{"id":301572,"date":"2026-02-16T23:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T23:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/301572\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T23:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T23:10:08","slug":"charli-xcx-wuthering-heights-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/301572\/","title":{"rendered":"Charli XCX, ‘Wuthering Heights’ Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last November, Charli XCX released \u201cHouse,\u201d the lead single from her new soundtrack Wuthering Heights. Tormented and haunting, the track instantly conjured a dilapidated, abandoned cliffside mansion: Velvet Underground co-founder John Cale lurking in and out of jagged, atonal cello strokes like a spectral presence, pacing and murmuring \u201cI\u2019m a prisoner \/ To live for eternity\u201d below his breath; Charli XCX herself a restless spirit trapped within the walls, unhooking her jaws to shriek with droning, industrial despair. For Charli, who\u2019d most recently come off the runaway success of 2024\u2019s club-forward brat<\/a>, the track seemed to stake out an electrifying new sonic direction. Commentators raced to christen the new season that would follow Brat summer: Wuthering Heights winter! Yearning winter! No, goth girl winter!<\/p>\n

In Charli\u2019s telling, Wuthering Heights can certainly be seen as a reaction against brat. On her Substack, she recalls<\/a> burning out by the end of Bratmania, exhausted from touring and performing the same songs over and over again. She was stuck, empty, and creatively depleted. So when English filmmaker Emerald Fennell reached out in late 2024 and sent Charli the script for Wuthering Heights, Fennell\u2019s adaptation of Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s classic 1847 Gothic novel, Charli latched onto the new material like a lifeline. Fennell floated the idea of having Charli make a song or two for the film; Charli shot back: Why not a whole album? Alongside frequent Charli collaborator Finn Keane (Easyfun), Charli\u2014who is famously adept at working off of vibes<\/a>\u2014soon got busy crafting the accompaniment to Cathy and Heathcliff\u2019s dark, enduring romance.<\/p>\n

Yet, for all the clamor of goth girl winter, Wuthering Heights is curiously more backward-facing than era-defining, often recalling instead flashes of Charli\u2019s past. True Romance, Charli XCX\u2019s moody 2013 art-pop debut album, is the most obvious reference point here, with new wave \u201cMy Reminder\u201d almost ghostly reminiscent of \u201cBlack Roses.\u201d Wuthering Heights struggles, though, in melding these twin industrial\/orchestral and art-pop streaks: despite the frisson-y, tortured strings of \u201cChains of Love,\u201d \u201cOut of Myself,\u201d and \u201cSeeing Things,\u201d the middle trio of tracks are bogged down by fairly generic alt-pop beats. The orchestral maneuvers here often end up feeling like window dressing, a way of gussying up basic synth-pop tracks with some Gothic flair while failing to lend them real heft and character. \u201cEyes of the World,\u201d meanwhile, wastes the rare Sky Ferreira feature on meandering, directionless gloss. And while \u201cWall of Sound\u201d is fine, its chandelier-crash explosion of strings is slightly undercut by the fact that \u201cHouse\u201d makes the whole wall-of-sound outro bigger and better right before.<\/p>\n

But then again, perhaps it\u2019s unfair to judge Wuthering Heights in terms of \u201ceras\u201d and all this parlance that infects the mind of a pop stan (myself included) like a virus. Though Charli has frequently redesigned pop music in her wake, from 2016\u2019s Vroom Vroom EP to the recent brat, Wuthering Heights is first and foremost a soundtrack, and Fennell\u2019s got a movie to make after all. Charli herself has noted that the pleasures of producing Wuthering Heights came from the opportunity to get lost in another world and work within someone else\u2019s constraints. Perhaps it\u2019s more accurate to think of this album as a creative exercise than an artistic statement.<\/p>\n

And creative exercise or not, Wuthering Heights still yields some beautiful moments. On the lush, wistful \u201cAlways Everywhere,\u201d Charli soars over sweeping strings and fluttering synth keys, as if her yearning calls were being carried over the wind and the moors. And \u201cAltars\u201d finds its drama by digging into all the dimensions of Charli\u2019s voice. You can hear how the gravel tumbles around inside her mouth as she drawls out \u201ccry,\u201d how the Auto-Tune renders her animalistic yet wounded in her devotion, how her throat presses up against that damned \u201cbaaby\u201d of the chorus, bleeding so many emotions at once: disbelief, desperation, defiance, desire. Fans of tracks like \u201cWhite Mercedes\u201d have always known that, despite Charli\u2019s grungy, coke-doll\/club-rat persona, she can easily write a heartbreaking, breathtaking ballad when she wants to; \u201cAltars\u201d is a shoo-in for the \u201cCharli XCX songs you can cry to\u201d canon.<\/p>\n

Still, hearing mournful, clanging closer \u201cFunny Mouth\u201d (co-written, surprisingly enough, by Djo\u2019s Joe Keery<\/a>) right before looping back to \u201cHouse\u201d feels like getting a glimpse of the album that could\u2019ve been. Speaking about her intentions for Wuthering Heights, Charli XCX said she wanted to make something that was \u201celegant yet brutal,\u201d a motto that Cale himself used to describe the Velvet Underground\u2019s sonic philosophy. Yet Wuthering Heights merely leaves a longing for more elegance, more brutality. On \u201cOut of Myself,\u201d Charli sings of the ravaging, destructive domination of love: \u201cPush my cheek into the stone \/ You take me out of myself.\u201d If only. The album that could\u2019ve been is spelled out there: one that, like the most feverish and unrelenting of love, tortures and tears you open in delight, challenges you and takes you out of yourself, leaving you open, lacerated, raw, and dripping like a wound. Yet so many of Wuthering Heights\u2019s songs feel too easy, especially for Charli XCX of all people. Love is a dangerous game, after all, but here you can\u2019t help feeling Charli is playing it safe.<\/p>\n

Lydia Wei is a writer based in DC. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, Pitchfork, Washingtonian, Washington City Paper, and elsewhere. Find her online at lydia-wei.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last November, Charli XCX released \u201cHouse,\u201d the lead single from her new soundtrack Wuthering Heights. Tormented and haunting,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,278],"class_list":{"0":"post-301572","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}