<\/p>\n
Charli\u2019s music had always been wildly popular\u2014and lucrative\u2014and dismissively underrated. She largely writes her own songs\u2014often in a collaborative fashion\u2014and is deeply engaged in composition and production. While many might have thought of her as another product of pop machine making\u2014controlled by others\u2014that has never been true. Charli was never Britney. She has always been in control.<\/p>\n
She is also 34 years old\u2014well beyond her sell-by date in the world of hyperpop, club, and techno gamins. While she was touring Brat<\/i>, she got burned out, apparently sick of the grind and the constant hype. Then, in December of 2024, Emerald Fennell sent her a txt, asking if she would score Wuthering Heights<\/i>. Charli and her long-time collaborator Finn Keane largely wrote the soundtrack during the last phase of the Brat<\/i> tour.<\/p>\n
ohfergodsakes. Another Wuthering Heights<\/i> movie? A book from 1847\u2014the single novel by Emily Bronte\u2014that has been reimagined too many times to count on stage and screen. A novel with as many critical interpretations as there are plankton. Somehow, we English speakers are like Jack Twist\u2019s desperate confession in Brokeback Mountain<\/i>,\u00a0\u201cI wish I knew how to quit you.\u201d Just mention the name \u201cHeathcliff\u201d to a book lover and, then, sit back for at least 10 minutes of disquisition. And depending what you know, another 50 minutes of arguing. (I once spent 45 minutes with a Heathcliff-stan, arguing that he is not the center of the book. But, ya know, I once spent more than 25 years trying to convince my mother-in-law that Chekhov is perhaps the funniest playwright ever. I didn\u2019t win either of those debates.)<\/p>\n
Prominent pop artists authoring movie soundtracks isn\u2019t that common. There are, of course, frequent star turns on soundtracks (looking at you Celine, Diana, Bette, Whitney). I don\u2019t consider Leonard Bernstein (West Side Story<\/i>), or John Williams (Star Wars<\/i>,\u00a0Jaws<\/i>,\u00a0Indiana Jones<\/i>,\u00a0E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial<\/i>,\u00a0Jurassic Park<\/i>,\u00a0Harry Potter<\/i>, and\u00a0Schindler\u2019s List<\/i>), Ennio Morricone (A Fistful Of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly<\/i>) pop artists.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This soundtrack feels\u2014perhaps first and foremost\u2014like an artist who really needed a break, a new thing to do and be, after the ridiculousness of the Brat<\/i> phenomenon. At 34, what a great choice.<\/p>\n
There are two ways to review a soundtrack. First, one primarily ties it to the movie, and whether it supports the import of that piece of art. Second, one primarily ties it to something standalone, as something independent from either the movie\u2019s showrunner, corporate backing, or whether the movie itself is atrocious or fantastic. This review is the latter approach, cuz I don\u2019t know nothin\u2019 about movies. I thought the movie was perfectly competent; I don\u2019t have a dog in the race about its relationship to the \u201creal\u201d 1847 novel (I mean\u2026 an aside\u2026 if we question \u201coriginalism\u201d when it comes to the US Constitution\u2026 why do so many of us who do that concomitantly insist on originalism when it comes to a 140 year old novel?).<\/p>\n
Wuthering Heights<\/i>, the soundtrack, is dripping with strings, orchestration, synths (deeply buried and providing the mantle to the crust) and goth menace. The classic drop of EDM is replaced with analogue composition. Berserk attachment and passion suffuse the album. Who are these people, and who am I, when they\/I fall into an addiction to another person that neither can escape? What does not wanting to escape mean?<\/p>\n
It is also Charli\u2019s grown-up moment, similar to Gaga going to duets with Toni Bennett. It is a Streisand moment for Charli, when Babs found her way to do the same in the \u201970s. It reveals Charli\u2019s vocal range, the emotion she can put into her delivery, and the compositional acuity she has always had, but got covered up by club, techno, dance, and hyperpop. And there are legit six pop bangers that make it easy to conclude that the album is more about Charli\u2019s past than present\u2014which isn\u2019t true.<\/p>\n
\u201cHouse\u201d opens the album. Already a TikTok meme, it features John Cale (Velvet Underground) speaking a poem over unsettling, minor scale strings. The rest of the orchestra comes in, loud, intrusive. Cale and Charli chant, \u201cI think I\u2019m gonna die in this house.\u201d Then percussion comes in\u2026 tt scares me. Like watching a murmuration of birds when a hawk swoops in.<\/p>\n
\u201cWall of Sound\u201d: discordant strings open. There\u2019s no initial indication of where this song is going. Charli comes in and suddenly there is a melody resolved. Until later. Then it resolves again. \u201cUnbelievable tension, wall of sound\u201d Charli speaks at the end, while the strings shriek wildly.<\/p>\n
\u201cDying for You\u201d: I dare you to drive a convertible on a sunny day on Highway One in Big Sur and not at least smile with this song on.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlways Everywhere\u201d: Think Charli doesn\u2019t have pipes? You\u2019re wrong. A song saturated like a long-hair cat caught in a downpour by the orchestral arrangement. Listen with headphones; listen to what\u2019s going on behind the melody. Listen to how what\u2019s going on as she brings back musical tropes from previous songs.<\/p>\n
\u201cChains of Love\u201d: A soaring vocal performance, backed by a quilt of music\u2014strings, synths, drums\u2014and just damn hummable. Dang thing hasn\u2019t been outta my mind for too many weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cOut of Myself\u201d: One of the star turns on the album, in terms of a single. Just bangin\u2019, due to wall-of-sound strings.<\/p>\n
\u201copen up\u201d: Nothing to hear here, move along.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeeing Things\u201d: Sometimes, a pop song, despite the underlying production, is simply insipid.<\/p>\n
\u201cAltars\u201d: The track reveals what Finn can do in the production of a song. Who needs EDM when an orchestra can underly the rhythm, feel, and texture here? The track reveals Charli\u2019s vocal vulnerability: Cracking, friable, distorted at exactly the right time.<\/p>\n
\u201cEyes of the World\u201d: Charli got Sky Ferreira to come back from \u201cretirement.\u201d It\u2019s not something that a Sky fan should gravitate toward. A song dismissed by many critics; I disagree. In many ways, it encapsulates the soundscape that Charli and Finn create.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy Reminder\u201d: Just, honestly, terrible.<\/p>\n
\u201dFunny Mouth\u201d: Total throwaway.<\/p>\n
Lyrically, Wuthering Heights<\/i> is threadbare and trite. Lyrics have never been a strong point for, and there are a few real gems and a few clunkers. But I like the growth, the inevitable transition to a middle-aged artist who\u2014not yet, but soon\u2014will lose the connection to the generation behind her. It shows that Charli is more than Brat<\/i>, or her previous catalogue.<\/p>\n
So: how about we let Charli grow up?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":35463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[11175],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-47359","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-charli-xcx","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/47359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=47359"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=47359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}