By Alexandra Pullen
Breaking free from the shackles of smudged eyeliner, strappy tops and cigarettes, Charli xcx has officially released her first album since the cultural phenomenon of BRAT. The singer-songwriter from Essex caused a shift in the matrix with her 2024 album, taking charge of a colour, a word and a lifestyle, through her unapologetically real lyrics and energetic electronic beats. Now, she returns with an album to accompany Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of the Emily Brontë novel Wuthering Heights.
As an English Literature graduate, when I saw the first trailer of Fennell’s ‘adaptation’, which I say tentatively due to the presence of inverted commas in her title, I felt a lot of emotions. I was immensely disappointed and baffled by many aspects of it. Wuthering Heights has been one of my favourite books for a long time; I even have a tattoo of a quote from the author’s 2022 biopic Emily (an underrated gem, by the way!). However, literary biases aside, one thing I found myself curious about was the announcement that Charli xcx would provide the music for said film. How would this movement from BRAT summer to Wuthering Heights-winter work? Could we expect more of Charli’s exhilarating and hedonistic flair in application to this 19th-century classic?
In short, the answer to this is a resounding yes. Through this soundtrack, Charli xcx implements her usual, hypnotic and well-thought lyrics onto beautifully opulent and climactic string-driven melodies. She embodies the essence of the harmful, intense, and utterly gothic relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff. In her own words, she expressed her feelings towards Brontë’s classic novel and moving on from the grip BRAT had on everyone, especially herself: “After being so in the depths of my previous album, I was excited to escape into something entirely new, entirely opposite. When I think of Wuthering Heights, I think of many things. I think of passion and pain. I think of England. I think of the Moors, I think of the mud and the cold. I think of determination and grit.”
Opening on a strong note, House, featuring co-founder of The Velvet Underground, John Cale, is a harsh departure from anything in Charli’s prior discography. Released in November of last year, it was the first offering from the album, and fans were equally in awe, disturbed and confused by it. The track opens with an unnerving soliloquy from Cale before sharp and jagged strings pierce into the song and accompany his quivering and intense vocals. Charli joins halfway through for the repeated line “I think I’m gonna die in this house”. The perfect opener and introduction to the archetypal gothic setting of Wuthering Heights, and probably a great representation of Lockwood’s thoughts during his first visit to the house in Brontë’s story.
Wall of Sound is dramatic and cinematic, filled with desire, anxiety and desperation. Throughout, it feels as though something is creeping up on you with the building strings and discussion of entrapment. The same can be said for the second single from Wuthering Heights, Chains of Love, but this holds a juxtaposing euphoric feeling which contrasts the lyrics: “My face is turning blue/Can’t breathe without you here/The chains of love are cruel/I shouldn’t feel like a prisoner”. This is a true earworm, and the chorus feels elevated by heartache but the singer’s fanbase were divided upon its release. While some were truly obsessed, and likened it to Charli’s debut album True Romance, others were disappointed and thought it fell short in comparison to House. I personally think it is one of the best songs on the album.
A trilogy of what are the strongest songs on the album only ends with Chains of Love though. Before it, Dying for You and Always Everywhere delve deeper into the themes littered within the entirety of Wuthering Heights (novel and album): obsession, psychological and physical entrapment, identity, and of course, love. On Dying For You, Charli’s vocals feel more vulnerable and soft, yet are met with glitchy and punchy industrial electronic beats which quicken the pace and build more tension, especially towards the song’s closure. The latter is beautifully emotional and completely stripped back in areas, with just an echo of accompanying strings in the background. Interweaving the natural world into her lyrics is one of the most triumphant aspects of this album: “I can’t escape the storm you gave me/Constant lightning in my veins”. Charli xcx channels a Silver Springs-esque attitude in the pre-chorus of Always Everywhere, “Every echo calls your name”.
Out of Myself feels tense with the harsh vocals and erratic string sequence at the end, as well as blunt synths which provide the track with a heartbeat, bringing it to life. Afterwards, Open Up signals a shift. It is an interlude of sorts with minimal vocals, where the orchestra takes charge and offers a rhythmic movement; it feels like a gust of wind which ends the storm of the first half of Wuthering Heights. An outlier follows in Seeing Things. Unlike the majority of songs on this album, it feels rather upbeat and jolly with the constant saw of the violin making it sound more pop-driven. It is a joy to listen to.
The album seems to lose its way slightly towards the end, perhaps like a bumpy journey through the Moors. The chorus of Altars is nothing short of brilliant, but the rest of the song lacks the oomph which has transported prior songs into a narrative of their own. Eyes of the World, featuring Sky Ferreira, and My Reminder, in my opinion, are the weakest tracks of the collection. On the former, the opening seems to be the most similar in sound to House, but upon moving more into the song, Ferreira’s vocals unfortunately do not add much substance and the overly auto-tuned harmonies take away from what could have been a cathartic release of desperation. Funny Mouth concludes well though, and with co-writer Joe Keery, gives a final nightmarish vision into the tumultuous relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff. Distorted beat blasts and fast-paced strings feel like a return to the darkness of the album’s opener.
It seems that through Wuthering Heights, Charli xcx is keen to continue her experimentation with sound, and perhaps has a more thorough appreciation of Brontë’s novel than Fennell. However, she does not shy away from interweaving themes and ideas from both the original story and the modern spin into this album, with string-driven opulence being an overriding sound which meshes with her frequently-visited vocal distortion and electronic synths. On Wuthering Heights, we see Charli escape the high-energy mindset of BRAT and enter another imprisoning and obsessive headspace: that of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff.
Text Copyright 2026 © Alexandra Pullen/ADRENALINE Magazine
Photography Copyright 2026 © to its rightful owners.
Madi Briggs 
Esme Campbell