I usually feel connected to popstars that are losers deep down inside.
Charli XCX might be the greatest exponent of this idea. Avant Garde, talented, inexhaustible and driven, Charlotte has proven to be a pop powerhouse through the tears of her fans. Cult following, pc music and post contemporary are words that can be found referring to her but I will give my two cents and say something not too on the nose.

As a singer songwriter who started in raves (that her parents drove her to) going off about having sex with a dinosaur (?) her evolution as the voice of a generation born in between the abyss of the cynical nihilism and the stupidity of the meme era has been astounding. In a world where everyone feels safe to share their own mental health issues in a humoristic way via template and real physical intimacy feels hard to reach, things like Nuclear Seasons or Take My Hand feel more relevant than ever.
She endlessly collaborated with friends geniuses, and one of those intertwining gave birth to the EP that would not only mean an steppingstone in her career, but basically create a new music genre on its own.

Sophie and Charli coming together to create Vroom Vroom must have been this cultural reset that people are talking about. She paved the way for herself to create a tryptic that revolutionized the pc music sound and created a whole new batch of hungry popstars craving to create something shamelessly pop. Number 1 Angel, Pop 2 and Charli (She could not have chosen a worse name) are a defining run of what it means to be a pop star.

Ans then, she surprised us with Good Ones.

An ambitious turn to the left, leaving the meticulous electronic production behind but being still heartbroken, still ambitious. Still silly and layered. And, oh yes, she fucking knows how to deliver a chorus that gets stuck in between your two eardrums.

She conquered hyper pop to dive into the next thing.

After a first presentation single that defines the new editorial route that she would pursue in her upcoming compilation, the second single must be another dive into the same idea, without somehow sounding the same but still enhancing the idea of what the concept will be holistically.

Add couple of meaningful featurings and we have New Shapes.

Charli is no stranger to calling other people to participate in her songs. In fact, some of them contain enough people to populate your average kitchen after party, but this time, oh girl. This time she really nailed it.

The key with a collaboration is that needs to be organic. Does not matter if the genres fit, if it seems unlikely or if somehow does not come together.

If the artists naturally come together and create something, the result is usually worth it.

Charli not only fulfils all this but twists it embedding her industry mind into it.

By summoning Caroline Polachek and Christine And The Queens, she brings together into the same project the one who allegedly invented the PC Music spend when they were working on Track 10, and the French enfant terrible who has inspired great philosophers like Madonna and works with Charli in the masterpiece that is Gone.

New Shapes is a simple and effective chanting to the discovery of new relationships and forms of intimacy. A hymn to falling in love in the wrong. To forgiving. To having sex with friends and keep on loving them (or not). To discover and love people in new and different ways.
Everything in the melancholic tone that fit these three like a glove, while still sounding deliciously pop and 80s.
The efficient use of the chords reminds me of Robyn in Do It Again, and how she said in an interview that while working with Royksopp, she wanted something that would hit in two beats. New Shapes smoothly creates a hook, a verse that melts into the prechorus and a shattering bridge that goes:

Yeah, I’m dive bar-ing again and again
Trying to get up close to you
Fucked if I know how it’s gonna end
But honestly, life would be better if I never
Met you in the first place

While STILL rhyming with the title of the track and jumping again to the vicious loop of arpeggios, repetitions and that marvellous What you want /I ain’t got it that stays already in my mind rent free. The only thing that would elevate it is a video of them three emulating Charmed while hooking up with a Darth Maul looking demon that looks like the guy from Nip Tuck in his human form, but well, what are we going to do. As they say in the youtube comment section:

Also the album is called Crash and the cover looks like this.

And this is why she is the underground leader of all the popper sniffing – weird hair coloured – pierced non binary folks.

And shall continue being that way.