CRASH
If you’re looking for a Main Pop Girl to soundtrack your night out this weekend, Charli XCX is here to help. The English singer and hit songwriter has released CRASH, her fifth studio album and the last in her contract with Atlantic Records—and it’s a certified smash. Teased back in September with the release of lead single GOOD ONES (co-written and produced by bonafide hitmaker Oscar Holter), Charli released a slew of posts insisting that she had "sold her soul" to her record label, ready to serve up the “ultra popstar” version of herself. In that sense, the CRASH era is an ironic return to basics for Charli XCX—a form of performance art but so immaculately conceived that it can’t be dismissed as such.
After achieving mainstream success in the last decade with hit singles FANCY, I LOVE IT and BOOM CLAP, Charli backed away from the peak of her Top 40 sensibilities and leaned into the boundless experimentation of “hyperpop”: songs that retained classic pop melodies but riffed on them in the least radio-friendly of ways—glitchy outros and excessive autotune all over. And yet over the last decade, these hallmark traits of Charli's sound have (of course) bled into the zeitgeist, finding their way into the landscape of Top 40 in 2022. Instead of embracing that and doubling down on the validity of her prior work, Charli has turned back to her mainstream roots and assembled an album full of insanely catchy hooks and interpolations of other hit songs. My standout tracks are title track CRASH, CONSTANT REPEAT, EVERY RULE, LIGHTNING, and YUCK. And basically every other song on the album. Sorry, not helpful. But with that, prepare to succumb to the Top 40 industry machine this weekend and CRASH!
—Neal Mulani, Development Assistant
