It’s not easy to follow up on the massive pop-culture moment that was Charli XCX’s Brat. It, and the remix Brat And It's Completely Different But Also Still Brat (much my favorite of the two) dominated tween, teen, and older wanna-be teen social media and top 40 spaces in 2024, and into early 2025.
Charli, who had been a pop/hyperpop darling since her emergence in 2008, hit some kind of zeitgeist moment where her exuberant dance club mixed with rapturous hooks that many of us didn’t think we either wanted nor needed. Remember Brat Green? It was captivating enough for SNL to make her both host and musical guest in November, 2024. Where we learned that she was quite funny and “the olds” realized that she was indeed more than a TikTok meme, another manufactured pop star.
Charli’s music had always been wildly popular—and lucrative—and dismissively underrated. She largely writes her own songs—often in a collaborative fashion—and is deeply engaged in composition and production. While many might have thought of her as another product of pop machine making—controlled by others—that has never been true. Charli was never Britney. She has always been in control.
She is also 34 years old—well beyond her sell-by date in the world of hyperpop, club, and techno gamins. While she was touring Brat, she got burned out, apparently sick of the grind and the constant hype. Then, in December of 2024, Emerald Fennell sent her a txt, asking if she would score Wuthering Heights. Charli and her long-time collaborator Finn Keane largely wrote the soundtrack during the last phase of the Brat tour.
ohfergodsakes. Another Wuthering Heights movie? A book from 1847—the single novel by Emily Bronte—that has been reimagined too many times to count on stage and screen. A novel with as many critical interpretations as there are plankton. Somehow, we English speakers are like Jack Twist’s desperate confession in Brokeback Mountain, “I wish I knew how to quit you.” Just mention the name “Heathcliff” to a book lover and, then, sit back for at least 10 minutes of disquisition. And depending what you know, another 50 minutes of arguing. (I once spent 45 minutes with a Heathcliff-stan, arguing that he is not the center of the book. But, ya know, I once spent more than 25 years trying to convince my mother-in-law that Chekhov is perhaps the funniest playwright ever. I didn’t win either of those debates.)
Prominent pop artists authoring movie soundtracks isn’t that common. There are, of course, frequent star turns on soundtracks (looking at you Celine, Diana, Bette, Whitney). I don’t consider Leonard Bernstein (West Side Story), or John Williams (Star Wars, Jaws, Indiana Jones, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, and Schindler’s List), Ennio Morricone (A Fistful Of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More, The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly) pop artists.
This soundtrack feels—perhaps first and foremost—like an artist who really needed a break, a new thing to do and be, after the ridiculousness of the Brat phenomenon. At 34, what a great choice.
There are two ways to review a soundtrack. First, one primarily ties it to the movie, and whether it supports the import of that piece of art. Second, one primarily ties it to something standalone, as something independent from either the movie’s showrunner, corporate backing, or whether the movie itself is atrocious or fantastic. This review is the latter approach, cuz I don’t know nothin’ about movies. I thought the movie was perfectly competent; I don’t have a dog in the race about its relationship to the “real” 1847 novel (I mean… an aside… if we question “originalism” when it comes to the US Constitution… why do so many of us who do that concomitantly insist on originalism when it comes to a 140 year old novel?).
Wuthering Heights, the soundtrack, is dripping with strings, orchestration, synths (deeply buried and providing the mantle to the crust) and goth menace. The classic drop of EDM is replaced with analogue composition. Berserk attachment and passion suffuse the album. Who are these people, and who am I, when they/I fall into an addiction to another person that neither can escape? What does not wanting to escape mean?
It is also Charli’s grown-up moment, similar to Gaga going to duets with Toni Bennett. It is a Streisand moment for Charli, when Babs found her way to do the same in the ’70s. It reveals Charli’s vocal range, the emotion she can put into her delivery, and the compositional acuity she has always had, but got covered up by club, techno, dance, and hyperpop. And there are legit six pop bangers that make it easy to conclude that the album is more about Charli’s past than present—which isn’t true.
“House” opens the album. Already a TikTok meme, it features John Cale (Velvet Underground) speaking a poem over unsettling, minor scale strings. The rest of the orchestra comes in, loud, intrusive. Cale and Charli chant, “I think I’m gonna die in this house.” Then percussion comes in… tt scares me. Like watching a murmuration of birds when a hawk swoops in.
“Wall of Sound”: discordant strings open. There’s no initial indication of where this song is going. Charli comes in and suddenly there is a melody resolved. Until later. Then it resolves again. “Unbelievable tension, wall of sound” Charli speaks at the end, while the strings shriek wildly.
“Dying for You”: I dare you to drive a convertible on a sunny day on Highway One in Big Sur and not at least smile with this song on.
“Always Everywhere”: Think Charli doesn’t have pipes? You’re wrong. A song saturated like a long-hair cat caught in a downpour by the orchestral arrangement. Listen with headphones; listen to what’s going on behind the melody. Listen to how what’s going on as she brings back musical tropes from previous songs.
“Chains of Love”: A soaring vocal performance, backed by a quilt of music—strings, synths, drums—and just damn hummable. Dang thing hasn’t been outta my mind for too many weeks.
“Out of Myself”: One of the star turns on the album, in terms of a single. Just bangin’, due to wall-of-sound strings.
“open up”: Nothing to hear here, move along.
“Seeing Things”: Sometimes, a pop song, despite the underlying production, is simply insipid.
“Altars”: The track reveals what Finn can do in the production of a song. Who needs EDM when an orchestra can underly the rhythm, feel, and texture here? The track reveals Charli’s vocal vulnerability: Cracking, friable, distorted at exactly the right time.
“Eyes of the World”: Charli got Sky Ferreira to come back from “retirement.” It’s not something that a Sky fan should gravitate toward. A song dismissed by many critics; I disagree. In many ways, it encapsulates the soundscape that Charli and Finn create.
“My Reminder”: Just, honestly, terrible.
”Funny Mouth”: Total throwaway.
Lyrically, Wuthering Heights is threadbare and trite. Lyrics have never been a strong point for, and there are a few real gems and a few clunkers. But I like the growth, the inevitable transition to a middle-aged artist who—not yet, but soon—will lose the connection to the generation behind her. It shows that Charli is more than Brat, or her previous catalogue.
So: how about we let Charli grow up?