When Charli XCX finished the relentless cycle around Brat, she didn’t double down on pop superstardom. She disappeared into something darker, stranger, and far more atmospheric. Wuthering Heights arrives as a sharp left turn: a full soundtrack album written in response to Emerald Fennell’s upcoming film adaptation of the Emily Brontë classic.

The project began in late 2024, when Fennell approached Charli for a single song. Instead, Charli read the screenplay and came back with a bigger idea: an entire album built to live inside the emotional weather of the story. Recorded throughout 2025 with longtime collaborator Finn Keane, Wuthering Heights emerged as a body of work shaped by obsession, volatility, and restraint. Charli has described the sound in stark terms: elegant and brutal, gothic and deeply British. That tension drives the album from start to finish.

This is not Charli retreating from pop. It’s Charli bending it. The songs lean into atmosphere and negative space, pulling from post-punk, art-pop, and cinematic minimalism while keeping her melodic instincts intact. Strings scrape, synths swell, beats pulse rather than explode. Everything feels intentional, measured, and emotionally charged.

The opening salvo, “House,” featuring John Cale, makes that shift unmistakable. Cale’s spoken-word delivery and abrasive textures set a confrontational tone, grounding the album in unease rather than release. It’s followed by tracks that trade immediacy for mood, allowing tension to build slowly. “Chains of Love” stands out as one of the album’s emotional anchors, pairing yearning vocals with glacial synth lines and orchestral accents that mirror the story’s fixation and pull.

Elsewhere, Charli balances intimacy with scale. “Wall of Sound” reframes her past maximalism into something colder and more controlled, while “Eyes of the World,” featuring Sky Ferreira, feels like a natural meeting point between two artists who understand the power of distance and detachment.

What’s striking is how fully Charli commits to the concept without turning the record into background music. Wuthering Heights functions as a standalone album first, film companion second. There are no filler interludes or scene-setting cues. Each song carries its own emotional weight, even as it feeds into a larger narrative arc.

After years defined by speed, volume, and provocation, Charli XCX has slowed the frame rate and sharpened the focus. Wuthering Heights captures an artist stepping away from the strobe lights and into a space that favors mood over momentum. It’s a controlled burn of a record, and one that quietly repositions her as a pop artist unafraid to trade immediacy for depth.