Music for the Internet Generation
Charlotte
Aitchison, better known as Charli XCX is 22 years old and has been in the
music industry since 2008, already her career is longer and more interesting
than some other artists. She has already achieved significant success in the
Singles Chart as a featured artist and is due to release her third studio
album, Sucker in mid-January. The wonders of the internet have allowed
me access to the version our American cousins are currently enjoying and
provide you with a glimpse into the near-distant future of British music. Sucker
has entered the US Billboard 200 at a respectable #28 and garnered 28,000 first week
sales, no mean feat for someone with little recognisable solo material. I
predict less success in the Britain because Charli appears uninterested in
spending time in UK and people seem oblivious to the fact she’s British.
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| Is Charli part of the future we want? |
It feels appropriate to trace Charli XCX’s origin story, from her not-so-humble beginnings in Cambridgeshire, to the middle of the American album charts. It all began back in 2008 when the 14 year old singer borrowed money from her parents to follow her musical ambitions. She promptly formed a record label called Orgy Music and released an album entitled 14. This is an album which sounds exactly like what you would expect a 14 year-old girl to record if they were let loose in a recording studio. It was vaguely unsettling for me, a 24 year old adult male, to listen to the inner thoughts of child; but I did it, in the interests of journalism and all that shit.
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| Fun fact – Her stage name comes from her MSN screename |
14 is full of the
melancholy and melodrama of the singer’s personal life; I now know that she
didn’t like a girl called Lucy because she
used to slag Charli off to who would listen. The track, “Yet Again”, is about a
girl Charli hated and features scathing lyrics like ‘She tries to straighten
her naturally curly hair / But it don't work, oh no, it don't / It just looks
like a pile of shite on top of her head’. We also have “Live Life”, where XCX
sort of raps about, ‘hanging out with the wrong group of lads / Who smoke dodgy
slips and pick fights with the chavs’. I don’t know what sort of world Charli
XCX was living in when she was 14, but it was far different to one I inhabited.
I remember being of a similar age, when a girl at school told me that she once
drank an entire glass of wine and smoked a cigarette, and in that instant
becoming the single edgiest person I had ever met. In the words of Charli XCX, 14
is an album of ‘fucking
terrible MySpace music’, 3 out of 10. Let’s move on.
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| I wouldn't recommend |
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| It really is a sickening amount of Charli XCX |
In 2013, XCX
released her second album, True Romance. Gone were the days of Orgy
Music and bedroom production, this project was released on Atlantic Records and
can be considered the singer’s true debut album. It is reassuring to note that
this album is a marked improvement from 14, instead of self-centred songs
about Charli and her friends, the album tackles mature themes like heartbreak
and…. heartbreak. True Romance is primarily indie pop with an electro
and synthpop influence; it puts its strongest foot forward with the opening
track “Nuclear
Seasons”. A song which
draws heavily from 1980s synth-pop, there are big kick drums and a few tinkling
notes from a synthesiser. Charli sings about ‘the night with your twisted
tongue / when you drop the bomb I'm blown away’, the not-so-subtle metaphor
compares the end of a relationship to nuclear fallout. Aside from the opener True
Romance is spotty and boasts few highlights. Again, Charli’s potential is
clear and teases where her career could go, but it remains a mediocre project. 6
out of 10.
Sucker is XCX’s first
coherent body of work and was written after Icona Pop’s “I Love It”, brought her
into the popular consciousness. The song sounded like nothing Charli had
previously written, it was catchy and full of rebellion, as opposed to morose
emotions. She secured her foothold in popular music by writing and performing
the hook on Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” in early 2014.
Charli is largely responsible for the song’s commercial success as she again
showed her flair for writing pop hooks. It becomes clear during Sucker
that Charli writes her choruses with an aim to fit as many words and syllables
into each bar. The complicated nature of these hooks makes them enjoyable to
recite and her delivery only adds to their stickiness. She has created a
persona of rebellion and attitude for herself, which means Charli can rely less
on her singing ability and more on snarling her lyrics. Her delivery is
reminiscent of Ke$ha but with less rapping;
XCX has learned the limitations of her voice and generally strays away from singing on Sucker.
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| Who would have thought Ke$ha would prove influential? |
Sucker opens in
abrasive fashion with the song “Sucker”, the very first lyrics on the album are
Charli XCX shouting, ‘said you wanna bang? / Fuck You! / Sucker!’ Let that set
the tone for the album. The album is brash, loud and feels over the top in its
desire to be edgy and offensive. “Sucker” is the first of many songs which feel
like a rallying call for teenage girls to embrace their inner rebel and break
the rules. This message is hammered home on the second track...“Break the
Rules”, with a chorus that repeats ‘I don’t wanna go to school / I just wanna
break the rules’. Sucker is aimed directly at this demographic of
teenage girls, who Charli is presumably enticing to join her rebel army of
smokers and drug takers. Taylor Swift’s 1989 is also directed towards this
demographic, but proves less accessible for a male general audience. 1989
is a safe and clean record, which seems to purposely stray away from being
different, whereas Sucker addresses similar subjects in an interesting
manner.
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| We can add 1989 to the list of effeminate albums I have recently listened to |
Unlike Charli’s
earlier material, Sucker features less taboo subject matter, namely
sex and drugs. XCX’s image is far from sexual, which is a refreshing approach.
Especially compared to female artists like Nicki Minaj and Iggy Azalea, who
make a big point of being bisexual as a marketing tactic to attract the coveted
Horny Male demographic. “Doing It”, is the
closest Sucker comes to addressing sex, and only does so through
euphemisms, ‘I think we better do it /
like we’re doing it now / o come on, let's keep doing it like we're doing it’.
Further, those like myself who enjoy songs about how many drugs Charli can take,
will be disappointed. Sucker plays it safe and avoids addressing such
topics, lest it offends the broad audience it aims to serve. It is a sensible
approach for a major label debut. Stick to the family-friendly rebellion.
‘Don’t go to school! Don’t follow the rules! Buy my next album!’
The album is
unashamedly pop. Whereas Charli’s previous material was largely electro-influenced
with pop style choruses, Sucker enlists mainstream producers such as Stargate and Benny Blanco. Further,
there are songwriting credits from Rivers Cuomo and Vampire Weekend’s very own
Rostam Batmanglij, which help explain the noticeable improvement in songwriting
and production from True Romance.
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| Connecting Weezer and Vampire Weekend |
This album
features pop with a strong retro influence, very much in the mould of 1989
and Unorthodox Jukebox.
“Hanging Around” borrows elements from the overproduced pop rock of the 1980s,
with its pounding drum beat and overdrive-heavy guitar riff; there are even
handclaps. And it wouldn’t be 1980s rock without nonsensical lyrics, ‘drums
bass / turn ‘em up loud / 3, 4 / spinnin’ around / sky high head in the clouds
/ never gonna come down’. It’s pretty fucking catchy and could easily be a
force in the singles chart. “Need Ur Luv”, closes the album and is inspired by
the most popular of female soul from the 1960s, the instrumental is reminiscent
of “Baby Love”, but with heavier drums. This is the only song where Charli
sings, her voice is altered into a higher pitch which gives it a haunting
quality, it also improves her singing.
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| I am Jack's sense of disappointment |
“Boom Clap” is
the track which sounds closest to Charli’s traditional style and was recorded
during the sessions for True Romance. Hilary Duff turned down an
opportunity to re-record it and revive her career; instead Charli released it
herself and it has become her most successful solo single to date, peaking at #6. As with
Charli’s most successful songs, “Boom Clap” relies on electro-pop production,
big drums and a catchy chorus. The song contains two verses and bridge which
don’t sound like they required much effort to write and take up little of the
song. Sucker is full of songs like this, great instrumental, catchy
chorus, lazy verses and incomplete concepts, from a technical standpoint many
of these tracks are poor. However, XCX’s delivery and the overall vibe of the
track makes them enjoyable and sometimes
great.
Sucker’s
experimentation with the various incarnations of popular music comes off far
better than Taylor Swift and Bruno Mars’s attempts. Those projects were mostly
unfocused and spotty, they felt like attempts to create deep music, backed by
retro production. Sucker makes no attempts at the depth which was
present on those other projects, which is beneficial. Charli XCX has created
the best pop album of 2014 by keeping her focus broad, playing it safe and
focusing on making her songs catchy. She is head and shoulders above the rest
in the in the competitive genre-bending-experimental-pop category and her album
deserves 7 out of 10, which probably makes it the best album I
have reviewed in 2014. A scary thought.
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