BRAT meets Brontë: Charli XCX’s latest album “Wuthering Heights”

Charli XCX, Wuthering Heights (Spotify)

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

Fact: I love Wuthering Heights. 

I first read this classic when I was sixteen, as part of my beloved A Level English Literature. Then as now, I have been fascinated by the psyche of its elusive creator, Emily Brontë. How did a woman who died at thirty, for all we know so sheltered, so tragic, write so cannily of human evil? While her sexual ignorance is made obvious by the inexplicable appearance of babies in the novel, her characterisation is otherwise deliciously horrifying: Hindley is a brute, Cathy is a biter, and Heathcliff… well, Heathcliff is a necrophiliac. Wuthering Heights has never been and never should be considered a love story. It is an exploration of generational abuse, the follies of ambition, and the certainty of death. Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” (note the quotation marks) misses the point. Its gaudiness and blatant miscasts are jarring. It cuts essential characters for a dozen shots of Jacob Elordi’s lolling tongue. It gives a whole new meaning to horseplay with an equestrian-themed BDSM montage. Yet its soundtrack is, quite simply, sublime.

You may have mistaken me for a traditionalist at the beginning of this article. I promise I am anything but that. In my A Level exam, I called Kate Bush’s 1978 single “Wuthering Heights” a necessary feminist intervention (much to the consternation of my teachers). Believe me when I say I wanted to like Fennell’s adaptation. After all, I am the product of a Call The Midwife household. Yet, as I watched this two-hour-long wet dream, I truly believe I was transported to a parallel universe in which Twilight takes place in the Bridgerton series. In fact, that is how I would describe this film: a fanfiction masquerading as a serious retelling. Elordi and Margot Robbie are depicted fingering egg yolks and drooling over kneaded dough in the hopes that the sexed-up narrative will distract from its incredible laziness. But, luckily for me (and for you), the music is my principal concern. 

Charli XCX’s accompanying album proves classics can be reinterpreted with modern edge while remaining attentive to the original source material. Some may rightly wonder if Charli was the appropriate choice to soundtrack the gothic tale when Florence Welch, for example, exists. But this album marks a clear transition from BRAT. It is both audibly and lyrically maturer, elegant even. Joined by the Velvet Underground’s John Cale and Tumblr princess Sky Ferraria, Charli XCX’s “Wuthering Heights” is one of the few saving graces for Fennell.

The film and album both open with “House featuring John Cale”. Here Cale delivers a spine-chilling monologue that gives way into Charli’s distinctive electronica. In just three minutes, Charli addresses essential themes of Wuthering Heights that Fennell merely brushes over. Landscape, for example, is fundamental to Brontë’s novel and yet totally discarded in the film, where the moors function only as a mossy marital bed for Cathy and Heathcliff. Yet “House” acknowledges the importance of setting by literally and repetitively stating “I think I’m going to die in this house”. This refrain does more to capture the dynamics of the Earnshaw clan, the sense of foreboding Brontë crafts throughout the text, and the intrinsic connection each character feels to the spaces around them than Fennell’s underwhelming screenplay. The collapse of Cale’s husky spoken-word and creepy little violin scratches into Charli’s bassy, breathy, and unapologetically autotuned second half further invokes the incessant turmoil of the original text. Reminiscent of Ethel Cain’s Preacher’s Daughter, listeners fall headfirst into an underworld rank with sewage and sin. Selecting it as the lead single was a masterful choice and speaks to the praiseworthy production of this album. 

There is nothing Victorian about the subsequent eleven songs. The album’s third song, “Dying For You,” proves Charli remains a hyperpop artist who belongs more naturally in an East London rave than a ballroom. Her infamous party-girl aesthetic, while only hinted at in “Wuthering Heights”, does not undermine the fact that Charli ultimately understands the Brontë novel. And therein lies the problem for the film’s director: I do not believe Fennell does. Her controversial casting of Heathcliff as a white and conventionally attractive man is a testament to that. Therefore, when Charli plays into the BDSM tendencies of the film, I do not mind this as much. In the book, readers never know if Cathy and Heathcliff consummate their relationship, let alone kiss. However, the lyricism of this album shows that S&M can be used to exemplify (and not obliterate) the plot. Having Alison Oliver on all-fours barking like a dog totally negates the importance of Isabella Linton’s flight from Heathcliff. However, lyrics “Put my flesh upon the cross until I scream” (“Eyes of the World featuring Sky Ferreira”) and “We grew together in the same four walls” (“My Reminder”) show that Cathy and Heathcliff’s obsessive relationship with one another was conceived through a shared rejection of a corporeal world that only invites bereavement, abuse, and chaos. 

My personal favourites of this album include “Seeing Things”, “Funny Mouth”, and “My Reminder”. The album’s second single, “Chains of Love”, is equally intoxicating. For those alarmed by Fennell, I urge you not to overlook what Charli XCX offers here. It blends the best elements of BRAT with Florence and the Machine’s Dance Fever, Lily Allen’s West End Girl, and the sounds of Yorkshire’s windswept and wild moors. Once again, this British artist has proven she is an unparalleled musical force.