Had it not been for the fact that Charli “XCX” Aitchison had struggled to find a hit of her own until last summer’s Fault in Our Stars-soundtracking “Boom Clap”, I’d be convinced that she had tapped into some secret formula for producing perfect pop hits. “I Love It”, the rabble-rousing breakup anthem she wrote for Swedish electropop duo Icona Pop and her attention-grabbing hook on Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” share a distinguishable swagger, but had little impact on the negligible success of her 2013 major label debut True Romance. In the fickle world of pop music, that should have been enough to sentence Aitchison to a lifetime of co-writes – but, thanks to a pair of fictional cancer-stricken teenagers, this precociously talented songwriter got a second chance to make her own mark.
I say “precociously talented” because, while Aitchison’s brand of ballsy brat-pop calls back to everything from the Runaways to Britney Spears, both she and her music feel far less like the product of a series of boardroom meetings. Sucker still boasts enough production, remixing and co-writing credits to field its own football team (and given they include Ariel Pink, Rivers Cuomo and Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij I’ll let you form your own mental picture), but they’re undoubtedly captained by the same character that made her songs with Iggy and Icona Pop the strongest on each respective album. In fact it’s “Boom Clap”, which shows up about halfway through Sucker, that ultimately sounds like the odd one out – it’s a bubblegum love song that pops and fizzes, more spring-in-the-step than clean-right-hook.
It’s also way less interesting than the album’s title track, which combines the theme music from Candy Crush and a Lauren Laverne-inspired vocal with a kiss-off punchline you’d never get played on the radio; or “Break the Rules”, which sounds like a gang of girl bikers kicking in the door of a warehouse rave. Bratty new single “Breaking Up” and peppy anthem “Famous” share hilarious lyrics and catchy choruses, and “So Over You” would have been a far better fit on that Taylor Swift viral break-up playlist. In fact, for proof that Aitchison deserves her second chance to tear pop music a new one look no further than track 7: a tedious duet with the inexplicably ubiquitous Rita Ora. Choose wisely, pop fans.
Overleaf: hear "Break the Rules"
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