Charli XCX’s soundtrack album for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights was released on February 13. For a stellar review of the film itself, you can read Online Screen Editor Lachlan Evans’s article. Preceded by singles “House ft. John Cale,” “Chains of Love,” and “Wall of Sound,” it’s an impressive follow-up from the artist who defined 2024 with electronic sensation BRAT. The album is jagged and synthy, and reflects the darkness Fennell tried and failed to convey.
Opening track “House” features John Cale of The Velvet Underground with an eerie spoken word poem. This foreboding song features in the opening scene of the film, a public hanging, and is aptly guttural. The track is the thematic basis of the album, inspired by a documentary XCX watched about The Velvet Underground. Cale described the aim of the band to create songs that were “elegant and brutal,” a phrase which stuck with XCX and inspired her on the album. Her ominous vocals are overlaid by blaring horns, and devolve into frenetic shrieking that captures the claustrophobic darkness of the original novel. “Wall of Sound” is more reminiscent of a pop song, replete with heavy autotune, but uses electronic strings similarly.
The lyrics to “Dying for You” are a more faithful interpretation of Cathy and Heathcliff than any scene Fennell could have imagined. “You’re a gun to my head and you’re a wound in my chest” describes the completely destructive force of their obsessions over an XCX-typical electro-pop beat. “Always Everywhere” was released as a single the same day as the album and film. It’s an immersive and romantic track, whose music video features characteristically English moorland.
Harkening back to her roots, “Chains of Love” is a (relatively) upbeat track which wouldn’t have felt out of place on XCX’s debut True Romance. She wanted the song “to feel like it was on the brink of brokenness whilst still being totally luscious, sumptuous and orgasmic.” It’s at this point on the album that the synthesised strings and autotune become slightly redundant. “Out of Myself” is the infatuated, kinky anthem of Fennell’s insipid Cathy, and, in spite of its provocatively masochistic lyrics like, “put the rope between my teeth,” it is quite forgettable.
Charli XCX wanted “Chains of Love” “to feel like it was on the brink of brokenness whilst still being totally luscious, sumptuous and orgasmic.”
“Open Up” is a hopeful, ambient interlude succeeded by “Seeing Things,” which again features nimble strings, but accompanied by a lilting piano melody. “Altars” is a typical synth-pop song, with an explosive, layered chorus that trails off into depressing uncertainty. Sky Ferreira features on “Eyes of the World,” a highlight of the record. Ferreira and XCX last collaborated in 2019 on “Cross You Out,” following Ferreira’s extended hiatus since 2013. Her rasping vocals complement the steadily rising string crescendo, meant to portray the duality of Cathy as a person and a ghost haunting Heathcliff (although Fennell notably ends the film at her death, completely neglecting the second half of the novel).
“My Reminder” is a calmer track, describing how Cathy and Heathcliff see each other as reminders of home. Wuthering Heights is an inescapable prison for both of them, the site of so much abuse and yet the origin of their “love.” The final track, “Funny Mouth,” is the ominous culmination of the carefully layered sonic motifs of the record. The vocals echo and stretch over rapidly crescendo-ing synths, bleeding into a murky Gothic reverie. This is easily the best track on the album, and the perfect closer.
Wuthering Heights manages the impressive feat of being the least inaccurate part of the adaptation. Charli XCX’s lyrics portray the mutual dark obsession between the protagonists vividly, and cements her versatility as an artist. The final placement of the tracks in the film was laughably contrived, despite the merit of the actual music itself. Unfortunately for Charli XCX, autotune will always feel out of place in 18th century Yorkshire moorland, but Fennell’s ludicrously gaudy set almost made it seem fitting. Wuthering Heights is a solid pop album, and Charli XCX is as faithful to her source material as she can be.
