Charli XCX has announced a new album. The follow-up to Brat and its spinoffs is called Wuthering Heights, and it is out on February 13 via Atlantic. Below, listen to a new song from the album called “Chains of Love.”
As the title suggests, Wuthering Heights was born from Charli XCX’s work with Emerald Fennell on the filmmaker’s new adaptation of the famed Emily Brontë novel. “I called Emerald and asked her what she was hoping for from my read of the script,” the British musician explained on Substack. “She coyly suggested ‘A song?’ and I suggested ‘An album?’ because why not? I wanted to dive into persona, into a world that felt undeniably raw, wild, sexual, gothic, British, tortured and full of actual real sentences, punctuation and grammar. Without a cigarette or a pair of sunglasses in sight, it was all totally other from the life I was currently living. I was fucking IN.”
Charli XCX also wrote about how she made Wuthering Heights primarily with Finn Keane, the British producer and songwriter formerly known as Easyfun. “From the very start of our process we were discussing the Todd Hayne’s documentary about The Velvet Underground and in particular this one quote from John Cale where he describes that the main sonic rule of creating songs for the band was that all things had to be both ‘elegant and brutal,’” she said. “We started to live by this description as we created songs for the Wuthering Heights album throughout most of this year. Finn came with me on tour and we rented a studio space most days.”
The 12-song Wuthering Heights opens with “House,” Charli XCX’s recent collaboration with Velvet Underground co-founder John Cale. The album follows Brat, the deluxe expansion Brat and It’s the Same but There’s Three More Songs So It’s Not, and the remix album Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat.
