FEATURE:
Revisiting…
Charli XCX - CRASH
_________
IN the last of my Revisiting…
PHOTO CREDIT: Emily Lipson
features that nods to great albums from last year, I want to mention Charli XCX’s amazing CRASH. Released in March, it was the fifth album from the Pop pioneer. Whilst it got some great reviews, there were some that were more mixed. CRASH should have been nominated for more awards. It has been decidedly missing from nominations and further kudos. One of the absolute best albums from last year, CRASH is a stunning work from an artist who keeps on growing stronger. Songs such as Baby and Good Ones are among the best of Charli XCX. In fact, the whole album is remarkable. I will get to a couple of the positive reviews for the stunning CRASH. There are interviews worth bringing in. There are a couple of interviews that I want to bring in first. Rolling Stone spotlighted and spoke with the amazing Charli XCX early last year:
“A strong narrative around Charli XCX has been that she’s too forward-thinking to win, something of an underdog. The fact that hyperpop crystallised as a genre during the pandemic is partly why the world finally caught up to her. She’s considered the figurehead of this sound of the 2020s. “I think hyper-pop becoming this word that people can umbrella a lot of artists under is definitely a familiarisation of a certain type of sound, which before was seen as quite uncontainable,” Aitchison explains. “You couldn’t put these artists on a playlist because they didn’t really sound like anything and now with that genre title, it makes certain sounds and artists easier to digest for people who maybe weren’t accessing that kind of sound on their own without the guidance of a Spotify playlist. I think that makes certain things about my project a bit easier to understand.”
The messaging of that project alienated a proportion of potential listeners, too. Her lyrics are about partying until oblivion and loving and hating yourself in violent doses; medicating your stress with hedonism. It has, at times, elevated the superficial and sybaritic to an art form, which is why it’s beloved by so many. She made music for people who liked to have a nihilistic laugh, who embraced working hard and playing harder during the grind of late-capitalism. If you can’t beat them, join them and be the best, says Charli XCX (a Leo, if astrology means anything to you). In other words, it’s just not that deep.
Her persona, like her sense of humour, is at turns flat, sexy and dissociative. But her uneasy lyrics draw red circles around her own flaws: she is frequently hardest on herself. In an age of empowerment feminism, this brash self-adoration and self-loathing wasn’t easily digestible. She was too dominant, multi-faceted and flippant to be your typical British female mainstream pop star or to be universally loved by the masses. At a moment in which “dissociative feminism” is being discussed as a trend on the internet, celebrity is having a deranged avant-garde moment with artful staged paparazzi shoots, performative love and unhinged interviews, and shitposting online is the norm, it would seem that the culture is in step with Charli XCX.
Aitchison herself is against the idea that celebrities should be accessible and “real”, the mode of celebrity culture in the 2010s, crucially in full force while she was navigating the bulk of her pop career. “I enjoy that early-2000s era of celebrity where Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan are just being iconic and being these otherworldly figures,” she says. “It’s the same with musicians, to be honest. I want my favourite musicians to shock and surprise me and annoy me and completely flip my brain. I don’t want to feel safe with the work that they provide me. I want to be constantly kept on my toes and not be able to see what’s coming next from them.” For her, that’s Kanye West, Yung Lean, Tommy Cash and her collaborator Caroline Polachek. “I think that’s what makes a great public figure, celebrity, artist, musician, performer, whatever: to not be able to predict what happens next. That’s the fun of celebrity, I suppose.”
“It’s hard for me to not sit on this call with you and destroy everything I’ve built because I’m feeling really reckless. It’s actually really a challenge in self-control, press, at the moment”
For Aitchison to enjoy her new album, she had to surprise herself. The insular, fast-paced construction of how i’m feeling now informed its follow-up: “I knew I had to turn it up to high-octane, ten, pop-star level for it to feel fresh for myself.” Crash should have existed first: ‘New Shapes’, ‘Good Ones’, ‘Every Rule’ and ‘Twice’ were written, at least in part, before the previous album began but the pandemic halted it. She knew she wanted to put her own money into this big, impressive pop album and not being able to travel to collaborate with pop producers or put on her biggest tour yet made the entire venture redundant.
By September or October 2020, a few months after how i’m feeling now was finished and released, Crash became her focus. “This album was originally going to be called Sorry If I Hurt You and I liked that title because that sentence is both past, present and future,” she says. “You can say that sentence to someone as if you hurt them in the past or as if you’re going to hurt them or if you’re about to do it right there and then.”
Of all tenses, the album is most indebted to the past. While making it, she listened to Control by Janet Jackson and songs by Cameo (though generally doesn’t consume music while in creation mode because it is a distraction). Inspiration for her retro bombshell look came from watching live performance videos of Madonna, 80s interior design and movies like Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!. You can see the research in the campiness of her humping her own gravestone in the video for ‘Good Ones’ or the bouffant hair with deadness between the eyes on the single covers: the visuals are equally indebted to sexploitation films, Elvira and Pat Benatar”.
Even though CRASH reached number one in the U.K. and was voted as one of the best albums of 2022 by many sites and publications, I still don’t think it got all the credit it deserved. Such a remarkably strong and accomplished album. In October, NME spoke with an artist who was reflecting on her most successful album to date. She had also ended a five-album deal with Atlantic Records. It seems, very much so, that her future is firmly in her hands:
“Compared with her previous releases, this year’s ‘Crash’ – her first Number One album in the UK – marked a tonal shift for an artist who has simultaneously rejected and courted the mainstream over the course of her decade-plus career. As Charli notes to NME: “I don’t feel like I’ve had a very traditional trajectory…”
As a teenager, the Essex-raised artist took out a loan from her parents to fund the recording of her unreleased promo debut ‘14’, which remains a fun, scrappy listen. Her debut album proper, 2013’s ‘True Romance’, combined a clear love of clean pop melody with an eclectic ear for subversion, sampling the likes of Gold Panda and Blood Orange. Just when mainstream stardom seemed as if it could be beckoning, she veered the other way with the uneven, pop-punk influenced ‘Sucker’ in 2015. Here, Rita Ora guest spots and mega-hits like ‘Boom Clap’ jostled side-by-side with yé-yé songs about wanking (‘Body of My Own’).
Instead, recalling the cartoonish, mechanicised funk production of Janet Jackson’s 1986 classic ‘Control’, and touching on themes of creative independence along the way, ‘Crash’ ended up feeling like the quintessential Charli album. “What you want, I ain’t got it,” she sang on ‘New Shapes’, seeming to briefly allude to her non-traditional career trajectory alongside Christine and the Queens and Caroline Polachek; two similiar artists who interchangeably infiltrate and move away from mainstream pop.
PHOTO CREDIT: Terrence O’Connor
On the chart-bothering ‘Used To Know Me’, which heavily samples from Robin S’s ‘90s house hit ‘Show Me Love’ Charli meshes together her undeniable ear for a pop banger with more complicated musings that seem to hint at the space she now occupies as an artist. “You say I’m turning evil, I say I’m turning pure.” Why does she think this internal creative grappling stems from? “There’s this subconscious resistance that I just can’t undo,” she replies. “I just can’t fully let go of the reins.”
Charli offers up the theory that her music contains an integral sense of “push and pull”, continually tugging her between two distinct worlds. As well as striving to be “the mainstream Pop Girl,” there’s also an impulse pulling her towards the “deep end, and doing something a bit more left. I think that’s always going to be a battle that I have,” she points out, “but I also think that it’s that tension that makes me make the music that I make.”
“I like playing games with pop music. Pop music has never just been as simple as being a pop star and releasing music. In a way I would love it – if it was just that for me – but then I think I would be a more boring artist who will probably be forgotten. I enjoy the nuances of this fucked up industry and game-playing and all of these strings that happen behind the scenes… I’m enjoying that element of pop music. I enjoy poking fun at it, I enjoy buying into it, believing it, rejecting it, being a mess, and the chaos within it”.
I am going to wrap up with a couple of reviews for the magnificent CRASH. DIY had their say in an excellent and insightful review. Even though Charli XCX is a very modern and innovative artist, her final album with Atlantic was her looking back in some ways. Playing with expectations and the formats of Pop. As a result, I think that CRASH should get a tonne of respect. So many people are going to be intrigued to see where the mighty Charli XCX goes next. Her sixth album is going to the most speculated of her career:
“It’s a bold move to tease an album’s release with an image of your own gravestone on Instagram, but then again not every pop star is like Charli XCX. From her breakthrough in the early ’10s and hits ‘I Love It’ and ‘Break The Rules’, to her influential hyper-pop innovation and love for experimentation in projects like ‘Pop 2’ right through to her landmark lockdown album ‘how i’m feeling now’, Charli’s been a pioneering tour-de-force of the pop world for nearly a decade. Now her fifth full-length ‘CRASH’ arrives, and Charli is ready to add to her legacy of boundary-pushing records.
For album number 5, Charli has placed a tongue-in-cheek emphasis on this record being the end of an era in her career, as well as a new beginning. The aforementioned gravestone was part of a winking nod to ‘CRASH’ being “the fifth and final album in my record deal…”. She’s been filling her social media with lighthearted ‘tips’ for new artists (“tip for new artists: it only gets worse” one reads, “tip for new artists: suffer in silence” states another),and has been embracing a deal-with-the-devil motif. “I’m exploring what it means to be a pop star on a major label in a not very current way,” she’s previously explained. “And that’s really fun to me.” Welcoming us to her “new chapter [that] embraces all that my life has to offer in today’s world - fame, glamour, inner demons and global hits”, this may be her final record in her contract, but Charli was never not going to go out with a bang, opting for yet another album that delivers something exciting and unexpected. Moving away from the hyper-pop that has characterised her most recent releases, ‘CRASH’ delivers a sublime slice of punchy power-pop helmed by an all-star lineup of producers including AG Cook, The 1975’s George Daniel, and Ariel Reichstaid (the latter having previously worked on the singer’s debut ‘True Romance’). ‘CRASH’ is glistening with influences ranging from Janet Jackson to Cyndi Lauper, and fist-pumping power-pop tropes that shone throughout the best of the ‘80s.
The record kicks in with thumping drums as Charli sings how it “ended all so legendary” over twinkling synths on the opening title track. The nostalgic pop influences quickly seep in, further highlighted by its guitar-solo finale. Elsewhere, previously released singles, such as the iconic Caroline Polachek and Christine and the Queens featuring ‘New Shapes’ and the ‘September’-sampling Rina Sawayama collab ‘Beg For You’, shine brightly, while the pounding and anthemic ‘Good Ones’ stands as one of the best from Charli’s back-catalogue. But at no time does Charli lose her forward-thinking pop flair either.
The dramatic ‘Move Me’ and ‘Lightning’ reinvent what pop and dance ballads should be, while ‘Constant Repeat’ is a refreshing slice of pure pop that shimmers as Charli sings about a relationship that could’ve been (“you could’ve had a bad girl by your side”). Dynamic strings open up the sleek, sexy bop ‘Baby’, and ‘Every Rule’ explores falling in love under tricky circumstances over dreamy synths. ‘Used To Know Me’ is a dance-floor ready club-pop number, while infectious ear worm ‘Yuck’ sings about simping hard (“that boy’s so mushy, sending me flowers, I’m just trying to get lucky”). ‘Twice’, which Charli originally premiered in a livestream concert back in March 2021, brings a close to the 12-track record on a shimmering note as she sings about living in the moment (“All the things I love are gonna leave me, one day you’re never gonna be there / I tell myself to take it easy, don’t think twice about it”).
‘CRASH’ may be closing a chapter for Charli but it is in no way a swan song. Instead, she once again explores new ventures, crafting a pop album that celebrates the old classics as well as the new, and cements her status as a true pop trailblazer”.
I will finish off with the review from The Line of Best Fit. Such a varied, confident, fascinating album that pleased existing fans but brought new ones onboard, CRASH really should have got a lot more love from some that it did. That is the nature of music, I guess. Some will miss out on the true strength of an album. In any case, CRASH is one of the best from 2022. One that people should take some time and revisit:
“Fearlessly tackling a spectrum of gritty, experimental instrumentals, the Cambridge-born singer has grown accustomed to having her vocals warped, skewered and scattered over everything from trilled hi-hats and ricocheting breakbeats to ghoulish harsh noise, with no sounds off-limits. Sure, her relationship with commercial music has coexisted alongside these leftfield explorations, but it’s her outings alongside the likes of PC Music head honcho A. G. Cook, cult favourites 100 gecs, and the late, great SOPHIE which have come to define her catalogue of late. Going back to basics for her fifth album was therefore something which few envisaged, but the decision makes perfect sense – Crash is nothing short of a victory lap.
Every bit as effervescent as its pandemic-induced predecessor, how i’m feeling now, Crash is the culmination of several years of work. Recorded partially pre-COVID, its lyrics span multiple relationships, and its personnel includes Oneohtrix Point Never – whose contributions here predate his record-breaking work on The Weeknd’s Dawn FM – as well as True Romance producers Ariel Rechtshaid and Justin Raisen. Elsewhere, chart mainstay Digital Farm Animals, most notable for his recent work with YouTuber-turned-popstar KSI, injects some good old-fashioned UKG flavour into the Rina Sawayama-assisted “Beg for You”, and Cook resurfaces on the atypically mellow offering “Every Rule”, in which Charli achingly grapples with the moral dilemma of breaking off an existing relationship in order to pursue somebody new.
Nods to the sounds of yesteryear crop up a few times over the course of the LP: the bubbly duet “Beg for You” manages to stitch together elements of throwback songs by September and Milk Inc. and simultaneously play to its two singers’ strengths, while “Used to Know Me” finds Charli celebrating her independence over a reworked version of Robin S’s evergreen floorfiller “Show Me Love”. Having recently revisited Stromae’s “Alors On Danse” on the Saweetie-assisted mega-hit “OUT OUT” with Jax Jones and Joel Corry, she’s clearly got the bug for Eurodance, and has no problem repurposing these universally familiar melodies for a 2022 audience; a challenging task which she recently described as striking a balance between “nostalgia” and “pure futurism”.
At the same time, she’s just as comfortable dabbling in the kind of cheeky, funk-inflected earworm primed for TikTok; the hilarious “Yuck” finds her aghast at a love interest’s cringeworthy displays of affection, however well-intentioned they may be, and the recent single “Baby” is a vibrant assertion of her sexuality, decorated with fast-paced guitar licks. With live instruments present throughout, these arrangements stand in stark contrast to how i’m feeling now’s electronics – here, the meandering electric guitar lines at the end of title track “Crash” and the flamenco-esque flourishes on the late entry “Lightning” are a real treat, crossing over into a hybrid soundscape entirely absent from her last album. Where that was detached and synthetic, this is connected and organic; a celebration of hope, love and spontaneity as both her catalogue and the world at large inch closer to some semblance of their old ways”.
A wonderful album from one of our very finest artists, there is nobody in music like Charli XCX. After the success of CRASH, it will be curious seeing what direction she takes. I think she could appear in films and broaden her career. When it comes to album six, maybe something more stripped-back, or she may explore new genres. Whatever she does, it will be fantastic! If you have not experienced CRASH, then go and check it out…
AS soon as you can.