Charli XCX – SUCKER
- Written by Rosie Duffield
Three songs into SUCKER, and you know you’re going to like the rest of what Charli XCX has to offer. XCX – real name Charlotte Aitchison – packs a punch; she’s got lots to say packaged into bursts of brash, direct bundles of power-pop. It’s all a bit of a whirlwind really.
If you thought the album might start gently, you’ll be disappointed. The title track immediately lets you know that XCX has arrived: “You said you wanna bang/Well, fuck you, sucker!” she shouts with glee. Quite the entrance; the message reinforced for the next two and a half minutes.
And that’s what you get with Charli XCX: simple ideas in a fairly straightforward verse-chorus structure, and those choruses are designed to stay with you for hours afterwards.
Take ‘Boom Clap’ for example. Perhaps familiar because it’s one of her most well-known songs, but God does it work. It’s not particularly surprising it was such a big hit; not only did it accompany one of the biggest teen films of 2014 (The Fault In Our Stars), but it captures youthful romance perfectly. XCX’s voice – here, quite gentle – yearns for that “spark” they tell you about in all the films: “First kiss just like a drug/Under your influence/Take me over, you’re the magic in my veins.” It’s incredibly catchy and deliciously moreish.
Another track sure to get teen attention is ‘Die Tonight’. A fairly chilled pop anthem about having fun with friends, it takes you back to those carefree school days when the school disco was the event of the year: “Oh I could die tonight/Cause I’ve got the magic in my blood/And I’m staying ‘til the sun comes up/Oh I could die tonight/Cause I’ve got the magic in my veins/And I’m going hard with all my friends/I could die tonight."
Elsewhere there’s a harsher tone to Charli XCX’s vocals, especially on the more anthemic songs like ‘Breaking Up’ where she almost spits the lyric “You had an ugly tattoo/And fucking cheap perfume…/Everything was wrong with you/So breaking up was easy to do”, or the defiant ‘Break The Rules’, which has a great bass line.
XCX says she was influenced by punk on this record, and that can be seen in tracks like ‘London Queen’ and ‘Hanging Around’, which sounds quite similar to Joan Jett’s ‘I Love Rock N Roll’. That’s not the only nod to other artists though; SUCKER channels ‘90s duo Shampoo – and there’s a comparison to Gwen Stefani that simply can’t go unnoticed, both in various cheerleader-style chants and in XCX’s vocals.
That said, SUCKER shows why Charli XCX deserves more recognition than she’s been getting for the last few years. She manages to expertly deliver fresh, fun and colourful power-pop that’s so simple you wonder why you don’t hear more of it. There are a couple of weaker tracks on the album, where attitude and speed don’t quite trump style, but it’s rare to get a full house. The only other disappointment comes in the absence of her collaboration with Icona Pop, but you can’t have everything, can you?