Charli XCX

No thread on her yet. Her two singles released this year ('stay away', 'nuclear seasons') got the 'best new track' feature on Pitchfork and TheSinglesJukebox rated the later with a 7.83 which is quite a high score by their standards. Also it seems she's been getting the love by british press for a few years now, but I can't confirm that firsthand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBxC5bRbruQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1GNx2bwZa4

Is she named after a Star Trek episode?

From interview magazine http://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/brit-pop-girls#_ :

CHARLI XCX
FULL NAME: Charlotte Aitchison. “The XCX really stands for ‘kiss Charli kiss’ which is unbelievably crap.”

AGE: 17.

PROVENANCE: Hertfordshire.

SOUND: Pouty raps, fuzzy basslines.

INTERVIEW: How long have you been making music?
CHARLI XCX: I started writing my own things when I was about 8. I used to try to bully my friends into imitating the Spice Girls on the playground. Then I realized, Oh god, my career’s going nowhere, so I looked in the Yellow Pages and phoned up the first cheap studio that I found and started recording.
INTERVIEW: What’s your song “I Wanna Be Darth Vader” about?
CHARLI XCX: Well, last night on Britain’s Got Talent, there was this absolute twat dancing to
Michael Jackson in a Darth Vader suit, which put me off a bit, but I used to think Darth Vader was really sexy—the mask, the voice, the heavy breathing, and the way that his cape whooshes when he walks.
INTERVIEW: What’s your grand plan?
CHARLI XCX: Well, there are a huge amount of girls out at the minute and they’re all great, but I feel like I could take them all on. I like Lady Gaga’s music and I think her fashion is great, but I saw her on a chat show and I wanted to punch her in the face. I kind of like La Roux, but her voice sometimes really annoys me. That said, I recently noticed that I’ve been doing really high notes in my songs, and I’m like, Oh no, here it comes. I’m going to turn into La Roux. And I’ve just gotten a massively short haircut with a huge fringe. Next I’ll be going ginger.

God bless all these musicians before their PR agents get to them and they actually give fun interviews.
Great songs, by the way.

Whoops, meant to say "God bless all these youngish musicians while they're still giving fun interviews, before their PR agents get to them."

kinda confused by seeing people have their minds blown by her. she's ok i guess, need to hear way more though - i like what i've heard but i'm not fully convinced for some reason, seems a touch heavy-handed

Stay Away is definitely one of my favorites this year. Nuclear Seasons, not really.

Totally into "Nuclear Seasons" and I think I'm gonna go see her tomorrow at her first US show (!)

i love stay away. and valentine. haven't heard anything else other than nuclear seasons which a lot of people seem to like but i don't really get

the chorus in this is great http://soundcloud.com/charlixcx/youre-the-one/s-pU6Fs

Still waiting for something as good as Stay Away. Not even the Icona Pop song is close imo.

okay so this "super ultra" mixtape is just ridiculously great

It is!

cosign! this is probably the closest an album has come to approximating the feel of maxinquaye for me, sounds amazing late at night. rapping over "moments in love" is p much a direct route to my heart. it's a little messy, but the songs are really there. also i didn't realize she was only 20--she'll probably go for leaner production choices in the future.

Everything is consistently excellent. Also "Heatwave" is my jam.

It's almost as if... Someone made tumblr-pop that justified the adjectives and lurid colourscapes.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/14932-various-artists-you-ha-ha-ha-lindstrm-remix/

Lindstrøm gives this shit a proper workout.

i really have no idea what to make of this album, like even whether i'm enjoying it or not

i feel like i'm on the brink of being completely YESSSSS THIS IS RESONATING DEEPLY WITH ME but i can't...quite...get...there and it's the kind of thing where if you're NOT on board emotionally it's kind of functionally useless

"you're the one" is a bit of a monster though

albeit i think i might like "you're the one" better if it didn't plunge shamelessly into its cheesy chorus?

the brooke candy verse on this is disappointingly terrible

have't heard the album but from the singles can attest that if you're on board emotionally they are the best ever

there's a vagueness that keeps me from being emotionally on board "you're the one" but that curving bass

really love the lingering the verses do on "you (ha ha ha)" too

Does she have her own "I Love It" on this? I am still curious to hear what she would have done with it instead of Icona Pop.

I'm into this newest single "what I like". she has a knack for cadence

streaming over @ pitchfork advance

This has very big Alisha's Attic vibes writ large all over it. It's a modern pop album that seems designed for people who grew up in the 90s, which is probably either really cute and endearing, or naff and silly, depending on your taste for talky-sung verses in the style of Siobhan Fahey when in Shakespeare's Sister.

Charli XCX herself seems very much a pop starlet for the twenty-something crowd, in the way she nonchalantly swears and sings about sexual encounters but it's all framed in this goth-pop cuteness with easy melodies and simple vivid imagery. I can see this album's relationship to 90's r&b being comparable to the way Anniemal took 80's disco and made it sound very pop but very chic, even though this is a lot more obviously dark and menacing.

aka the awful song with Brooke Candy made me nervous but I even don't mind that in the context of the album and You (Ha Ha Ha) is actually better than I remembered and the rest of it is great. The first three singles are still the best stuff here especially Nuclear Seasons but this is a pretty wonderful pop album.

as extravagant as charli's overload of stylistic reference points is, i don't think it's what's preventing this clicking for me - basically just don't think her songwriting is quite there yet. it's a bit overstuffed but the problem is less that and more her lack of a really distinct songwriting voice

or just, interesting words, or something

i think i'm the only person in the world that doesn't hate the brooke candy song. the second-to-last one "how can i" would be the dud if i had to pick one

You're not alone. Cloud Aura is one of her best. That said, True Romance is a let-down for me largely due to the production. My favorite track is What I Like, but even it has it's problems. Like why start of with a great intro that gets you all hyped up, only to never reference it anywhere else in the song? Still love it, but that's just one example of the many opportunities missed by this album. I expected it to be much more in the vein of Dance 4 U and Velvet Dreaming but the album's first half is like a 90's rehash of what Little Boots was doing with 80's pop.

I've been cool on her other singles but "What I Like" is marvelous.

this is awesome; the two-year-old songs thread in pretty seamlessly

weird but so far i prefer the album tracks to most of the singles (except "what i like" which wow). "like roses" and "take my hand" especially

black roses*

Really, really, really good record.

after seeing her live last week this album is finally seriously beginning to click for me

in a way i'm glad the singles never quite did it in isolation because i get to feel the rush of "YOU'RE JUST ELECTRIC BLUE" now instead

CUZ I CAN TASTE YOUR LIPS ON MY LIPS
YOUR KISSES TAKE ME OUT OF CONTROL
AND I CAN FEEL MY BLOOOOOOOOD
IT'S CRAWLING THROUGH MY VEEEEEEIIIIIIIINS

somewhere, shirley manson feels proud

brooke candy's rap on "cloud aura" is so so bad but the rest of it is so good

WHY YOU WANNA GO TO SLEEP
DON'T GO TO SLEEP
DON'T GO TO SLEEP
LET'S GO OUUUUUT

hmmm i gave this album a couple spins last week but i only actually liked about half of it (mostly the front half, but some later too), the rest just became this amorphous blur of whatever

it's taken me about a month and about...8 or 9 plays, i guess, to click

YOU'RE JUST ELECTRIC BLUUUUUUE is wonderful. all of this is wonderful.

except for brooke candy

Is "cloud aura" the same as on last year's mixtape?

yeah no changes as far as i can tell

"set me free" is ENORMOUS and shoulda been the lead-off single instead of "you"

I still don't get why "I Love It" didn't get the praise this is getting, I know it's noisy and brash but that's kinda the point?

This keeps getting better on repeated listens, it's not so much that it's a grower as

something else that I was thinking of how to explain before I hit enter, oops. It's like it's really simple but sticks way more than the disposable pop she clearly adores.

I love that mixtape so much but "Cloud Aura" wouldn't be the tune I'd carry over from it.

i never heard the mixtape - how does it compare to the album tim?

"i love it" is just completely rotten imo

I haven't heard the album so I can't compare - but the mixtape is shimmering cloud-R&B which by that description should be awful but actually is excellent - "Cloud Aura" is pretty indicative of the overall sound but there's some more discoid and/or balladic stuff on there and there's no other raps.

There are some songs down the end of Super Ultra that could have slotted in fine, on here but for the most part the album is much stronger, which of course it was always going to be given that it has all those pre-release singles on it.

I'm a big fan of "I Love It" (which has had plenty of praise, btw - perhaps not on ILX but certainly elsewhere), but it's not something that would gel with the rest of this record at all; too daphne & celeste / bananarama. it's pummelling, brash, throw-your-hands-up-in-the-air-sometimes sort of stuff; none of the songs on true romance even remotely approach that kind of aggression.

and yes there is a stray comma in that first sentence, oops

Yeah, "I Love It" would sound totally out of place on this but I think it's strange that there's so much dislike for it on its own.

"i love it" did really well on the ilm poll despite not being overwhelmingly praised here (and met with boos and hisses during the results rollout)

yeah i'd be interested to learn what is quite so rotten about "i love it" - as was mentioned upthread, obviously it's loud and obnoxious - but that's the whole purpose of the track, to convey that feeling of just not giving a fuck

I don't _love_ it as much anymore, but I like it in the same way I like Shampoo. And it's not like Icona Pop didn't sound more or less like this for years, so it's not like they "sold out" or whatever accusation you want to level.

at any rate this album is amazing. and yes, "Set Me Free" is massive but it doesn't seem to be the direction Charli XCX wants to go with her singles. alas.

(incidentally, the "Set Me Free" producer's best known for working with _Meds_-era Placebo, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Nicola Roberts and Sohodolls, which is as good a triangulation [uh, with "tri-" replaced with "quad-" as necessary] of this album as you'll find anywhere.)

"i love it" feels clumsy and contrived and, crucially, totally unfun to me. i like don't-give-a-fuck music but it just repels me.

(katherine - picking up something i half-saw on twitter last night if i may, which is prob relevant here - your dislike of "tumblr" as a signifier. i'd say tumblr - regardless of the pockets of tumblr where this isn't the case - signifies decontextualisation above all to me, whether that's endless images/quotes plucked from the ether or the social justice kids or whatever...)

oh, and GREAT review btw

http://www.mtvhive.com/2013/04/23/charli-xcx-true-romance/

haha, that was actually prompted by reading a bunch of metacritic reviews of this very album. the thing is... tumblr is a huge site, with a huge and varied userbase; it's like how people say designs "look like Geocities," as if a site with millions of uses could be somehow aesthetically consistent in a way that isn't "this is how entry-level HTML from cookbooks in 1999 is probably gonna look."

my beef I think is that a lot of time it gets invoked as a kind of shorthand to sneak in pejoratives. like, if someone is trying to say that "this charli xcx album sounds like a thing teenage girls would love," then they should just say it -- and then think about why this is such an important thing to mention. or "this charli xcx album sounds trendy" -- how? why is that bad? etc.

(also, thanks!)

Ugh not feeling this at all, there's an underlying clumsiness to almost everything here and she's just not an enjoyable or engaging on-record presence. Awful voice too.

Agreed, and I even like some of her mixtape material. I just can't with this unfinished-sounding album.

Love it!!!

She covers 'I want it that way': http://www.popjustice.com/briefing/believe-when-we-say-we-like-it-this-way/114844/

every time i listen to this, the one with brooke candy is the only one that stands out to me

but then again it is the blatant 90s r&b homage so

the album really turns around after that track, i think. "what i like" and "black roses" are also very good.

i find myself rooting for her because she seems really likable but there's something gloopy about this record that i find a bit impenetrable. it's like listening to pop while having a head cold.

haha isn't that kinda the idea of tumblr-pop in the first place?

Supa Ultra was more consistently R&B-influenced IMO (and also led off with "Cloud Aura"). Their quality seems about the same to me.

well then that must be why i don't listen to a lot of tumblr-pop

i guess i mostly like pop to be bright and snappy and confident

idk i feel like she doesn't really put herself out there? i don't get a sense of vulnerability, it feels too hedged to me.

"Take My Hand" is by far my favorite of the singles. What a banger.

Agreed.

J0rdan you're not wrong, I just think it's amusing how the vaunted appeal and point of distinction of this music is also the thing likely to leave many pop listeners a bit cold. But the same point's probably been made many times upthread.

i find myself rooting for her because she seems really likable but there's something gloopy about this record that i find a bit impenetrable.

i wish she wasn't so likable tbh, or so eager to be liked - i feel like she's a really interesting voice and artist but there's a major label sheen, an eagerness to be pop, that doesn't sit quite right. like, i don't feel we should be judging this as "pop" at all - did we ever judge pj harvey or björk as "pop"? even though they were basically mainstream figures - but it's the album's doing that it positions itself like that.

maybe some people will parse it as contrived but i get a real sense of vulnerability from "set me free" and "grins"

or maybe not so much vulnerability but at the very least her performances on those songs feel like she is having an ~emotional breakthrough~

waitwaitwait. how are "set me free" and "you're the one" NOT vulnerable? like, you can level all manner of accusations at them but "not vulnerable enough" is just fucking bizarre. (or "hedged" for that matter -- I mean I can't think of a single emotional stop that isn't pulled out.)

FWIW I don't see her as anything close to pj harvey or bjork and I highly doubt she's aiming for that, so it seems like a non-sequitur. she's far more '80s than '90s. like, you should be looking to mall-pop and freestyle, not alt-rock.

The reference point that snuck into my head somehow was early Bananarama but I haven't yet relistened to Deep Sea Skiving to determine whether there's any actual basis for that. Possibly I subconsciously absorbed the Shakespeare's Sister reference upthread.

It's actually interesting to think about the album's (non)relationship to 90s alt-rock - the clear absence of that vibe is a very now quality IMO. If this was released in the mid-to-late 90s it might have sounded more like the first Imogen Heap album maybe?

OTOH I haven't actually heard any Alisha's Attic albums from that period so maybe I'm wrong about this.

The Goldroom remix of "You (Ha Ha Ha)", save the Macarena opening, is quite good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrrmtqVunt4

new song "interior" is kind of hilarious

Saw on twitter someone saying she did a Backstreet Boys cover at her gig in W. DC last night. I don't know anything about her, so maybe that is not news to you folks who do (or maybe it is).

the album's (non)relationship to 90s alt-rock - the clear absence of that vibe is a very now quality IMO'''

it might have come more from 'i don't care' than the other material but i get a vague shirley manson/garbage vibe, where does that fit into this non-relationship?

[Actually 'i dont care' made me think especially of the song 'jellyhead' (the motiv8 remix), which is a good thing]

"I Don't Care" is Republica's "Ready To Go" X Transvision Vamp which means that its relationship to 90s alt-rock is stronger than Charli's own material but not significantly so.

Can't see anyone mentioning Lock You Up, which I basically have in a loop in my head

"The Goldroom remix of "You (Ha Ha Ha)", save the Macarena opening, is quite good"
it is, including the macarena opening

this is like the 15th time I have heard a reference to republica in the past two months

Saw on twitter someone saying she did a Backstreet Boys cover at her gig in W. DC last night. I don't know anything about her, so maybe that is not news to you folks who do (or maybe it is).

See my previous post itt

ok this is amazing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPWcX-16A9Y

wow very nice

Yes, properly amazing. I've already played it six times.

like the song quite a lot, :/ at the video because how many more 'western pop stars having a zany time in japan' videos do we need.

the chorus feels more sugary than anything off 'true romance' but maybe i'm wrong on that point. more bubbly than take my hand, even.

You're not wrong. This is Radio Disney drivel. Such a regression from True Romance.

>:(

If this is what radio disney is like then i clearly need to be listening to a lot more radio disney

lmao @ someone who has no fucking clue about radio disney actually played when it was a thing

good song!

it's fizzy

lmao@ a grown ass man proud of being the world's only radio disney hipster, tbh. He was there...a l o n e

Loving this! I'm starting to think Charli XCX may be the best pop songwriter right now.

plenty of ppl (or 'grown ass men' b/c i guess those are the only ones whose opinions should be considered right) repped for radio disney actually: http://www.villagevoice.com/2000-03-14/music/all-ears/

lmao@ a grown ass man proud of being the world's only radio disney hipster, tbh. He was there...a l o n e

― Cousin Slappy

haven't been here long have you

The guitar riff under the chorus is just gorgeous

i really like the production on this a lot.... sorta cut copy-ish circa 'in ghost colours'

I've liked her more and more with each single. Juxtaposing the alphabet game with acoustic strums and video game whooshes is some genius.

it does sound like she says "you're smoking through my butt" though

you know, typical Radio Disney fare.

I dont think anyone has mentioned it so far but some of her vocal ticks remind me heavily of Gwen Stefani. Am I alone in this?

I mean I can easily picture this new song and Nuclear Seasons as Gwen Stefani fiddling with darkwave.

i don't know about here but i've definitely read no doubt comparisons to her before.

I've heard it before, yeah. (Stefani's own tiptoes toward that are just as good.)

SOS THIS IS REAL AND THIS IS DANGEROUS

Love this song!

https://vine.co/v/Mm5ge1IZjQ7

https://vine.co/v/MmhWal1VEt3

i laughed way too hard at these

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-zpOMYRi0w

iggy azalea raps like someone who isn't quite finished with her 't.i. drawl' rosetta stone class yet

"unfinished" is the right word for Azalea. Charli should have rapped Azalea's part and have done with it.

i don't think charli makes the best hook singer on rap songs either

I have little to no time for iggy azalea after she said something phenomenally stupid about indigenous australians, which I will find a link to when I'm not phone boarding

Charli's album eventually (without waiting too long)comes up and grabs me in the murk; doesn't let go. Her poses become her; was even thinking "Bowie's granddaughter" (she's 20, right?). Icona Pop's album seems too often to be trying too hard, like some recent Lady Gaga. "I Love It" works better in Tiesto's remix. Should prob listen more to IP's album, and maybe Iggy.

I have little to no time for iggy azalea after she said something phenomenally stupid about indigenous australians, which I will find a link to when I'm not phone boarding

probably this

Charli should have rapped Azalea's part and have done with it.

listened now: otm

funny how her two biggest hits by far have both been ft. credits.

it seems like that might always be true but who knows

It's gonna be hard for her (and icona pop) to create another global hit like 'I love it' but who knows.

my gut feeling is that charli's odds are better than icona pop's odds, but they are both regrettably slim

I still really like "SuperLove".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOPMlIIg_38

Boom! Clap! is a great hook. Rereading this thread makes me wonder if I'm listening to the same artist and album, because I think she's a great songwriter and it's the murky production that lets her down.

is that filmed in Copenhagen?

Probably Amsterdam, as that song is on the Fault in Our Stars soundtrack, and a part of that book (and movie, unless they've taken liberties with the source material) takes place there.

I felt very underwhelmed with Boom Clap when I was watching it but then I went away from my computer without any other music on and I had it playing in my head constantly for half an hour. Wonder if I'm going to end up loving it like I have with just about everything else she's done. Doesn't seem like a big change in style in anything. I thought the second album was supposed to sound like Bow Wow Wow and The Waitresses or something?

boom clap is still kinda underwhelming and it sounds like a castoff from old sessions, i would be surprised if it ends up on her new album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8k2AAMTZKo

I'm not sure whether "Boom Clap" is a leftover from the True Romance sessions or not, but it's certainly veering back towards glittery, gothy pop and away from the promised bratpunk of "London Queen", "Breaking Up", and the "Allergic To Love" cover, so I'm inclined to think it's just a soundtrack thing or if it does appear on the album, it'll be an outlier / bonus track. Going rock could potentially backfire for her but if Sky Ferreira could pull it off, I'd say Charli is just as capable, if not more so. I'd imagine her label are rethinking things after the success of "Fancy". I'm not sure whether she's done anything with Reichtshaid for this album, but Noonie Bao, Rostam from Vampire Weekend, MNDR, Rivers Cuomo, and Patrik Berger are some of the known collaborators. There were also rumours she was working with Cathy Dennis.

Anyway "Boom Clap" is apparently in the top 100 on US iTunes, so I hope she finally gets her own solo hit. She's deserved to for about 2-3 years.

weaksauce like "boom clap" becoming her solo hit will be almost as disappointing as "fancy" being arguably it

Interesting interview with Charli went up on popjustice overnight that seems to indicate that she's scrapped the "punk" album with Patrik Berger for the meantime, and confirms she's been working on her own stuff with Stargate and on other people's stuff with Dr Luke.

The "punk" album was a startling and not altogether sensible move, which is kind of why I loved the idea. I wouldn't blame her for never following through with it, though.

to be honest i wouldn't be surprised if the stuff she makes with stargate ends up being quite good

charli xcx apparently turned down lead on a christina aguilera song

ESSETKES:EST s/lead/feature (although given her track record of features she probably would have ended up the de facto lead)

Well, perhaps I spoke too soon. https://twitter.com/charli_xcx/status/482583396234035201

boom clap at no. 6 in the UK chart

(and fancy still hanging in at 24)

I'm really happy she's doing well even if Boom Clap isn't my favourite thing she's done. Hopefully people will go out and get True Romance now.

COME ON TO ME
COME ON TO ME NOW

did she really say "iggy and i defeated the racists" :(

‘I sometimes ask for a framed picture of Bill Murray on my rider just because I think he is really cool,’ she said.

‘There are a few I have collected and some of them have been in nice frames!’

‘I have a weird Bill Murray collection, I guess. Although it’s not some weird obsession.

‘It would be sick to have him in a music video.’

No stranger to music, Murray was once MC for Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival.

dyl no she did not... it's a classic if egregious example of the peculiarly british newpaper practice of summarizing - often incorrectly - what someone has said and then putting that in quote marks as a subhed

http://gometro.ie/2014/07/charli-uses-girl-power-to-fight-off-the-haters/

‘People give Iggy (pictured) a hard time because she’s Australian and white and female and apparently that’s a weird thing, which I don’t get,

i read that as her attempting not to address the question which is fair enough imo

maybe she should have gone in on the fraught question of iggy's authenticity as a rapper though? i dunno

the boom boom clap
the tap tap tap

http://www.popjustice.com/songs/charli-xcx-break-the-rules/

the lack of chemistry iggy and charli have on "fancy" is pretty astonishing. even when they both do it live on the same stage, charli sounds like she's been parachuted in from another song and that they've never actually talked to each other

(i wonder how long ilm can go without a thread dedicated to iggy azalea)

forever

xxp: okay, I was mildly into that before they brought in the weird little jig.

even in that video it feels that way when they're sitting right next to each other

this is straight up republica / shampoo / garbage (the band) and i'm into it

aaahhh the bassline is straight ripping off something that i can't quite place

it's alright though, even if it is a bit "fancy" x a not-terrible "i love it" ie "please please like me now, public, look, my two most popular songs for you". i guess the darker, gothier stuff is probably gone for good?

"boom clap" remains deathly plodding tho

i think in general i have come to terms with the realisation that charli xcx will never quite be the artist i was hoping she could be

this is a thousand times better than "boom clap" though. (plus, wasn't that the "please like me public" stage? by this point the public actually likes her)

Agreed. Lots of little details: the synth solo, guitar strums. I don't know about someone trying to "break the rules" with a hornet swarm preset ripped from a Calvin Harris production in '08 though

(plus, wasn't that the "please like me public" stage? by this point the public actually likes her)

i guess it's "please continue to like me" - i hadn't realised "boom clap" was actually a hit. but i guess bratty nu-republica x nu-avril stomping will be her thing rather than gothy triangular tumblrpop.

funny thing is, in that taylor announcement yesterday (didn't watch, couldn't bring myself to whiplash to a taylor swift presser on yahoo after a day of bad news-news, don't begrudge anyone else though), what she was describing as her influences on _1989_ don't seem worlds apart from what _true romance_ was going for. perhaps minus the gothiness.

er, that is, I didn't watch live but I caught up later

Count me in the minority (at least here) that thinks boom clap is amazing.

it's grown on me

i love boom clap, it's like the happy prelude to the inevitable fall chronicled in 'stay away'

isn't the bassline of the new track sorta 'gigantic'-y

charli sounds like she's been parachuted in from another song and that they've never actually talked to each other

Given that's what actually happened, it's not surprising. Iggy said her label had Charli do up the chorus part and she didn't realize they'd even asked her until the final product was ready to put out.

more like charli zzz

I think I prefer Boom Clap to this but it is still better than most pop out there just now.

boom clap has grown on me a little mostly by sounding somewhat different to what radio is playing otherwise

this song is okay, the chorus kinda sucks but w/e

listening on a stereo with good bass and ayyyyyyyy sounding good

albeit the thing it vaguely reminded me of was, uh, "smells like teen spirit"

cavernous echo as chorus builds is incredible, references to "school" and "discotheque" make it seem weirdly dated

Interesting to see people commenting on which of these two singles are the "public please like me" one. To me SuperLove sounded way more like she was desperate to have a hit than either of these. I like these two single fine but SuperLove is still by far my favourite song of hers. I'm hoping she'll put it out again and it'll be the hit it should have been but it's more likely it won't even be on the album.

albeit the thing it vaguely reminded me of was, uh, "smells like teen spirit"

ding ding ding ding imo

i vastly prefer boom clap to this despite the great stonking "paint it black" drums but maybe i'm just an old softie

"To me SuperLove sounded way more like she was desperate to have a hit than either of these."

otm

Didn't Boom Clap drop like a year ago? Shit is old news. Charli release some new stuff...

Boom Clap is tailor made for strip clubs

Regardless. Love Charli

Boom Clap is only a few months old. The Break The Rules video is out and features a Rose McGowan cameo!

Album out 20 Oct (UK) / 21 Oct (US)

i'm starting to love the synth after the chorus - actually it kind of IS the chorus? though the build-up feels over-egged both musically and lyrically to me still

The lyrics to this new one are really clunky and disappointing, despite the melody being insanely catchy.

The lyrics to Break the Rules and Boom Clap are really generic and let the songs down. Sad to thing just a year ago she came out with a line as brilliant as "I used to think that the power of love was just a song, but now it's got hold of me"

not really feeling "break the rules" at all. i'm excited she's getting her chance at a legit mainstream breakthrough tho. "boom clap" is closing in on #1 on top 40 radio.

the lyrics to boom clap are brilliantly generic imo, plenty of wide open space for you to fill in the blanks yourself. the music's doing all the meaningful work, poised right on the interstice between longing and fulfillment

I think i figured out one reason I like Boom Clap so much. It sounds just like, or gives me the same feeling as, golden-era Cyndi Lauper

the album got pushed back to mid december T_T

:(

The excuse is '"Boom Clap" is doing well' which to me sounds like a reason to strike while the iron's hot, if anything. I'll never understand labels.

They've already had a reasonably big pre-order campaign underway, so wtf.

Perhaps pre-orders weren't meeting expectations.

Maybe Break the Rules isn't doing as well as expected? Disappointed with this news whatever the reason.

Break The Rules hasn't done anything yet, but admittedly radio is probably still focussed on Boom Clap. I think it only got sent to Radio 1 playlists in the UK this week.

Boom Clap! Boom Clap! Come to our macaroni party and we'll take a nap.

album is pretty good but i still don't think she's fully found her voice yet

sorry if i missed it, but is there a tracklist for this thing yet?

itunes doesn't, wikipedia does:
1. "OK"
2. "Break the Rules"
3. "Seronja"
4. "Mow The Lawn"
5. "London Queen"
6. "Boom Clap"
7. "Make Believe"
8. "Need Your Love"
9. "Hangin' Around"
10. "Gold Coins"
11. "Breaking Up"
12. "Light It Up"
13. "Hey Molly!"

hey thanks!

Wish SuperLove was on there.

Agree! "Superlove" is the best of the post-"True Romance" singles, makes no sense to leave it out.

I think with the release of Boom Clap in hindsight I see Superlove as post-True Romance rather than pre-Sucker and will probably be added as a TR bonus track some day so am happy with it's absence in lieu of new tracks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H89R9K75eo

man "boom clap" is way more true romance than "superlove"

rip "superlove"

imo foregrounded bass guitar is a good ass look

*thumbs up*

13. "Hey Molly!"

pre-emptive strongest possible nope

I like to think that's a song about heaven's journalist cabal welcoming Molly Ivins to the afterlife.

Some solace for Katherine: "Hey Molly!" doesn't exist on the latest version of the album tracklisting on wiki, which seems to be constantly changing (curious, as I understood promos had gone out)

i like "london queen" :)

not even charli xcx is infallible, true romance had a brooke candy song

both "break the rules" and "london queen" pander way too much to youth imo? like they just ring kinda false to me. i feel sort of embarrassed listening to them.

actually "london queen" is pretty good even if it's sort of a rewrite of "i love it" -- i think my dislike of "break the rules" is infected

the little keyboard hook on "london queen" is pretty nifty

the keyboard hook is great, but there definitely is a playing young thing going on that oddly reverses the mature presence of her earlier singles

both "break the rules" and "london queen" pander way too much to youth imo? like they just ring kinda false to me. i feel sort of embarrassed listening to them.

― snrub goin up on a tuesday (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, October 7, 2014 11:10 AM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

blame "boom clap"

(plus I feel like most radio, promotion, etc. is now deliberately positioning her as teenpop. which goes to show how arbitrary a lot of this is, but fuck if I know where you'd write something like that anymore in 2014)

i really dislike "break the rules" but i love "london queen," glad there's a good inversion of the former's formula

true romance had such a teenpop appeal to it tho (the better parts imo) so it's not like this feels like some huge betrayal of her former values or aesthetic. i do agree that "break the rules" takes it to a slightly bizarre and uncomfortable extreme but i think she's convincing enough regardless.

see, I don't see true romance as teenpop at all, or if it is it's heavily filtered toward an '80s version of teenpop that no one recognizes as such anymore. (or toward jesus millions blogcore I guess)

love london queen :D

it's not teenpop-teenpop though, you'd never mistake even "break the rules" for idk aly & aj or hilary duff back in the day or whoever, because what actually marks teenpop out is that dead-serious sincerity. it's more knowing teenpop - not ironic, definitely affectionate, but something like "break the rules" mostly feels like dressing-up-as-an-ideal-of-teenpop (cf the carly rae jepsen album). it's to its credit that it still pulls it off though i have to say since that halcyon week of caning the thing repeatedly it hasn't stuck as much as i thought it would.

(this, btw, is why i find pc music and their fans so objectionable because pop DOES the dressing up/commenting on itself/idealising itself thing ALREADY and BETTER and a tru pop head would fucking know that)

pc music?

I dunno, I could see someone like Fefe Dobson or Shut Up Stella releasing it

To me, True Romance is the Shakespeare's Sister/Alisha's Attic axis of pop - gloomy textures with big choruses and universally-understood themes. The production is going to seem so of-its-time in a decade but I think her ability to write a chorus in any style is going to be what lasts.

Every criticism of "Superlove" as her attempt to be loved by everyone seems more valid when applied to "Break The Rules", it feels like it's so beneath what she's capable of. "London Queen" is fun in a goofy way but I'm not sure the power-pop-punk direction is where I wanted to see her go.

Heard a bunch of new songs at her concert and boy there is some clunkers out there, Gold Coins is head scratching bad and it isn't the only one. There is no coming back from I Love It it seems, not for the moment. Kids went absolutely nuts for Break The Rules, also no You're The One and Nuclear Seasons and Set Me Free left me a little bitter if not unsurprised.

oh anyone expecting this to be anything like true romance will be severely disappointed, charli's following the money

It sounds a lot like Republica in places.

I really got on board with Charli via Supa Ultra, which in retrospect now seems like this weird ultra-extreme of blogcoreness. Hard to believe now that she used to write songs with choruses that were just her chanting Justin Bieber's name over and over.

i have a weird kind of respect for the blunt stupidity of "break the rules", given the theme of the song. like, if that's what you feel then that's what you say. what was that line john lennon used? if you've fallen out of a boat you don't say "i'd quite like it if someone came to my aid"

rbh when it comes to bratty pop punk, it still emerges as "nearly there!...but not quite" as her previous tumblrpop

though it feels less likely that she's actually going to get to pulling it off 100%

oh anyone expecting this to be anything like true romance will be severely disappointed, charli's following the money

― lex pretend, Friday, October 10, 2014 5:35 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

i'm on board w/ this personally

the live stuff last night was some bratty pop punk, some 90s no doubt ish ska type stuff. the backing band in matching union jack dresses, the cover of Money (That's What I Want) was pretty on point, and even though the material was probably weaker than most of the first record and i'm not sure if i'll love it recorded the way i adore True Romance her stage presence keeps increasing. she knows how to work a crowd.

I have a feeling I'm not going to like this new Punky Brewster direction. London Queen is easily my least favorite of these new tracks.

Boom Clap is still glorious.

She was fine live tonight. Actually, I really like her, more than I like most of her songs. She really sells this punky pop stuff, even though the moody stuff ultimately suits her better.

p good interview of her http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/9542-charli-xcx/

excited for this & think it'll tie w/ tinashe for my favorite pop album of the year. interesting quote re: true romance -

I felt nervous and was definitely worried what people would think about me. I wanted to make a pop record, but I wanted to make it “cool.” Now I couldn’t give a fuck if people don’t think I made a “cool” album.

(i did love true romance but i think i know what she means)

I do too. She was up above it, now she's down in it.

Like, True Romance was really good (I still listen to it frequently), but it kind of seemed like an anthropology project on popular music. tbh, "Break the Rules" and "London Queen" do as well, but "Boom Clap" is a legit '10s pure pop sell out in the finest way.

i love boom clap like i love very few other songs of the past few years. i don't feel compelled to play it, it doesn't slay me, but it somehow sustains me while i'm listening to it, it lends me a type of buoyancy that i don't get from much else.

i listened to it like 6 goddamn times in a row when i stumbled upon it via spotify! i dont turn her stuff on like, completely on the regular but every time i do its usually for extended loops - either the album or one of the new singles

on Break The Rules: "A lot of people think that single is really calculated, because it’s like a record label’s wet dream; I handed it in in June, and they were like, “This is perfect, school starts in September.” But it came so naturally and it’s very tongue-in-cheek."

is it though???? once you add the video into the mix i think that tongue done slid out somewhere along the way

idk i liked that one in particular too much to give a fuck

ha

great interview regardless

Gun Shot by Likke Li has a strong Charli vibe

"Gold Coins"

http://kindofsubtlety.tumblr.com/post/102815360929/via-vk-com-charlixcx

this is really good

i'm into it. i think it's reasonably likely i'll end liking this album better than true romance despite initial appearances.

Immediately loving this more than the last two.

yah the buzzsaw guitars are dope & the hook really sticks

OK, I definitely like this the best of the post-True Romance material. Looking forward to the new record with a little less hesitation now.

it's a bit like sleigh bells with the noise taken out

kind of a 'this is england' groove too

can't get this one out of my head. verges on royals territory lyrically but much more complicit and ambiguous (imo)

my only criticism is that i'd love another verse up front, just hold back that glorious chorus a little bit

it's on spotify! never realised

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/magazine/the-pernicious-rise-of-poptimism.html

;_;

did not watch the AMAs, because barf, but her performance was p good

*the clip of her performance

"break the rules" was good, "boom clap" was shit and you could tell even charli was passing time until she could get it done with

like, if you are performing "boom clap" it has to be BOOM! CLAP! and not "boom, clap, whatever, can I deploy the collapsible prom dress yet"

i def agree with that point haha

"breaking up" is out now as well - i'm really excited to hear this album

so here for her nonchalant, letters to cleo phase

Bloom Clap is great you guys

maybe it was just an effect of hearing it through the computer speakers but it seemed like her vocals were mixed really high in Boom Clap. some singers would be "revealed" unflatteringly by that but not Charli.

Breaking Up strikes me as corny, but I'll probably like it later.

love it. it IS a bit corny...but like, folks, were we expecting joni mitchell understatement here?

Nah, I kinda know what her trip is these days, but even for Charli v3.0 it's kinda corny.

Gold Coins!! Yes.

very joan jett. not a fan of the "off" chord changes in the chorus but the rest is pretty great.

also very cristina/ze records! i wonder if charli's ever heard this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY9Fcln60Jw

Some of this album sounds like Transvision Vamp. Not saying that's good or bad. It just does.

i liked boom clap more upon realizing that it's like stay away brought out into the sunlight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fkt91iye4c

i like everything i've heard from the album so far except "break the rules" so :D

getting the transvision vamp thing loud and clear on that one

oh man that rules

I'm still not sure about "Breaking Up", I feel like I'm always behind with Charli XCX, like my favorite song is always two before the latest one. Right now "Break The Rules" is the one that does it for me.

FEWMIN at the delayed UK release of the album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImGHYBcKoGA

What a terrible show

yeah it's p much the worst

It was good at one point like a decade ago.

"I don't usually want to work with other girl writers - but she had my vibe," Stefani told Rolling Stone.

....tmi?

http://diymag.com/2014/12/08/charli-xcx-reveals-more-tracks-from-sucker

Wait, it's not coming out until January now?

Oh, phew. The US release date is still December 15th.

the songs arent playing in that link blahhhhhh

grrrr

http://www.josepvinaixa.com/blog/charli-xcx-sucker-famous/

ty tracerhand that one works!

love these

she is the meeting point between joan jett and cyndi lauper and I LOVE IT

i love it so much

The album is streaming on iTunes.

Oh wow, I finally got one of these First Play things to work!

Doing It is delicious.

one play in i'm pretty impressed. the production is very pleasing to the ear and it's all very hooky. just as i thought things were starting to drag toward the end she started doing some truly bizarre things with her voice. tentative impression: i think i will probably like this better than true romance in the end.

Oh damn, this is something isn't it?

Charli's talked a lot about worshipping Britney Spears and about Blackout being her favourite album of all time, and I think "Doing It" is the first time that idolisation has come across really strongly.

Album sounded fantastic on first play.

this is so great

FUCK YOU

SUCKER

this is the album i hoped 1989 would be (and isn't, except for "style," imo). not in literal style/sound so much as being a just knockdown-amazing-no duds pop album.

I'm in the middle of this and so far I'm loving the "new" tracks. Still nothing yet beats "Superlove" and I'm still annoyed it's not on the album.

i love "superlove" but i can undestand why it was left off.

xp i had that thought re: 1989 too! like there's only maybe one song i might possibly want to trim from this

whereas i had to excise like 25% of 1989 to make it palatable

Agree that there is nothing as good as Superlove on here but this album really is fantastic. London Queen and Break the Rules are probably my least my favourite songs. Doing It is the big highlight, incredible song.

I love London Queen.

i only had to hear this in full once and it instantly made my top 10 of the year. listened a zillion times since then

i feel like the most impressive thing about sucker on first listen is how it moves at such a brisk pace but the songs themselves are so self-contained that you don't really feel like you're constantly trying to play catch-up, it satisfies in that way from start to finish

"doing it" is magnificent, a really excellent simulation of early madonna imo

I read that as "a really excellent situation of early madonna" and thought "otm".

well, yeah

Doing It is wonderful, London Queen is dreck.

london queen is prob the worst song on the album but its still not "bad," imo.

idk what's wrong with all of you

it literally had me dancing into my office when I arrived this morning

"situation" and "vogue" was a favorite go-to blend of mine back in the day

"london queen" rules

yes i love "london queen"

this album is making me giddy w/ joy. love it.

what do people think of the weezer song?

the what

'Hanging Around'. Rivers Cuomo wrote it with Charli after she said she wanted something like 'Beverley Hills' iirc.

its pretty good, although i dont think any of its goodness comes directly from the cuomoesque attributes, feel like he bent to her will and aesthetic pretty well

'Hanging Around' is my least favorite.

"london queen" is fucking awful, it's like a mary and kate and ashley go to the UK soundtrack cut (except those were actually good and this is not)

(that said this album is pretty good)

"London Queen" is almost note for note "Revolution" by the Veronicas. Very hard for me to dislike it on those grounds, even though it's really stupid. I called the album Sky Ferreira meets Skye Sweetnam and my wife asked me why on earth anyone would want to combine those two things. But it's good!

And agree that it's refreshing not to have to scrape off a quarter of the tracks to want to listen to it all the way through.

Thank you, Brad. And dyl. :)

A few OK tracks aside, this is a brilliant album.

never mind I'm a dumbass "london queen" is great

it helped to hear it as a cross-pond version of kay hanley's "nicky passes marble arch"

bridge on "hanging around" >>>>>>> (everything else on "hanging around")

thoughts on her SNL appearance?

if i was on my phone rn it'd be all 100 and prayer hands emojis

she has grown leaps and bounds as a stage presence and embraces the opportunity to be a little ridiculous (dance moves during the post-refrain breakdowns of "break the rules") and can work with nonexistent or minimal backing vocals, a thing not a lot of pop stars (even ones whose stuff i enjoy on record) will do live

dunno about that -- I thought her stage presence was remarkably fully-formed when I saw her live (pre-True Romance)

I posted on Twitter that I thought she was made entirely out of x-factor. I couldn't tear my eyes away from the screen; it was a very simple performance but transfixing.

If ppl still get SNL popularity bumps, I predict her rising US profile is going to go nova.

I wonder if it would've happened if she'd released "I Love It" herself instead of pulling Icona Pop's strings.

i saw a video of a whole set from some festival and was a little underwhelmed, but, to be fair, that's video & it doesn't always give the proper impression. either way i'm really excited to see her -

*looks up dates, realizes she already came to boston two months ago, kicks underside of desk, stubs toe*

I was pretty underwhelmed by her live a couple of months back. Or rather, just whelmed enough, I guess. It felt way too constricted, from banter to setlist to music (a mix of live but plenty of shadowed pre-recorded stuff) for my tastes. I think Charli XCX's biggest strengths are also her weaknesses. She's not much of a singer (imo) and her direction is kind of erratic, which makes her kind of interesting and exciting, but dunno how sustainable. I think Gaga's overconfidence and ability c. "The Fame" (she was the same age then as Charli is now, amazingly) ultimately hurt her. Charli seems more into the idea of shaking things up, to coin a phrase.

"just whelmed enough" sums up my reaction to everything charli does in general, albeit in different ways every time, though i thought she was actually less constricted the one time i saw her live, more natural, whereas on record there's just enough there to sustain my interest and basic positivity but there's this air of second-guessing and deliberateness that hangs over both albums for me

she's more of a singer when she wants to be, cf:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO72qcXvakE

Isn't this just Avril 2.0?

nope, next

slappy in the cut

Well, judging from her interviews she's perfectly ok with that comparison.

Loving the guitar on "Famous". I'm guessing it must be a Greg Kurstin thing, cause it's almost the same sound he used on the (sadly) never-released "Femme Fatale" by Sky Ferreira. It's a shame the melody is kind of meh, though. Something doesn't work for me. Maybe some of the notes are too high for Charli XCX?

this album is really fucking dope

best riffs of the year

Have been obsessed with this album for the last week. Need Ur Luv is my current favourite. It's been bugging me who it reminds me of and at the moment I'm thinking maybe something from the first Lykke Li album with a bit of Cher Lloyd in the chorus. My only complaint is the album version of Boom Clap is a bit different. The synth in the chorus has been changed a bit and that was my favourite part.

this record is so much fun, oh my god

I think this year my two favourite albums were released on the same day - Charli's and D'Angelo's.

killed it on letterman last night also

Found the letterman performance pretty awkward with its forced sexiness but I'm still rooting for her

Btw, my sister- and mother-in-law were at that taping yesterday although I'm not aware of them being Charli XCX fans specifically

was kinda awkward on Saturday Night Live tho I still kinda like her.

Will Hermes on NPR loves her

http://www.npr.org/2014/12/16/370318970/charli-xcx-and-the-years-most-fabulous-pop-record

i like this album a lot but at times i wish it weren't all 'attitude' all the time. like even "caught in the middle" toward the end manages to be a welcome respite despite being firmly in the territory of a merely-decent 'sensitive' ke$ha album track. i know that desiring slightly more emotional range is an almost heretical reaction to a record as 'punky' as this but i'd be lying if i said i didn't occasionally want that.

well "boom clap" is on the album too so maybe i am just complaining for no reason.

I loved the SNL appearance. Sexy as fuck. Lip syncing though for at least some of it. And fake guitarist.

Love Doing It, my high point for this album.

Same for me.

doing it
sucker
need ur luv
gold coins
body of my own
famous
breaking up
london queen
boom clap
caught in the middle
hanging around
break the rules
die tonight

would be my ranking

yeah that's about right though i'd rank "breaking up" above "gold coins"

"famous" would go much lower, sorry kurstin

god "need ur luv" is the best

i wish i liked this album more than i do but despite the many catchy hooks it never quite lives up to the promise of the opening FUCK YOU, SUCKER!!!!!! apart from maybe "body of my own". someone on the jukebox said that true romance felt good but overworked and even if this is a pivot away from it the same is true. the hooks carry every song for like, a verse and a chorus and then they start to lumber where they should leap. it's all a bit lana del rey-ish, "here is pop songwriter charli xcx inhabiting some archetypes and pushing the right buttons" but i don't feel like i connect to HER or feel there's ever much at stake. also, i thought this would click when i put it to the "tipsy on the night bus" test that most great pop ends up passing at some point, and it...failed it miserably.

consider "london queen" our revenge for countless americans writing terribly about britain

i feel like charli xcx needs to get away from the MAJOR LABEL POP mindset to really fulfil her talent tbh

supposedly the next single is a new version of "doing it" featuring rita ora -__________-

Haha, it's like she's making singles just for me now.

nope

charli get out of there what are you doing

you are not cher lloyd, cher lloyd isn't even cher lloyd anymoer

UK release date pushed back again :(

the closer she gets to sounding like republica the less i'm down with her but i still mostly like the album

the whole release strategy for the album was odd to me -- score a big top 10 hit in multiple countries, then follow it u[ with something like "Break The Rules" that was so obviously doomed to not go top 10 anywhere (except Australia, apparently) and keep pushing back the album release while that stupid single choice saps her career momentum.

hilarious

this is shit music

Omar otm

yeah "break the rules" is a proper hit down here

i love the album but i think it's flopped. don't really see how rita ora could rescue things but i'm open minded

it's probably not true that anyone considers a rita ora verse in itself to be a game-changing value-add

might more just be that rita's camp is down to put up cash for a video or radio budget that the label might not be willing to part with at this stage of the campaign

i think it sounds fine

if this replaced black widow in US top 40 playlists i'd be ecstatic

"i don't feel like i connect to HER or feel there's ever much at stake" So glad you said this, lex. I gave it a lukewarm review, acknowledging it has a handful of great songs, for this reason and the blanket enthusiasm itt confused me. It's very basic - each song has one conceit (I like partying, I don't like rules, I am from London) which is reiterated efficiently without adding any new wrinkle. My daughters are obsessed with 1989 so I'm constantly reminded how many insights, twists and idiosyncratic details Taylor packs into her conceits. This seems cartoonish by comparison.

cartoonish is great!

Up to a point, sure, but I'm not going to lose my shit over it, especially when I feel there's more to her than that.

yeah charli xcx is really great at writing a catchy hook but i can't shake off the thought that she's not moving beyond being the "jessie j it's cool to like". i feel like there's a disconnect between her and her songwriting, like the amount of heavily-underlined character in her voice disguises its lack in the lyrics, which are mostly prefab signifiers - which actually might work with a more anonymous vocal (weirdly i seem to like the rita ora version of "doing it"...better???). she's tremendously talented and i don't dislike either of her albums but i feel like they're both, in different ways, dulled versions of what they could be

this whole thread and no one's mentioned the Marcus Schossow remix of Boom Clap yet (AFAICT)?

https://soundcloud.com/marcusschossow/charli-xcx-boom-clap-marcus-schossow-remix

feel like there's a disconnect between her and her songwriting, like the amount of heavily-underlined character in her voice disguises its lack in the lyrics, which are mostly prefab signifiers - which actually might work with a more anonymous vocal (weirdly i seem to like the rita ora version of "doing it"...better???).

This is why most of the album works for me: she's certainly NOT anonymous, so I hear no disconnect b/w her and the songwriting. It's like giving a charismatic actor a strong script and watching her go.

xpost sort of sounds like a trancey Knights of the Jaguar with Charli sped up on top of it? :/

I like the way it slows down halfway through then inches up through the tempos ever so slowly until it gets back up to top speed. But yeah very trancey.

I think the one-idea-per-song insight is probably mostly right, but I don't experience that as any kind of problem. Lots of the artists I love have only one idea per song. Some of them have only one idea per album, or one idea, period. If I want another idea, I switch to something else.

(Leveling this as a criticism feels to me a little like saying that Mondrian paintings don't have character development.)

She kind of reminds me of Gillette -- simple ideas put across with energy and personality.

a new blade stabilizer to maintain optimal blade spacing for maximum comfort too.

Well yeah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km3agvlyRmM

really hope this becomes huge

:D

yeah really feeling it, rita's inclusion is kind of pointless but it doesn't detract either

that sounds like a sheena easton song

I like this but I don't think it could be a hit in the US

Yeah, as much as I like this song (it's my favorite on the album), I think Boom Clap may have been her best shot at breaking into the US market this go-round.

rita ora is barely perceptible on this song

i think she's just there so it can be a uk hit lol

yeah i think this one's aimed at britishers esp. given that the album is (finally!) being released there soon too

rita ora is barely perceptible at the best of times tbh

is Rita even perceptibly bigger than Charli in the UK at that point? they seem roughly even in terms of singles and in terms of albums Rita hasn't had one out in two and a half years.

Rita is far far far far bigger

rita's had four #1 singles in the UK, she's also a judge on The Voice right now

welp, PC music finally found her i guess :/ http://www.wonderingsound.com/charli-xcx-doing-it-a-g-cook-remix-pc-music-rita-ora-stream/

lmaooooo

terrible remix anyway

i like AG cook but i'm not sure what the point of this is

wasn't she supposed to be working with them? i had hoped that she might get them out of their horrible habit of making grown women sound like babies, but, nope

That is capital D dreadful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omRRRkfbPYM

video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJoytOvVAbU

This album is relentless!

love Hanging Around.

Charli knows the sick beat line is horrendous

Album finally came out in the UK last week. Despite containing two top ten hits it went at number 15 with 5,622 copies sold. Sad stuff. Shows that putting albums back and leaving a three month gap in between international release dates is really pointless.

If they bother with another single it has to be Need Ur Love. It's one of the catchiest songs of the last few years.

kinda surprised it sold so poorly in her home nation

U.S. first week sales were 28,907. i fail to understand why rita goddamn ora is so huge in the U.K. while charli has sales like that

I think a lot of people may have bought it on or import or just downloaded it when it came out in the US in early December. When an album gets put back four times people don't want to wait anymore. I'm waiting for a vinyl copy which has been put back too. It was supposed to be out this week but it's put back until next month. The whole campaign as been such a mess. It would have been bigger if it had come out just after Boom Clap but that was eight months ago.

love Hanging Around.

This is the one I've had on repeat recently. Great rip of "I Love Rock n Roll," with perfect teen-angst lyrics.

The current UK sales for True Romance are just 6,302 copies apparently.

She is too old for teen-angst ridden lyrics. That's why I couldn't support her this era, along with her poor quality, generic, rote tunes featured on Sucker. She was pandering and it shows all too clearly on this album.

these sales figures are fucking terrible!! holy shit!

she has more retweets in the last week than sales of her album

it's still a top 20 album though - i think really this says more about the number of people buying music generally than the album itself. That said, the label certainly stuffed things up. Should've been released worldwide in October 2014.

Maybe a cute video for standout "Famous" will help turn it around for this mess of a campaign-- oh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f5A4DnGtis

Yeah, how is this album getting no traction? A huge part of not just one but three songs of the summer, and then the album drops and ... crickets.

tbh it's really not that surprising, every single after "boom clap" did very little on the charts, with non-core fans

(which might be chicken-egg, but without any actual knowledge of what went on the label side what else is there to work with?)

Doing It went top 10 in the UK but the album did really badly. Overall this has been a terrible campaign. When Boom Clap came out I was convinced she was about to become a massive star. Picking Break The Rules as a follow up was probably the first mistake.

should have rushed out the album while Boom Clap was still a huge song, not quietly farted it out months after most people had forgotten her name. We could have been on the deluxe version padded with Berger-cowrites by now :,(

I want to say "Breaking Up" would have been better (as much as it pains me to say it, I can see it alongside "Lips Are Moving" etc) but it didn't really get much traction either so who knows?

there aren't any obvious hits on Sucker, at least not any who work for Charli. she comes across as too canny for her own stuff a lot of the time. I could see some pubescent Disney kid have big hits with Break the Rules and Famous with the under-12 segment (with some lyrical adjustments, of course).

it seems like people knew her as the girl on the iggy song and the one from that movie and weren't really invested in her career personally

Need Ur Love sounds like the hit to me but then I thought Superlove was going to be massive when I first heard it. It got to 63 in the UK charts.

Well in a just universe True Romance would have been as era-defining as OK Computer

what a terrible video. her record company must really hate her.

she's doing stuff with PC music now btw: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4PJuhE7XMyjYkJTODdqSWpnSGc/edit

she comes across as too canny for her own stuff a lot of the time

omg bingo, this is exactly what i haven't quite been able to put my finger on

I could see some pubescent Disney kid have big hits with Break the Rules and Famous with the under-12 segment (with some lyrical adjustments, of course)

yeah same - "break the rules" is potentially a brilliant pop song, way better and more immediate than "boom clap", it just didn't ultimately fit her very well

amusingly "break the rules" became a hit in germany which is one of the bigger/tougher music markets. i think it's b/c it was attached to some tv promo there but i like to pretend it's because a smaller proportion of the ppl there can understand the lyrics.

but yeah the attempt to make her a ~star~ is evidently not really working out at least for now

i actually don't think that "famous" video is that bad, some parts are a bit amusing

of course being attached to a tv commercial didn't help "doing it" on this side of the pond lol

I could see some pubescent Disney kid have big hits with Break the Rules and Famous with the under-12 segment (with some lyrical adjustments, of course).

― Leonard Pine, Wednesday, 25 March 2015 21:52 (Yesterday) Permalink

that's the thing though -- this didn't happen either! charli xcx wrote a couple songs on bella thorne's EP and they got very little traction even with the radio disney crowd. (given that the radio disney crowd is enamored with the likes of shawn mendes, this honestly isn't so surprising.) I feel like whatever mechanisms make people ~~celebrities~~ just weren't put fully in place for charli, for whatever reason.

yeah but i meant someone a lot less terrible than bella thorne, charli can't do all the work (and boyfriend material is no break the rules, it's not even a famous)

i feel like the odds were always stacked against her being a celebrity in that way, but she had a window and with a really effective campaign for sucker, who knows? i mean it would be great if she didn't care about mainstream success and was happy just appealing to 30 year old music nerds like me, record blogbait and play small dives to our grateful, sweaty faces, but it would seem not!

i would like to think this is her betty boo stage after which she will carve out a very nice career as a backroom songwriter for pop startlets who will the play the game a lot more effectively than she does.

have to admit i was quite suprised to see simon price label her as a lidl ke$ha today in the metro (or something along those lines).

it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that people who haven't been over-invested in her tortuous and grasping career arc see her as a lidl ke$ha

I don't really see the comparison, but if true she is ke$ha with worse promotion ("blah blah blah" is still an awful song and were it not for the fact it became a hit, it'd come off as THE MOST baffling follow-up single in recent pop history)

yeah that's probably true buttt when your career arc goes "gothy tumblrpop for internet pop fans" => "iggy azalea collaboration" => "shampoo-style kiddie-punk bratpop", it's hard not to seem like you have no commitment to any sound or image

i don't really care about her commitment to anything, in fact it's kind of cool to have no idea what she's going to do next. i've enjoyed the fuck out of pretty much every stage you just described.

but yeah, maybe not so shocking that she sold like 8 copies of her album. like i give a fuck, though.

I mean, you can say that about a lot of pop artists, if not every pop artist:

"Rascal Flatts songwriter" ==> "collaborator with C-list tween actresses" ==> "doo-wop revival"

"Christian contemporary artist" ==> "shemo singer for The Matrix" ==> "arch, sarcastic mean-girl Warped Tour pop" ==> "America's Sweetheart pop" ==> "Juicy J collaboration"

"piano-rock artist playing NYU showcases" ==> "writer for Britney Spears" ==> "RedOne electropop" ==> "omg it's art it's pop and it's secretly back-of-the-bar hair metal" ==> "Tony Bennett collaboration"

"Sheryl Crow wannabe" ==> "middle-tier post-Spice girl group member" ==> "super-bubbly bubblegum pop star"

(bonus round)

"girl with a bunch of blokes covering the Beatles in pubs" ==> "arty art-rock lady"

"girl fronting a cheesy hair metal band with songs about pirates" ==> "introspective piano songwriter"

because this is just how the music industry works, has always worked, every artist goes through it in multiple iterations, only difference is the mechanisms are a little more public now that everything gets social media'd and thrown up prematurely and such. "commitment to any sound or image" is an illusion, always has been, but it only ever gets brought up selectively: always as a pejorative, and increasingly leveled at artists the industry failed to nurture. (there are exceptions -- Lana Del Rey, for instance -- but again, they're always pejorative.) it's the one-percentification of the industry again, basically. the difference between "no commitment to any sound" and "pop star eras" is pretty much the size of the marketing budget.

recent pop history
believe it or not "Blah blah blah" was 5 years ago. time flies.

no commitment to any sound or image
Compared to who? Katy Perry's last 2 albums were huge and weren't connected to any sound or image, whereas Charli seems like she's aiming to fill the Ke$ha void.

"Break The Rules" was a def a bad choice for riding momentum. Seems like they poorly chose the one most similar-sounding to "I Love It," and no one cared because it sounds boring on the radio.

upon thinking about this -- and trust me, there are little pieces of my soul dying as I think it -- the problem with charli is that there weren't enough MEMES. like, her verse on "Fancy" was one, but it wasn't really one about her, unlike, say, "brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack" or "wake up in the morning feeling like P. Diddy"

she needs more gimmicks?

not gimmicks, exactly, contrary to almost everyone in the industry gimmicks only succeed because of the pop star attached. (the No. 1 gimmick-producer in the industry might be rihanna -- that annoying "unlocking" thing, the rihanna plane, whatever fuckery happened today. but she gets away with it because she's rihanna)

the Icona Pop song was shampoo-style kiddie-punk bratpop

stuck trying to figure out who katherine is talking about in her last three example trajectories

i think it's a trick question and the answer to all of them is actually beyoncé

guessing kate bush and tori amos for the bonus round

your answers are: meghan trainor, katy perry, lady gaga and britney spears

(but that's not why I bumped the thread, I bumped it to say that "famous" is growing on me, albeit probably only me)

i like "famous" a lot!

its a great song like everything else on the record

Famous is one of the handful of songs on Sucker I'll happily listen to on repeat. I love the line "sweat drips from the roof", few pop writers can really put you right in a specific situation with only a few words like she can.

i had no idea britney was a girl group member!

http://www.pepatung.com.my/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Britney-Spears-Innosense.jpg

Having spent most of the 2000s on the side of poptimists who were like OMG WHY IS RACHEL STEVENS NOT HUGE HOW DOES THE RECORD COMPANY PUBLIC KEEP GETTING IT SO WRONG, these days, the failure of Sucker and Carly Rae Jepsen to get a second hit seem to make perfect sense to me.

Because, like, Sucker isn't very good at all, is it? Really?

I still think we should go see her and Tkay.

one thing i know is that Rivers Cuomo makes an appearance for a totally lame rewrite of "Beverly Hills," so that's one strike. (but i like "Doing It" (and the official A.G. Cook remix is one of the few PC Music things i'd say is god-level).)

There is a lot of lame stuff on Sucker. I wish I could perform an exorcism on all the college rock elements of it and be left with a decent 90s girl band best of. I'd still be dreaming about the Gainsbourg/ye ye/new wave-influenced masterpiece she talked about in interviews though.

come on that sounds terrible.

man i forgot about innosense

At least three people in this thread voted for Sucker in the P&J. I almost didn't, but then I listened to it one last time to decide whether it belonged in my top 20 or top 50, and it won me back over. For me, at least, the whole album is much more than the sum of the songs. Or maybe it's that it actually is worth the sum of its songs, where albums often aren't. Anyway, I don't know and don't care whether she "should" be a star, any more than some kid you admired in gym class in 4th grade "should" be in the Olympics, but I'm excited to hear her keep making records.

the bar feels kinda low for female pop stardom right now, like if Meghan Trainor and Ellie Goulding can be on the radio 24/7 and do solid album numbers then it shouldn't have been that hard for Charli to reach that level

That javelin thing in the Olympics doesn't look that hard.

had to check whether I voted for sucker -- I did, I mostly like it except for the two or three obvious castoffs, I'm mostly invested in her becoming a star because she almost (what seemed like) improbably became one, then didn't

come on that sounds terrible

a mashup of my three favourite genres, what could possibly go wrong??!

I know I know probably a lot but I can dream. I was actually pretty excited by the live version of London Queen and thought the new wave thing was happening and then I heard the recorded version and... eh

also I heard Red Ballon today but maybe I should post about that in the rolling worst songs thread instead

this album still ridiculously fun to put on, fuiud

she performed "famous" and "drop that kitty" (w/ ty$ and tinashe) on the mtv movie awards last night and it was pretty unbearable

i do still like the album tho

they're still trying to make "drop that kitty" happen, bless

that said, I am somewhat surprised she hasn't tried to go the EDM crossover route, because she's SO GOOD at it:

https://vimeo.com/33337865

"Famous" is one of my favorites on the album, so if that's the next single i'm cool with that.

i mean let's be real it has no chance of getting more than negligible airplay at this point

I love End of the World and I love her other Alex Metric collabo Atomic too
https://soundcloud.com/charli-xcx-fan/charli-xcx-atomic-feat-alex

She's capable of such greatness and it's frustrating that this hit-and-miss era is the one getting mainstream attention. Famous is terrific though I wish it stood a chance. MMAYBE with a really good, Fancy-level video, not that Wareheim mess.

lol

http://40.media.tumblr.com/b9d329b91fa62bf1410224465ce03a00/tumblr_no1dptqp0e1typl03o1_540.jpg

I saw her live last week (Tkay Maidza supporting). She's improved a lot since I last saw her in 2013; she also rapped the entirety of Fancy without a blaccent and she is a far better rapper than iggy iguana will ever be

http://diymag.com/2015/11/13/charli-xcx-is-working-with-ed-bangers-mr-oizo

New EP coming up with Mr Oizo, should be good

Nice. Looks like she learned her lesson.

And in the meantime, there's also her spot on the new Giorgio Moroder album!

https://open.spotify.com/track/09Y5FQrv7ldNgXdLPWLJbN

Is there a Charli xcx discussion on another thread? I listen to True Romance all the time but the last one is doing nothing for me

Britishers might find this BBC Three doc she did on feminism diverting (although a lot of it is just tour-diary stuff): http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b06qnk6p/charli-xcx-the-fword-and-me

Features only a tiny amount of Charlotte Church, I promise.

Aw man, can only watch this in the UK...

i strangely have not watched yet but heard it was kinda disappointo

I understand the best way to approach this is more 'tour diary' and less 'observations on feminism'? (haven't watched, not in UK)

Bow streaming:

https://www.thefader.com/2015/12/10/mr-oizo-charli-xcx-hand-in-the-fire

http://uk.thefader.com/2016/02/23/charli-xcx-announces-new-label-previews-vroom-vroom-feat-sophie

I'm not really into Vroom Vroom. Hope there is better on the EP.

Excited for the new album which apparently she finished last week.

really not into this EP. the hannah diamond collab sounds like a dance dance revolution track that nobody would intentionally select.

can the pc music joke end soon pls cheers

this EP is a disaster and I say that as a self-admitted Charli diehard who honestly thought she could never do any wrong ever

what even is the pc music joke

every song on the EP is better than the one before it but when you get to the end it still hasn't had time to get good. still interested in the new album!

I hope this EP is her getting this sound out of her system. The thought of her new album being of this quality makes me really sad.

Basically what boxedjoy said.

album stuff i have heard is great, does not sound like EP

i have no evidence on which to base this assertion but i'm sort of thinking (maybe moreso) that the pc music EP might be a between-albums experiment

maybe moreso hoping***

this is bad but on the other hand it's not any worse than the brooke candy song

I mean she's said that SOPHIE's going to be all over her album so regardless of how you feel about this EP I don't think what comes next is going to be any kind of hard left turn away from it.
That said I like the EP quite a bit, even if I understand how other people might find it obnoxious. If nothing else "Secret" feels to me like a really good update of those simmering early-2000s "good girl gone bad" tunes a la "I'm A Slave 4 U"? (Not that I think there's nothing else.) It definitely does get better as it goes along.
idk, it's evident to me by this point that I'm way more in the target demographic for PC Music-type stuff than the typical ILXer. Don't take my word for it.

WHAT IS THIS BULLSHIT

NO

I tried really hard getting into the EP but somebody on another forum pointed out "Paradise" sounds like Blümchen and now I'm too sad to play it anymore. The title track is good though