{"id":291068,"date":"2026-02-14T13:45:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-14T13:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/291068\/"},"modified":"2026-02-14T13:45:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-14T13:45:08","slug":"charli-xcxs-wuthering-heights-album-is-part-movie-soundtrack-part-reset-button","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/291068\/","title":{"rendered":"Charli XCX\u2019s Wuthering Heights album is part movie soundtrack, part reset button."},"content":{"rendered":"

To reverse\u00a0the Shakespearean maxim<\/a>, now has our glorious brat summer become a winter of discontent via the wuthering winds of Yorkshire. As seen, that is, in Emerald Fennell\u2019s new loose film adaptation of Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s gothic romance\u00a0Wuthering Heights<\/a>,\u00a0and as heard on the very moody but likeable new Charli XCX album of the same name.<\/p>\n

While it partly is a soundtrack to the movie, this short collection of angst-ridden love-and-loss songs is also meant to stand alone as the U.K. singer\u2019s latest release. It\u2019s a clever way for her to follow up her long-awaited career breakthrough with 2024\u2019s\u00a0Brat<\/a>,\u00a0while sidestepping any great expectations for a sequel. One wonders whether she\u2019s thinking of those pressures, not just the ones between doomed lovers Cathy and Heathcliff, when she sings on\u00a0the album\u2019s second track<\/a>, \u201cUnbelievable tension, wall of sound \/ Love and hatred, and I can\u2019t escape it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Charli XCX arrives at this phase of her career with a very particular dilemma, having been the pop-demimonde\u2019s alternative auteur since her late teens and then finally becoming\u00a0famous-famous in her early 30s. She\u2019s now at risk of being washed, of her long-cultivated cool turning to cringe after\u00a0Brat\u00a0became a brand, an overexposed iconography\u2014the color, the font, the celeb feuds<\/a> and reconciliations<\/a>, all prone to overshadowing the music.<\/p>\n

Worse, her summer 2024 rise coincided with the U.S. election season, and one notorious, well-intended tweet<\/a> entangled\u00a0Brat\u00a0with the fortunes of Kamala Harris as she campaigned to become brat-in-chief. Now those intoxicating hopes have aged into a \u201cwhat were we thinking\u201d hangover, and we are all cast out wandering our own barren moors. While it\u2019s a pleasant memory, a repeat of\u00a0Brat\u2019s mode of cocaine confessionals and purgative party jams would seem quite inapt for the current mood. And yet for much of the world, that\u2019s really all they know of her. It\u2019s like having made your name playing a character on a smash TV show and then having that show become a bit of a punch line,\u00a0as happened to the late James Van Der Beek (RIP). One of Charli XCX\u2019s strategies in response is to parody the problem itself in her recent mockumentary\u00a0The Moment\u2014much as Van Der Beek did when he tried to shake off Dawson\u2019s Creek by\u00a0playing himself on Don\u2019t Trust the B\u2014 in Apt. 23<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t seen the Charli doc yet, but most reviews suggest it has at best mixed success at achieving her goal of making a\u00a0Spice World\u2013like sendup of the absurdity of pop stardom<\/a>. But even if she didn\u2019t make a great movie, at least she is making a\u00a0lot\u00a0of movies\u2014as many as\u00a0nine of them<\/a>, reports say, including queer-cinema pioneer Gregg Araki\u2019s\u00a0I Want Your Sex<\/a>,\u00a0indie drama\u00a0Erupcja<\/a>, The Gallerist<\/a>\u00a0with Natalie Portman, the fantastical romance 100 Nights of Hero<\/a>\u00a0(also in the queer-cinema bracket), one directed by Dakota Johnson<\/a>, a remake of the 1970s fake-snuff \u201cshockumentary\u201d\u00a0Faces of Death<\/a>, and a new slasher by\u00a0Japanese horror master Takashi Miike<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Given that, it makes a lot of sense for her next musical move to come via a cinematic tie-in. She\u2019s had plenty of sync placements in the past, of course\u2014her breakout 2012 hit with Icona Pop, \u201cI Love It<\/a>,\u201d is practically a\u00a0screen standard<\/a>\u00a0by now, and her track \u201cBoys<\/a>\u201d was used in\u00a0Promising Young Woman,\u00a0Fennell\u2019s 2020 feature directorial debut. But her only previous work on a complete soundtrack was on\u00a0Bottoms<\/a>\u00a0in 2023. While she was still touring\u00a0Brat,\u00a0Fennell got in touch to ask for a song for\u00a0Wuthering Heights, and according to interviews, it was XCX who came back with the counteroffer of a whole album.<\/p>\n

She said she was captivated by the script, but no doubt she also saw its usefulness for her post-Brat\u00a0reset: As someone who\u2019s been the very model of hypercontemporary, why not pivot into a period piece? Suitable to editing to picture, the album is also a chamber piece made up of miniatures, with most of the tracks running less than three and a half minutes, and the whole set of 12 adding up to only 34:40. Fans might want more, but that\u2019s the way to leave \u2019em.<\/p>\n

While, thematically, it drapes itself in 19th-century crinolines, mosses, and capital-R Romanticism, XCX\u2019s\u00a0Wuthering Heights\u00a0sound also reaches into her own past and reaffirms her attachment to the avant-garde. In places, it\u2019s reminiscent of her gothy debut album\u00a0True Romance,\u00a0elsewhere of 2017\u2019s much-loved\u00a0Pop 2.\u00a0This project announced itself in November with the potent \u201cHouse,\u201d the opening track, which features the octogenarian Velvet Underground violist and Welsh composer John Cale delivering spoken word over scraping strings and industrial soundscapes. I can hardly imagine a clearer way for an artist to declare that she\u2019s more substantial than just her substance-fueled \u201cclub classics\u201d and chronicles of shaky self-esteem.<\/p>\n

Wuthering Heights\u00a0does include a couple of attempts at bangers, but they are still downbeat ones, such as the single \u201cChains of Love\u201d as well as \u201cEyes of the World,\u201d on which Sky Ferreira rises out of the mists like the ghost of alt-pop careers past, or like Cathy\u2019s spirit haunting Heathcliff in the section of\u00a0Wuthering Heights\u00a0that Fennell left out of her film. (Is Charli XCX just doing her old friend a favor, or presenting herself with a cautionary tale?)<\/p>\n

Overall I prefer it when this album, created mostly with her frequent collaborator\u00a0Finn Keane<\/a>, uses sparer methods to trace its descents into emotional tumult, as on the enveloping \u201cDying for You\u201d\u2014\u201cAll the pain and torture that I went through \/ All makes sense to me now, I was dying for you.\u201d The tightly repeating cycles of its melody get across the sense of being locked in a pattern of obsession. On some of the other highlights, such as \u201cAlmost Everywhere\u201d and \u201cSeeing Things,\u201d we find XCX in a storytelling mode that calls Taylor Swift to mind, but Swift back when she knew better than to use nine words where three could cut to the quick.<\/p>\n

On a first night\u2019s listen, I was also drawn to \u201cMy Reminder,\u201d which lowers the goth accoutrements like a veil and exposes the warmer side of Wuthering Heights\u2019 central, lifelong, love-hate relationship. Then the closing \u201cFunny Mouth\u201d twists us back into the darkness, with staccato strings accompanied by ratatat beat blasts, and finally seeks to ease us out of the Bront\u00eb zone while also universalizing the tale: \u201cEveryone sleeps \/ Everyone wakes up \/ Everyone dreams \/ And everyone breaks up \u2026 Will we be all right?\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I\u2019m Still Trying to Process Ilia Malinin\u2019s Olympic Meltdown
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

In the actual film, except for a couple of scenes, the songs do not stand out as much as I imagined before seeing it\u2014the effect is far from that of the flagrantly anachronistic 1980s needle drops in Sofia Coppola\u2019s Marie Antoinette, for instance. I found both the score by Fennell\u2019s usual composer Anthony Willis and the repeated use of\u00a0Olivia Chaney\u2019s version<\/a>\u00a0of the Heathcliff-evoking folk ballad \u201cDark Eyed Sailor\u201d more conspicuous and memorable.<\/p>\n

As reviews and Bront\u00eb fan outrage have indicated, Fennell\u2019s adaptation is about as unfaithful to the source as her Catherine is to her rich husband Edgar Linton, but that\u2019s to be expected. It is best when most outrageous, but unfortunately perhaps not outrageous enough often enough. The album gets closer than the film does, but I could lodge somewhat the same criticism at it: Having lived with \u201cHouse\u201d for several months, I was somewhat let down to find there was nothing to equal its audaciousness on the rest of the record. I was hoping something might surpass it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Dana Stevens
\n The New Wuthering Heights Is Preposterous, Proudly Stupid, and the Director\u2019s Best Film Yet
\n Read More\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

As it stands, while Charli XCX perhaps has made just the album she needed to now, it remains the case that\u00a0Wuthering Heights\u00a0in popular music still belongs completely to\u00a0Kate Bush\u2019s wily, windy, hot, and greedy 1978 debut single<\/a>. Now there is someone who, when the outrageous was called for, did not hesitate to provide it, cartwheeling across the threshold of the ridiculous until she flew toward the horizon of the sublime. Be a saucy brat and you\u2019re the toast of a season, but that cool soon turns cold. Be a sacred monster like Bush, and like Bront\u00eb\u2019s original Catherine and Heathcliff, and you can burn forever.<\/p>\n

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