Charlie XCX is trying to see how far it can extend commercial flexibility. But it ends up boring a lot on the road.
Album: Pop
Charlie XCX
“Crashes”
(Asylum/Warner)
“What you want, I don’t get it,” Charlie XCX says of New Shapes, and it’s an amazing hit. The 29-year-old’s career seems to be beautifully complex and totally convoluted based on not doing exactly what is expected.
Although this album was previously announced Through a slightly subtle tweet about excessive commercialsPartially, it is the lack of innovation that characterizes the whole.
“New Shapes,” for example, is the second collaboration with Kristen and Queens. Perhaps not evidence of a lack of imagination, but certainly laziness. and highly recurring from one of the most central pop breakouts of the past decade.
As early as 2012, Charlotte helped Emma Aitchison Swedish duo Icona Pop has their iconic status with “I love it”. Ten years later, she’s still a pop icon. While the 29-year-old has gone through a career upstream as much as a commercial genius.
On the previous album She brought Troy Sivan with her Missing the nineties («1999»).
In 2022, it’s almost extending itself with both the ’90s and the ’80s.
“Lightning” reminds us of the strange love triangle of the new order. “Good Ones” has at least some bassgram sounds from Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams” in it. This is how she immerses herself in a reality in which it is not entirely known whether this is a mixture of facts or just a lack of imagination.
Norway’s Caroline Aileen, who was behind Dua Lipa’s biggest hit, contributes to last year’s compound wave moment, “Good Ones,” which of course has found a place here as well. Dua Lipa’s producer on the same songs, Ian Kirkpatrick, also tries, but fails to recreate the same magic.
In general, this is the challenge as well. The production is solid and brief, but many of the songs don’t seem to want anywhere. For example, her “creative leader”, Alexander Jay Cook, got tired of two songs. Perhaps it’s these moves that make “Crash” sound more like a mixtape album, as the songs don’t always seem to live in the same galaxy.
For example, the subtly exaggerated interpolation of dance floor songs from each decade: September “Cry for You” (2007) It became “Big for you”. While “used to know me” tends to be hard Classic Show Me Love (1993) That songwriters Fred MacFarlane and Allen George are widely credited.
The cover also flashes David CronenbergThe movie “Crash”. A story about people who are so bored that they crash into cars to feel something.
If this continues, Charlie XCX is fast on its way to something similar.
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