Back when the days were still low enough to count, the idea of quarantine was scary. The historical precedent, the looming uncertainty, the sudden disruption of basically everything we had taken for granted. In the (somehow only) four months since, that fear has been morphed into a nauseating feeling of perpetual bad and disheartening news, of stunning incompetency, and of absurd stupidity. Escapism is what we need, what we crave; and for once, that feeling is felt universally across the country. Artists often delve into their work to escape, as do listeners; it’s easy to forget that these people feel like we do. They’re just better at presenting it in a way that makes us think of them as different.
So when an artist is able to present their feelings in a way that is so utterly relatable, it’s a special thing. When an artist can bring themselves to their audience as an equal, it’s unique and refreshing. Pop auteur Charli XCX does just that with the exemplary idea of art under quarantine, her DIY album how i’m feeling now.
Listen: Charli XCX – how i’m feeling now
It took her thirty-nine days to make this album, a span of time over which she chronicled so many of the feelings we have and continue to experience: stress, nostalgia, and boredom selfies (maybe not as universal as the other two). What made this Twitter presence different, however, was the constant updates on her album’s progress. She sent out Zoom codes for fans to jump in and help her write lyrics, asked her followers for their opinions on certain production choices or samples, and made everyone following along feel like they were in the booth with her. It was thrilling–in a time when “surprise drops” are fading out of popularity, I would love it if more artists pulled back the curtain on their work and showed us the details of their craft.
In these never-ending days of lockdown, how i’m feeling now is a 37-minute futuristic journey taking its listeners through the claustrophobic atmosphere that we’ve been stuck in for months. Opening with the industrial and harsh “pink diamond”, the album lets us know what Charli wants right away: “I just wanna go real hard, I just wanna go real hard”. She acknowledges our new favorite pastime, Zoom calls: “I’m online and I’m feeling so glamorous/Watch me shine for the boys and the cameras/In real life, could the club even handle us?” Go hard or go home, as they say, but these days we have no choice but to go hard at home.
From there, the album turns into an endearing and sincere album about love. Directed towards her boyfriend of seven-plus years, who she’s been living with during this time, “forever” is a sleek, glitzy ballad with blown-out production and layered synths. Charli talks about her love in an almost deadpan way:
“I’ll love you forever
Said I’ll love you forever
I know in the future
We won’t see each other”
The song sounds like it’s out of the year 2050 with its production, and Charli sings like she’s high above her own body, observing the relationship she’s currently in.
The third track, “claws” is exuberant and bouncy, almost kid-like in its lyrics: “I like, I like, I like, I like, I like everything about you”. As the synths and drums and dissonance build, it feels like a classic 90s club cut made by time-travellers. When the drop comes, it’s hard not to bounce along with the beat. As Charli’s voice soars so does the production, with help from Dylan Brady of 100 gecs, who I’ve mentioned before. The PC Music sound is thriving on this album, and it’s better for it; maximalist music can help take us out of the moment we’re currently in, providing that much needed escapism.
“7 years” chronicles the tough times that Charli and her partner have been through with honesty and clarity that is refreshing to hear. “So hard, things that we’ve been through, yeah/Could’ve fallen, but we only grew, yeah”, she tells her partner, with optimistic and shimmering synths floating around her.
One of the many special qualities about this album is the way it manages to capture the feeling of quarantine while not talking about it. She mentions the specific quarantine a few times, sure, but her lyrics speak to the side-effects of quarantine, the emotions that become amplified and the thoughts that become louder. Throughout the album’s runtime, the maximalist and flourishing production captures the feeling we have when we think about the good times we had before, when we were allowed out of our homes. The unconventional sounds, the layers of dissonance, and vocals that seem to wrap around themselves in the mix; it’s intoxicating in its escapism.
This upbeat production often comes with messages of self-doubt and fear. On “detonate”, the album’s least positive track, she talks about her state of mind in the early days of quarantine (only day twelve):
“Close myself off in new ways
Building walls in my sleep, I can’t turn back
I’ve been reelin’ for twelve days
When I start to see if it gets real bad”
It’s hard to imagine that it’s been over a hundred days since that, but much of the feelings of self doubt and isolation remain entrenched in our collective psyche. This is surrounded by arpeggios of glitchy sounds, and a swirling cocktail of synths, drums, and bright chords. It’s a contrast that’s hard to reconcile with, but mimics the quarantine’s abundance of ups and downs.
Another stunning feat of this album is how in the moment it feels. Maybe it’s because I followed along the creation of the album on Twitter, but listening to it makes me realize how much of a product of its time it will be considered upon retrospect. The production and lyrics combine to make an album that really lives up to its title. We know how Charli is feeling at this moment, how she’s feeling now. It’s that relatability, that earnest honesty that strikes so close to home for us. Even though she’s mostly talking about her relationship, it’s easy to hear our own thoughts in Charli’s.
And when she’s not talking about her relationship, she’s talking about a feeling we all know too well: “wanting to get fucked up”, as Charli says in the editor notes. Opening with what feels like a super self-aware reference to the 2012 film Project X Pursuit of Happiness remix, “anthems” is an absolute banger that makes me want to go out like no other. “I’m. So. Bored,” she shouts before the track launches into a dizzyingly danceable song. In one simple verse she sums up the boredom, and how we’ve been spending the days:
“Wake up late, eat some cereal
Try my best to be physical
Lose myself in a TV show
Staring out to oblivion
All my friends are invisible
Twenty-four seven, miss ’em all”
This song is what I think it would sound like to eat a bunch of sour candy, if such an experience could be crystallized into music. It makes that excruciating anticipation and impatience for when the world opens up a little more bearable. The chorus echoes what we all want to do: to party.
“I want anthems
Late nights, my friends, New York
I sleep, wanna wake up brand new
I sleep, wanna wake up with you”
She touches on the humanity that we might gain from this collective experience: “Finally, when it’s over/We might be even closer”. Knowing what we know now and what we’ve seen in the months since, it’s an optimistic and ultimately naive thought. But it’s a line that’s so simple yet so full of brimming hope that it’s hard not to get swept up in that feeling, in that prediction despite the past months of divisive rhetoric.
Charli closes the album with “visions”, which sounds like it’s been plucked from an alien rave. Halfway through the song, the album spins out into this crazy, turbulent ride through space with no end in sight. It’s unclear where the song wants to go, and can’t really settle, and even picks up speed as the track nears to a close, with discordant sirens and alarm beeps coming in to end the album. It’s a mirroring of what we’re experiencing now: uncertainty, discordance, and hurtling into the unknown with reckless abandon. “I got pictures in my mind/I can see it so clearly, and it looks so right,” Charli told us earlier on this song. The song touches on a theme that’s ultimately the center of the album: looking forward, and longing for what lays there while acknowledging what we’re going to experience on our way to getting to the future.
“Never seen the future so real/But maybe I’m just fantasizing,” Charli sings. But fantasizing about the future is all we can do right now. We might as well have fun doing it, and how i’m feeling now lets us experience that joy in an intoxicating, life-enriching album that will forever live in this unprecedented moment.