Charli XCX

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

finally listened to this

so disappoint

u_u

so Angry i'ma explode

^I like that.

this sounds like a throwback to ca. 2004 to me

and i love it

2:44 to 2:58 is genius!

New single called After the Afterparty coming tomorrow. I hope it's more inline with Explode rather than the EP.

I hope it sounds exactly like SuperLove which I have listened to approx 500000 times in the last 48 hrs

I don't think it sounds like either tbh

Based on the clip I heard, it sounds more closer to "Boom Clap" than SuperLove, Explode, or the EP.

It also feature Lil Yachty, but I have not heard that part.

xpost Charli has made two of my favourite albums of the decade so far but SuperLove is still my favourite thing she's done by a long long way.

As long as the new single doesn't sound like the EP, I'll be happy.

it's on spotify here. it sounds sort of like miley's "we can't stop" or "die tonight" from sucker with a guest rap

comparing this to Boom Clap is making me imagine a sad, lonely take on going home at the end of the night and it being a bit heartbreaking rather than the never-stop-partying vibes that song title suggests

Not feeling this. Angry Birds song still the best thing from her this year.

sounds like a solid album track, but not feeling it as a single.

Yeah, this would sound fine on her album but I was expecting so much for a lead single. She wasted Explode on the Angry Bird soundtrack.

Charli is releasing a mixtape on Friday. The new songs sound a lot better than I was expecting. Pull Up should have been the lead single from the proper album.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04w4f3m

these are still all produced by sophie & stargate aren't they? shocking how much better than they are than vroom vroom & after the afterparty

the producers she shouted out on mista jam were danny l. harle, sophie, a.g. cook, klaus ahlund and john hill

She's dead to me.

i will listen for the cupcakke feature

Sounds like she's quickly losing patience with her record company. I've no idea why they didn't identity Pull Up as the obvious single. I've had it stuck in my head since last night. All three of the songs they played are so far are ahead of anything she did last year. I'm feeling very relieved.

a few bangers on this mixtape for sure

She's dead to me.

Charli + Klas sounds super-promising to me

i'm 2/3rds into the mixtape and i like it a lot!

Holy shit, this album is fiery trash.

jaw just dropped at how abysmal "roll with me" is

i mean it's all pretty bad but that song is a new level of terrible

finished it. what a dreadful release. don't get why she enjoys industry support given everything she's released outside of "boom clap" has flopped, and her cult fanbase is baffling given that she's long had no discernible artistic voice beyond desperate trend-hopping

i flat-out love like 5 songs from her last album - which was stylistically quite coherent if you care about that! - so i keep hoping she can pull that off again. i agree that there appears to be a bit of a vision drift going on atm :/

yeah it's since then that it's become evident that her approach to different aesthetics is to desperately switch up every time one of them flops. felt both the tumblr goth of the first album and the pop-punk nu-republica thing on the second were like...two-thirds of the way there both times and could've really been honed into something good but she abandoned both as soon as they didn't work out and since then the chopping and changing has been kind of embarrassing

i like "pull up" and "emotional" but not into the tove-lo-a-likes and trap-esque sh*t

I really like the mixtape. There's some good callbacks to True Romance on here. Babygirl is so great it could be on the recent Ronika album and Pull Up is one of the best thing she's ever done. Roll With Me is the only one I'm having any trouble with.

there's a fairly clear aesthetic link from True Romance tumblr goth to this, Sucker feels like the outlier.

mixtape is good, pc music stuff is much more enjoyable when they're just making pop without the deliberate awkwardness or silly concepts or whatever vroom vroom was supposed to be

babygirl and pull up are definitely highlights, and i really like lipgloss despite it being quite a mess

Sorry but even beyond my usual PC Music partisanship I can't see how "Roll With Me" doesn't come across as immediately charming. Like, it's certainly the most alive that her or the production feel at any point on the mixtape.

haven't listened to this yet

i suppose the reason she continues to get industry support is b/c every now and again one of her songs will become a hit for another artist (e.g. "same old love" in the semi-recent past) and the hope probably remains that she might actually manage the same for herself again

how much industry support does she really have? she can't even get an album out

do feel like diane martell directed video is probably her last gasp as a quasi big budget pop star unless she somehow runs into another big single

hmm so i just listened. it is not *terrible* but certainly not up to par with her albums. a couple tracks are sorta charming, mostly shoved toward the front of the tracklisting.

I'm not too sure why it's embarrassing that her aesthetic has changed with each album. Isn't that quite a common trait in pop stars?

"Roll With Me" sounds like Britney in a sex club. It's probably my favourite! That or "Lipgloss".

i only listened to the cupcakke verse but i like her now

doesn't "sounds like Britney in a sex club" = "sounds like Britney"

(I haven't heard this yet, I'm kind of avoiding it and reassuring myself that even on album one she was working with Brooke Candy and (sigh) J£ZUS MILLION)

I'm not too sure why it's embarrassing that her aesthetic has changed with each album. Isn't that quite a common trait in pop stars?

because it seems to come as a result of the previous aesthetic not working rather than being fully explored, and at the expense of her having a really distinctive voice. i mean what is charli xcx's "thing" at this point rather than jobbing industry songwriter throwing stuff at the wall in the hope something will stick?

True Romance and Sucker were both great albums where she aesthetic did work though. It doesn't feel like she gave up on them because they were failed experiments, it just seems like she doesn't like to repeat herself and she maybe has a short attention span. The Vroom Vroom EP is the only time she really got it wrong for me. The material just wasn't good enough. This mixtape is her back on track that makes me feel a lot more hopeful about the third album than I did at any time last year. I think Charli's thing is just being an incredible songwriter.

as someone who pre-Sucker would have considered her a favourite and has been cautiously supportive since, I have to say this is not going well at all for me. The abundance of guest singers accentuates the lack of personality on this release and it feels a bit like someone's prospective CV for being a popstar. That said, all of this is far better than Vroom Vroom and After The Afterparty which are both simply unacceptable.

it's more that she gave up on them because they were commercial failures (speaking as someone who loves True Romance and quite likes most of Sucker)

I don't think it was ever really likely they would be successful though, at least in a major-league way. They're both pop albums but they feel slightly out of step with the pop climates they were delivered into. I don't actually believe she's a hack, chasing success - I imagine it would actually be a lot easier for her to do that than to pursue her own artist divergences and hope the world bends to her will.

I feel like it's her record company that still have some hope of her becoming this massive pop star (based on I Love It, Fancy and Boom Clap). I think Charli is probably happy with the level she's at commercially. She's obviously really prolific and just wants to get the music out there. In that interview I posted about this mixtape, she didn't exactly hide her frustration about the label sitting on the album for so long. It really does come across that she gets bored very easily. I could see her leaving her label and going it alone by the end of the year.