Charli is the third studio album by English singer-songwriter Charli XCX, released through Asylum and Atlantic Records on September 2019.
The story behind the album was one of a massive uphill battle for Charli: following her dramatically reinventing her sound alongside SOPHIE for the 2016 EP Vroom Vroom — which featured an experimental, postmodern version of pop music that was being steadily codified as what critics were calling "Hyperpop" — Charli announced her plan to release her third studio album, which had begun production from as early as 2014 — featuring the likes of SOPHIE, StarGate, and BloodPop working production — and expecting a late 2017 release. Unfortunately, after a mere two songs were revealed officially (the single "After the Afterparty" featuring Lil Yachty and a live performance of "Bounce" featuring Kyary Pamyu Pamyu), Charli's Google Drive account was hacked, resulting in a massive Content Leak of hundreds of hundreds of release-ready tracks, demos, and completed artwork spilling into the internet for some period of time. In late 2018, Charli officially announced that this version of the album — widely recognized by fans online as XCX World — would be scrapped, and the third album would be remade entirely from scratch, resulting in what became this new album, Charli.
Musically, it builds on the Hyperpop styles of Charli XCX's previous projects, Vroom Vroom, Number 1 Angel and Pop 2. Much like the latter two projects, the album is collaboration-heavy, featuring the likes of Christine and the Queens, Sky Ferreira, Troye Sivan, Lizzo and HAIM, along with previous collaborators Kim Petras, CupcakKe and Pabllo Vittar.
Tracklist:
- "Next Level Charli" (2:37)
- "Gone" (featuring Christine and the Queens) (4:06)
- "Cross You Out" (featuring Sky Ferreira) (3:28)
- "1999" (featuring Troye Sivan) (3:09)
- "Click" (featuring Kim Petras and Tommy Cash) (3:53)
- "Warm" (featuring HAIM) (3:45)
- "Thoughts" (3:11)
- "Blame It on Your Love" (featuring Lizzo) (3:11)
- "White Mercedes" (3:23)
- "Silver Cross" (3:28)
- "I Don't Wanna Know" (3:05)
- "Official" (3:04)
- "Shake It" (featuring Big Freedia, CupcakKe, Brooke Candy and Pabllo Vittar) (4:35)
- "February 2017" (featuring Clairo and Yaeji) (2:33)
- "2099" (featuring Troye Sivan) (3:25)
Tropes:
- Album Closure: Early in the tracklist is "1999" with Troye Sivan, which a Genre Throwback to music of the past, and the last song on the album is "2099" (also with Sivan) that imagines the music of the future.
- Alone in a Crowd: As per Charli herself
, "Gone" is about the anxieties and insecurities of being in a large social crowd, feeling isolated and wanting to be gone from it all.I feel so unstable, fucking hate these people
How they making me feel lately, they making me weird, baby, lately
I feel so unstable, fucking hate these people
How they making me loathe, they making me loathe - Anti-Love Song: "White Mercedes", a love song with lyrics that are so self-loathing it becomes a Tear Jerker.Hate myself, but really love you
Hurting you feels like I'm hurting as well
All I know is I don't deserve you - Auto-Tune: Used extensively throughout the album, often for creative effects, like on "Click".
- Broken Record: "Shake It", the hook of which is Charli repeating "I shake it I shake it I shake it ooh, I shake it I shake it all on you."
- Careful with That Axe: A gratuitously panned scream opens Brooke Candy's verse on "Shake It".
- Multilingual Song:
- "Shake It" features a guest verse from the Brazilian Pabllo Vittar in Portuguese.
- "February 2017" is closed with a verse from Yaeji in Korean.
- Non-Appearing Title: "February 2017" and "2099".
- Rearrange the Song:
- "Next Level Charli" is effectively a Charli-tinged recreation of the 2015 song "Big Bratt", an earlier collaboration between its producers, A. G. Cook and Life Sim.
- "Blame It on Your Love" is a rearranged version of "Track 10" from Charli's earlier Pop 2.
- Sequel Song: "2099" to "1999". While "1999" is a straightforward throwback to nostalgic pop culture, "2099" is a chaotic, avant-garde depiction of what we can assume Charli believes is in store for the distant future of music.
- Shaking the Rump: "Shake It" (feat. Big Freedia, CupcakKe, Brooke Candy, and Pabllo Vittar) is an entire track about this, with the chorus by Charli herself being the words "I shake it" on repeat while each verse has another artist take over and build on and expand that one sentence into full musical sections using their unique lyrical and musical styles.
- Shout-Out: In keeping with the song being a love letter to The '90s, the video to "1999" features Charli and Troye Sivan recreating several iconic pop culture images and icons from that era, including The Matrix, Titanic, American Beauty, "The Real Slim Shady", Spice Girls, "I Want It That Way", *NSYNC-era Justin Timberlake, Marilyn Manson, The Sims 1, and even Steve Jobs and The Blair Witch Project.
- Stuffy Old Songs About the Buttocks: "Shake It" is explicitly referring to the butt.
- Word Salad Lyrics: The chorus on "Gone" has a bit of this. It's even lampshaded by Charli herself.