Charli XCX

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.

robyn's mid-level, mainstream success worked for her because she was fully independent and not splitting her profits from touring or record sales with a major label

that model is not viable for artists on major labels

there are not major label pop artists who wake up in the morning and think "i don't really care if i can be huge on the radio or not, as long as my modestly-selling albums reach a core fanbase of sophisticated pop aficionados"

it's go big or go home

"roll with me" is basically a robyn song (which explains lex not liking it)

Out here acting like this industry prop actually writes or makes any of the music she puts out. I got nothing against that but why are we now fooling ourselves pretending she's something shes not?

uhh what? it should be pretty clear that she writes her music (+ the songs she's done for others), maybe it's you who ought to be thinking about what could be "fooling" you i.e. pervasive culturally-sanctioned assumptions typically made about young women in creative industries

nice trolling orientmammal

Racoonlike

"uhh what? it should be pretty clear that she writes her music (+ the songs she's done for others), maybe it's you who ought to be thinking about what could be "fooling" you i.e. pervasive culturally-sanctioned assumptions typically made about young women in creative industries

― dyl, "

http://i.imgur.com/BihLufY.png

http://i.imgur.com/DBDWqcd.png

This is a strange argument you are pursuing, as a simple look at her wiki page shows she is a passenger of dozens of creators who are creating her music, without which, she would not have a product to sell. Yes, her name is included, for some sense of artistic authenticity on the part of the label to fool apparently people like yourself who don't see the other 20 and at times half dozen people on one song.

Also, a strange (projection?) thing to blame it on her happening to be a woman, I'm not sure what that has to do with anything, but I guess it's what you've been taught to say but it only diverts the debate into the abyss.

*sigh* this shit again, here we go

Charli XCX is a topline writer, someone like Ariel Rechtshaid (for instance) is a producer. This can be confirmed by reading any number of interviews with her or with her collaborators, or having a passing knowledge about how pop music is written

as far as "(blaming) it on her happening to be a woman," topline writers tend to be women and producers tend to be male, and there is a consistent pattern of downplaying the former work in favor of the latter.

lol katherine just wrote a way better version of the post i was sitting here composing

also if you're going to post wikipedia screenshots it's a good idea to clear your history and cache, so you don't put on display what you didn't bother to click through

Charli XCX has also been releasing pop music since she was 14, well before she was in contact with Ariel Rechtshaid or any major label

god this idiot assuming i'm trying to defend charli xcx without knowing how songs are written in today's pop industry. (bless you katherine for having the patience to explain the details, and so succinctly.)

lol i forgot raccoon tanuki was also making fun of the "charlie xcx fans" here before he was booted

one of my favorite charli xcx songs is still "valentine", which she chucked out on the internet on valentine's day 2012 or something like that. i think it was supposed to be something she had written ages before? not sure tho.

one of my favorite charli xcx songs is still "valentine"

Wow, "Valentine" is great, thanks for the heads up. Just reaffirms I like her earlier stuff a bit better than what she's been releasing lately. Sucker is such a killer album, nearly perfect front-to-back. "Art Bitch," released when she was like 16 or something, is probably still my favorite of hers.

You're so right her songwriting is so good she only needs like at least two random label people to write it with her and someone else to write the music for it.

fp

yeah, and I'm a shitty singer because I need someone to conduct, someone to play the piano and someone to turn the pages

(I am in fact a shitty singer but regardless of that)

well, HOWEVER that may be i'd still rather hear the shitty singer sing than to read the orientalracoon's thoughts on modern pop music.

also, sorry to manthread but the reason people keep pointing out sexism is that you never -- literally, I have never seen this* -- hear producers' writing skills get questioned because they only write the backing tracks. (it's not like the toplines get written in a vacuum, that would be quite difficult to do -- usually the demo has some kind of standard piano and/or guitar accompaniment, those "5 p.m. stripped-down such musicality wow" versions of pop tracks you see are often pretty close to their original form)

* if it happens at all I would guess it would be more in rap than pop writing, but the dynamics between rappers and beatmakers aren't exactly parallel

What point are you making re: her songwriting ability? Please name some great writers of history who have needed at least several people to write their all their songs for them? My point is there's no indication she writes anything, as every song she has ever put out has multiple random people in the writing credits as far as I can tell.

There's literally loads of female singer songwriters through time who no one has EVER questioned them, because they simply DO write their own music and lyrics. (Bjork, Tori Amos, Joni, Nina, Dolly, Bush, Joplin, Tracy Chapman, Stevie nicks etc). There's no of this imaginary sexism with female acts who actually do write their music. My point is obviously, why are you pretending someone who doesn't - does??

I'v eliterally never heard anybody question the artistic integrity of Kate Bush or Tracy Chapman. Never. Doesn't happen. The idea that it does is a ludicrous fantasy world.

I've literally never heard of anyone get upset about the writing credits on Charli XCX's songs. Never. Doesn't happen. The idea that it does is a ludicrous fantasy world.

SHE'S A PHONY, A BIG FAT PHONY

ppl were literally questioning the artistic integrity of stevie nicks (whose songs occasionally have cowriting credits) in a fleetwood mac thread two weeks ago