Charli (album)

Executive producer A. G. Cook came up with the album title Charli.

In 2017, Charli XCX was preparing to release her third studio album. However, a hacker was able to steal several demo tracks from her Google Drive and leaked them online. Fans gave the collection of leaks the unofficial title XCX World, though a title and track list was never finalised for the album. After the leaks, Charli XCX decided to scrap the entire project and decided to remake a new album.[6]

After a series of monthly single drops in the summer of 2018, Charli XCX released the lead single of the album, "1999" in October 2018. Charli XCX and executive producer A. G. Cook began recording the album in November 2018 at Flume's studio in Los Angeles, California. The project was initially intended to be the third release in a trilogy of mixtapes, following the release of Number 1 Angel and Pop 2. The title was to include the number "3", continuing the numbering motif, but the plan was never finalised. After two weeks of recording, Charli XCX decided that the work would instead be her third studio album. Recording continued in Eagle Rock from January to March 2019, where the majority of the album's songwriting and production took place. The song "White Mercedes" was recorded in Andrew Watt's home. Initially trying to keep the "3" in the title, a working title for the album was Best Friends before Cook suggested the title Charli.[1]

On 13 June 2019, Charli XCX announced Charli, along with its cover art, release date, and track list that featured 15 tracks and 14 collaborations.[7][8] Charli XCX debuted "Gone" with Christine and the Queens at Primavera Sound in Barcelona on 30 May[9] and "2099" with Troye Sivan at the Go West Fest in Los Angeles on 6 June.[10]

The album is supported by the Charli Live Tour. The tour was announced alongside the album's official reveal on 13 June 2019. The tour started on 20 September 2019 in Atlanta, United States and will conclude in February 2020 in Australia.[11]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
AnyDecentMusic?	7.6/10[22]
Metacritic	80/100[23]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[24]
The Guardian	[25]
The Line of Best Fit	7/10[26]
NME	[27]
Pitchfork	7.8/10[28]
Q	[29]
Rolling Stone	[3]
The Skinny	[30]
Slant Magazine	[31]
The Telegraph	[32]

Charli was met with critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from professional critics, the album received an average score of 80, based on 22 reviews.[23] At AnyDecentMusic?, which uses a weighted formula to find an average rating out of 10, it received a score of 7.6 based on 22 reviews.[22]

In a five-star review, Bethany Davison of The Skinny wrote "Charli is an expansive record, flooded with joy and heartache, consolidated in its array of features. Alongside indulgently unadorned ruminations on fear and love, the record is boundlessly liberating, decadently indulgent, and irresistibly danceable. Aitchison has delivered her greatest work yet".[30] Valerie Magan of Clash awarded the album 9/10, commenting: "'Charli' is no doubt an album of too many features and too many parts, but it somehow all fits together in a way that allows her penchant for unconventional songwriting and her ear for an exciting melody to work in concert, creating a project better than most anything she's done in the past".[33] Hannah Mylrea of NME stated that Charli is "Bold, brash and brilliant, this is Charli XCX at her most genuine, and it's dazzling."[27] Neil McCormick of The Telegraph commented that "The sexy android cover and star-studded collaborations (including alternative icons Lizzo, Haim and Christine and the Queens) on her third album, Charli, suggest an all-guns-blazing pitch for blockbuster status. But the contents are far weirder than that implies. [...] Come the century's end, you can almost imagine future critics scratching their AI-augmented brains and still touting Charli XCX as the next big thing."[32] The Line of Best Fit gave the album the "Album of the Week" designation, with Claire Biddles adding that "Charli is almost there. Ultimately she's too gloriously messy and multitudinous to produce such a thing. Although she could often benefit from an editor, her process and vision doesn't adhere to the music industry's prioritisation of the album format – which feels right for an artist whose music could be read as an attempt to dissolve time itself."[26]

Mick Jacobs, writing for PopMatters, gave the album a 6/10 rating, noting that "compared to the previous compilations' sense of liberation, Charli sounds at odds with its some of its invested players and parts: the label, the fans, and Charli the artist." Jacobs praised the track "Silver Cross", but criticised others such as "Thoughts" and "Blame It on Your Love", which he described as "a unneeded revamp [that] seems to exists just because her and Lizzo share both a label and rising profiles in the industry."[34] Rachel Aroesti of Q gave the album a mixed review, writing, "Between Cook's trademark production and the song-stealing brilliance of her collaborators, it often feels as if Aitchison's nasal croon and counter-intuitive toplines are the least interesting bits of her own project."

Charli debuted on the U.S. Billboard 200 at number forty-two with sales of 13,200 album-equivalent units, of which 5,500 were pure album sales.[44] In the UK, the album debuted at number 14 with sales of 4,177 combined units.[45]

Notes

• ^{^[a]} signifies an additional producer
• ^{^[b]} signifies a vocal producer
• On physical releases of Charli, "1999" credits Troye Sivan as a featured artist instead of a co-lead artist
• "Next Level Charli" interpolates a section of "Selecta" by Mz. Bratt.

Credits for Charli adapted from Allmusic. [47]

• Charli XCX Dissects Her Album, Track-By-Track, from Paper