Written and recorded in the midst of the global coronavirus pandemic, Charli XCX’s How I’m Feeling Now was shaped by the limited tools the singer-songwriter had access to at home. And Charli’s self-isolation imbues her fourth album, perhaps inevitably, with the confessional immediacy of bedroom-pop, even as the tracks reach for her signature brand of sonic maximalism. The result is a collection of songs that speaks to our current circumstances without being exclusively tethered to them.
The defining tension of How I’m Feeling Now is between the songs’ highly specific personal narratives and their big, sweeping backdrops. The sprightly verses of “Forever” eagerly build to a huge, swooning chorus as Charli fixates on a rare happy moment in a relationship that’s unlikely to ever work out. Whether she’s remembering the relationship or experiencing it in real time, the song’s lyrics—“I will always love you/I’ll love you forever”—bring into stark relief the gulf between her present joy and the promise of future heartache. Elsewhere, “Party 4 U” is lyrically slight, but the incessant repetition of the phrase “party on you” seems intentional, as both the line and a rapidly pulsing synth figure mirror the obsessiveness of checking one’s phone for a text message that never arrives.
Though she recorded the album in a home studio, Charli didn’t limit her ambition and, as a result, manages to surprise both musically and lyrically throughout. “Detonate” is the catchiest song here, though its poppy contours belie its lyrical darkness. The track opens with a glittery synth part before morphing into a complex glitch-pop song that, for Charli, feels surprising in its minimalism. The chorus is full of sharp wordplay and quick turns of phrase as she tries to warn a potential romantic partner that he should keep his distance, though the song makes clear she’s only interested in protecting herself from heartbreak.
On “Anthems,” Charli explicitly confronts her quarantine: “I’m so bored,” she sings atop a skittering synth, cataloguing a routine of now-familiar activities—sleeping in, trying to exercise and failing, watching TV, and so on. She succinctly sums up the mood of the moment (“Sometimes I feel okay, some days I’m so frightened”) before the song’s megawatt chorus explodes, her voice soaring plaintively: “I want anthems.”
Writing a club banger about how nobody can go to the club right now is a clever trick, but there’s more to it than simple wishcasting. One of the more surprising aspects of our lockdown life has been our collective nostalgia for mundane or outright unpleasant things. Charli captures this feeling when, after lamenting how hours alone make her “existential and so strange,” she sings about wanting to feel the rush of heat from being packed in a sea of bodies. “Anthems” is philosophical introspection delivered at a breakneck pace, an apocalyptic dance song in search of a party to crash, appealing to anyone who would do anything to elbow their way through a crowd in order to shell out eight bucks for a domestic beer right now.
Even that song’s hyper-immediate relevance doesn’t have to be read in terms of the unmitigated awfulness of our current state though. Someday the virus will likely be just another manageable inconvenience, but there will still be people who find themselves trapped and isolated from their friends and lives by other forces. Heartbreak and despondency will always have a place in pop music, whether inflicted by a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic or the day-to-day vicissitudes of emotion. Though How I’m Feeling Now was born out of the former, it finds something interesting to say about the latter.
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