Hi, everyone. Heathcliff here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new Charli XCX soundtrack for Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights.

Yes, yes, yes. The English-lit classic, Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, is getting a new film adaptation. In fact, it has already happened – I'm sure you've heard of it. It's directed by Emerald Fennell. Of course, the movie has a soundtrack, as many movies do, which is not usually cause for me to go ahead and review the damn thing, as I often have a hard time reviewing film soundtracks. Structurally, they often end up feeling a little bit lacking.

Usually, the point for a soundtrack is to create music that ends up complementing a scene and playing into a feeling, a vibe, a moment that's playing out in the film, and isn't meant to necessarily steal the show in the way that a hit pop song might. If I were to judge a soundtrack like this, by the metric of "how well does it work into the film itself," by that point, we're almost a few shades away from a movie review, which I'm not doing movie reviews on this channel. (That is for my OnlyFans, which you have to pay top dollar for.)

Anyway, yeah, a film soundtrack review, not something I would typically do. But this soundtrack, surprisingly, is, for the most part, masterminded by the one and only Charli XCX – who is a pretty interesting pick, considering, again, the source material is Wuthering Heights. However, when you consider that Fennell's interpretation of the story – as some have gone on to complain – isn't necessarily as period-accurate as it could be, and also seems to lean into the steamy dynamics of its two lead characters, maybe turning a somewhat blind-ish eye to some of the darker dynamics at play... I'm not going to get into it. I haven't seen the movie. I don't know how, narratively, it holds up to the original source material.

All I'm trying to say is, if, with Wuthering Heights, it's essentially Emerald Fennell's goal to create a sexy, enticing period drama romance, that's hip and modern and new and is sure to get social media talking, then, you know what, Charli XCX was absolutely the perfect pick for pulling this soundtrack together. I'll keep any film-related commentary from here to a minimum, and just talk about the soundtrack itself, which is 12 tracks, just over 30 minutes in length.

But there's still quite a few interesting highlights and textures and moments throughout this tracklist. For example, we heard the song "House" in the lead-up to the release of the soundtrack, featuring John Cale. It proves how well Charli can work in this context, because even though she is, traditionally speaking, a pop singer, an auto-tune singer...the way she uses distortion, and even her vocal fry, and the way that her singing just melts into the layers of really harsh, abrasive, garish strings. There's something truly unnerving and horrifying about all of it, especially with John Cale's vocals in the mix, too. However, this track really does end up being the darkest and most potentially horrifying moment on the entire soundtrack.

Things do lighten up from here, relatively, with a series of songs – when we are getting songs, because there are some tracks on this thing, like "Out of Myself", as well as "Open Up", that don't so much feel like proper songs as much as they are rough sketches of songs, or interlude-ish, interstitial type moments... that are fine, they bring a vibe, they're passable for sure. It's not anything that I think a Charli fan would be drawn toward over any number of bangers off of any record she's dropped in the last six to seven years.

So put these types of tracks to the side here, of which there are several in this tracklist. But when we are getting a formal-sounding, well-put together, structured song, it feels like vocally and melodically – writing-wise, too – Charli is going back to the '80s-flavored pop ballads that she was building her name on back when she made her True Romance album, well over a decade ago.

However, I wouldn't say her tapping back into that is a complete waste of time, or her completely treading water, because there are enough instances of her adding some strings and some extra instrumentation to these moments to make them sound a little bit more elevated and mature, and also bring a little bit of a gothic, dark, tortured vibe to match the source material, too. I mean, sometimes this does lead to lyrics that are a bit too on the nose, or instrumental passages that are maybe trying to sound a little too off-kilter, like on "Dying for You", because I do not know what that synth outro is.

There's also, surprisingly, a Sky Ferreira feature on this thing. Yes, Charli has brought Sky out of retirement for this thing. However, Sky's appearance on "Eyes of the World" is very stiff and doesn't really add that much to the track, frankly. I'm not really sure if there's too much I could do in terms of framing or explaining the music beyond that. There clearly are some points where Charli is inspired by the source material she's working with for the movie as far as some of the lyrics go, but it's not as if she's writing out the narratives of these songs and playing them out in her words in a literal fashion. I mean, while that may have made it more entertaining and interesting as an album experience, doing that for the purpose of a soundtrack would have been distracting.

Look, the end result certainly has strong romantic, dramatic vibes to it that occasionally get pretty dark and gnarly as a result of some of these very intense string arrangements. Is it something I personally see myself returning to, outside of maybe a few songs in the tracklist? Not really. But part of me thinks this is all by design for Charli at this point, because she is nothing if not self-aware, and very thoughtful, and very careful about how she releases music and how she has been crafting her career over the years.

With Brat being the massive success that it was, anything she does in the immediate aftermath, as far as a new, original studio album goes, is going to be immediately and directly compared to Brat – not only in terms of its artistic quality, but: is it going to reach the same level of success? There's almost an unfair expectation on her in that respect, because Brat's success was by no means guaranteed. It was completely unforeseen. Charli, as great as her music has been for years, is not one of these artists who's guaranteed to go number one just because she dropped an album.

Because of that, I think she needs to play creatively with audience expectations. Releasing something like this, getting involved with a project like Wuthering Heights, and dropping a series of songs and interlude-type moments that are a bit more low-stakes – because it's a soundtrack – makes total sense. In effect, that will reset people's heads mentally for whatever it is Charli decides do musically down the road for her next full-length project – which again, for this era in her career, I think makes total sense. You have this huge moment, this massive, viral, fantastic album. Find ways to do side quests from here, and then come back around to your next complete project, your next ambitious solo statement when it makes sense.

But yeah, with all that being said, I'm feeling a strong five to a light six on this thing. I'm pretty neutral on it.

Anthony Fantano, Charli XCX, Wuthering Heights. Forever.