Reviews

Charli XCX – Wuthering Heights

How do you follow a cultural phenomenon like BRAT? Charli XCX’s John Cale collaboration hinted at a wild left turn, but the curiously conservative Wuthering Heights feels like an exercise in retreat rather than reinvention.

After defining the zeitgeist of summer 2024 with BRAT, a record that was unusually ubiquitous in the culturally fragmented world we now inhabit, Charli XCX was never going to settle for more of the same. Her approach to music has always hinted at a certain restlessness, and she was quite vocal about an understandable sense of BRAT fatigue.

If the news that Charli’s next project would be a soundtrack to Emerald Fennell’s reinterpretation of Wuthering Heights hinted at a major pivot, its first single hammered home the point emphatically. The exhilarating “House” features moody cellos, a John Cale spoken-word intro, screeching violas, and an abrasive, cacophonous climax, all of which are worlds apart from her recent club-focused work. The world braced itself for a bold reinvention—perhaps something akin to Bowie’s legendary stylistic shifts—but as Wuthering Heights very quickly makes clear, this isn’t her Young Americans moment.

If anything, Wuthering Heights signifies a degree of retreat—conservatism, even, which is understandable given the sense of expectation that builds after any dominant cultural statement. The format, too, is likely a factor. A film soundtrack generally demands a certain degree of cohesion. While Fennell evidently positions herself as a disrupter, her filmography increasingly betrays this, with its focus on aesthetics over character development. If Wuthering Heights, the film, demanded the cultural cachet of Charli, but with the edges sanded down, then its soundtrack certainly delivers on the brief.

When the dissonant pulses of “House” subside, we’re greeted by ten synth-pop tunes and a relatively nondescript instrumental (“Open Up”). Subtle gothic elements nostalgically hark back to Charli’s 2013 debut, True Romance, but this feels oddly out of character for such a noted innovator.

And the songwriting itself is uneven. The lightweight “Eyes of the World” is a rare misstep for Charli, featuring the kind of saccharine hook you’d expect to find in a mid-level Disney movie. Even Sky Ferreira’s superb guest vocals can’t rescue it. Meanwhile, “Dying for You” is compromised by the fact that its opening verse sounds uncannily similar to Buggles’ “Video Killed The Radio Star.”

The sumptuous ballad “Chains of Love,” which feels like the true centrepiece of the album, is an obvious highlight. Indeed, its 80s synth-pop stylings and insistent rhythm arguably carry it into power ballad territory—and who had Charli-goes-Bonnie-Tyler on their 2026 bingo card?

Elsewhere, the baroque flourishes of “Seeing Things,” “Funny Mouth,” and to a lesser extent “Altars” offer a welcome change of pace, while resonating more naturally with the period of the record’s source material.

After the critical and commercial success of BRAT, Charli XCX earned a pass to create whatever kind of record she wanted. Wuthering Heights is a competent, glossy synth-pop work, with a handful of soaring highs that are offset by a couple of duds. While it’s certainly not the bold left turn some critics are evidently trying to manifest, it remains a perfectly fine record—even if it feels oddly static.

Wuthering Heights is out now via Atlantic.