Charli XCX’s Charli Makes Strange and Sweet Pop Work Together, Earning an 8/10

Charli XCX built her third album around a simple idea: pop music can be strange and still work. Charli, released in 2019, pairs A.G. Cook’s experimental production with a long list of collaborators, and it treats those two things as the same project, not a divide.

From Next Level Charli to Warm

The album opens with “Next Level Charli,” a short blast that sets the tone in under three minutes. “Gone” is one of the record’s clear high points — restless, anxious, and built for large rooms at the same time. “Cross You Out” and “1999” follow. “1999” is the album’s nostalgic hit, sweet enough to stand alongside anything on pop radio that year.

“Click” is where the record gets strangest and best. It stands out precisely because it refuses to smooth itself out. “Warm” cools things down without losing its pace.

Thoughts through Silver Cross

The middle stretch is more uneven, but it’s where some of the album’s sharpest writing sits. Here’s how the run breaks down:

1. “Thoughts” — a quieter, more direct moment of self-examination.
2. “Blame It on Your Love” is a standout, one of the album’s most purely pleasing pop songs.
3. “White Mercedes” is the heart of the record, stripped back and singled out by critics for good reason.
4. “Silver Cross” closes this stretch on a steady, mid-tempo note.

None of these four embarrass the album. But “Blame It on Your Love” and “White Mercedes” do the heavy lifting, and the other two exist mostly to keep the pacing moving.

“I Don’t Wanna Know” and “Official” round out this section without much fuss. They’re solid rather than essential, the kind of tracks that make sense in the album’s flow but wouldn’t be missed on a shorter cut.

Shake It to 2099

“Shake It” is the album’s most crowded track, piling several voices on top of each other. It’s messy by design. “February 2017” slows things down again before the record closes.

Then comes “2099,” and it’s a strong closer. It sends the album out on its most confident, forward-looking note.

Charli XCX’s third studio album reflects an artist ready to commit to self-examination, as Pitchfork put it, and that’s exactly what the track list delivers: a record that gets more personal the deeper it goes, even while it sounds increasingly built from machines. AllMusic noted that Charli tries to capture the spontaneity of her mixtapes Number 1 Angel and Pop 2 in a more polished format, and mostly succeeds. That’s the right read. The polish never fully swallows the mess, and the mess never weakens the hooks.

Album of the Year’s aggregated review called it the best version of XCX yet, the one where her pop skill lines up most closely with her experimental ear. That’s the album’s real achievement. Charli doesn’t ask listeners to choose between strange and sweet. It insists both can happen in the same three minutes, sometimes in the same line.

The back half loses a little steam compared to the opening run. That’s the only real knock against it.

Charli is a confident, often thrilling record that mostly earns its ambition. The best tracks — “Gone,” “1999,” “Click,” “Blame It on Your Love,” “White Mercedes,” and “2099” — are truly excellent, and the ties between them rarely drag the whole thing down. It’s an album that trusts its own instincts, guests and all.

2019 albums · A.G. Cook · album review · Charli XCX · pop music