Does the Charli XCX ‘Wuthering Heights’ soundtrack hold up as an album?
From the second Charli XCX was asked to make a song for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, the project spiralled into something much bigger.
“I read the script and immediately felt inspired, so Finn Keane and I began working on not just one but many songs that we felt connected to the world she was creating,” the pop star revealed, and quickly, she had a full album.
Charli’s Wuthering Heights fast became fascinating. It’s hard to think of another time when what is technically a film soundtrack has been handled as if it’s part of the artists’ usual discography. But as soon as an artist like Charli XCX begins releasing songs alongside her own music videos, the hype naturally begins to swell.
In truth, for fans of the artist, it was vividly clear, Wuthering Heights granted her a long-awaited escape rope from the prison of Brat. Becoming so ingrained in the wider understanding of Charli XCX, the hyper-successful album cycle has become difficult to break free from, with some even seeing it as a betrayal of her previous guise.
Charli has always had vast influences and ambitions that existed in a more ‘high-art’ world that Brat-haters might want to deny her entry to. She referenced Twin Peaks on Crash and wrote a song for Blondie when she was a teenager. She loves Lou Reed just as much as she loves Sophie and hyperpop. But, despite the intelligent musings on fame and motherhood within the grooves, the boom of Brat had her stuck – how would she kill the party girl?
“After being so in the depths of my previous album, I was excited to escape into something entirely new, entirely opposite,” she said, with Emily Brontë, the moors and the gothic stylings being the most anti-Brat move possible.
But as an album of its own accord, away from the film and away from that motivation – how does it hold up?
Charli kills Brat on one song: ‘House’. Suddenly, we have the 365 party girl gutturally screaming “I think I’m gonna die in this house” over discordant strings, and if that isn’t enough, she’s doing it alongside John Cale, bringing her Velvet Underground influence to reality in the clearest way possible to shut up any of the boring suggestions that she doesn’t actually know the band.
The track is genuinely impactful. ‘House’ is creepy, almost to the point of not being enjoyable, as the atmospheric sounds swell. It’s the sort of song that comes on shuffle when you’re in the shower and scares you when the climax kicks in. It’s all-out in devotion to this new world. Perhaps the best way to illustrate it is that the album swings between Charli XCX, the brand, and Charlotte Aitchison, the artist.
On songs like ‘Chains Of Love’ and ‘Dying For You’, we have Charli XCX in a package we know. These are songs that could easily slot into her Sweat tour and not feel out of place. They’re catchy and feel poised to be played in clubs across the land.
But on the other end, there are tracks like ‘Open Up’, and the stunning, layered finale of ‘Funny Mouth’ where Charli XCX seems to completely disappear and Aitchison emerges, devoting herself in an almost painterly way to capturing a mood and matching it, rather than crafting expected hits.
In the golden middle ground, Charli XCX proves her ability to play both sides. Her collaboration with Sky Ferreira on ‘Eyes Of The World’ is the ultimate bridge between reuniting with her Charli collaborator and managing to bring her own world of artists into the world of Wuthering Heights in a way where neither feels compromised.
As an album all on its own, it stands up owing to that endeavour. It’s dynamic and interesting, taking you through soaring love songs like ‘Out Of Myself’, to moody depths. There isn’t your classic soundtrack filler either; this is an album beyond that, with each track clearly being seen and treated as a song in its own right. But overwhelmingly, these have not been treated like Brat songs.
If you want Charli’s next album to be Brat 2.0, this one won’t hold up. But as a work reintroducing her to new fans and reconnecting old ones with her more dynamic side, it becomes an apt post-Brat escape. As a freeing move, it leaves the gate wide open and the lime green long gone.
