Charli XCX’s Crash extends the car metaphor of the British singer’s 2016 EP Vroom Vroom, kicking off with a bouncy, two-minute title track centered on the narrator’s full-fledged intention to wreck her vehicle. The song begins with the mantra-defining chant “I’m high voltage/Self-destructive/End it all/So legendary,” promising a portrait of volatility. But while Crash nods toward a propensity for self-sabotage, it sounds like Charli is more interested in reforming herself than reveling in chaos.
This is mostly due to the album’s production choices, which are fleet-footed and less brash than those of 2020’s How I’m Feeling Now. This is an artist who has, prior to this point, consistently pushed the limits of what’s considered pop. She accomplished that on Vroom Vroom—which was produced by the late electronic auteur Sophie—as well as on her collaborations with PC Music mastermind A.G. Cook, helping to pioneer the hyperpop subgenre that has bubbled up into the mainstream in recent years.
Exemplifying Crash’s approach, the sultry “Beg for You” retools Swedish pop singer September’s 2007 hit “Cry for You” as a muted but still grooving U.K. garage number. It’s a fun flip, but after PinkPantheress made a whole album setting her sweet, nonchalant vocals to drum n’ bass breakbeats, “Beg for You” feels less like a sonic breakthrough. Still, while Crash isn’t quite as much of an aesthetic gamble as the rest of Charli’s catalog, it’s still a diverting collection of pop ditties.
There are some inventive and playful sonic flourishes to be found throughout the album. On the melancholic “Every Rule,” Charli’s processed vocals carry a weighty viscosity, and tucked away in the final 30 seconds of “Move Me” and “Lightning” are some glitchy vocal trills melded to synth aberrations. But these tracks don’t announce themselves like those on How I’m Feeling Now, where the singer’s glaringly processed vocals often merge with the bombastic beats to work as one unwieldy force that demands the listener’s attention.
Crash really comes alive in its second half. “Baby” resembles a gender-swapped millennial take on David Bowie’s “China Girl,” echoing the original song with bright keys, exotic guitars, and theatrical strings. And its assertive chorus—“Imma make you mine/Imma make you mine/Imma fuck you up”—rivals that of “Yuck” for the album’s most delightfully amusing lyrics. On the latter track, Charli hilariously sings of being disgusted by a man’s earnest affections (“Quit acting like a puppy/Fuck!”) atop a fluttering synth that mimics the nervous butterflies that she dismisses at the start of the song.
“Yuck” is the finest rendition in a long line of “Don’t Start Now” copycats to emerge over the last couple of years, and its jokey, oversharing tone makes it stand out from other disco-funk imitators. “Used to Know Me” is a piano house tune with an appropriately propulsive sense of driving motion given that the song is about outpacing a lover and leaving them in the dust. Lead single “Good Ones” pulls off a similarly clever matching of form to content; its cooed hook is elusive in the same way that Charli claims to “always let the good ones go.”
David Bowie’s 1983 album Let’s Dance is a fitting comparison point for Crash—an effective pivot to dance floor tropes from an artist known for being wholly original and daring but unapologetically content to swim in more conventional waters for a bit. Though Charli’s latest jettisons some of the sonic adventurousness of her past releases, it still finds the singer workshopping the reckless abandon of her persona.
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