The ultimate ranking of Charli XCX’s albums, mixtapes, and EPs from worst to best. From True Romance to Music Fashion, Film, see where your favourites have ranked.
- True Romance (2013)
- SUCKER (2014)
- Vroom Vroom (2016)
- Number 1 Angel (2017)
- Pop 2 (2017)
- Charli (2018)
- how i’m feeling now (2020)
- CRASH (2022)
- BRAT (2024)
- Wuthering Heights (2026)
- Music, Fashion, Film (2026)
#11
SUCKER (2014)
Charli xcx goes for a candy-coated pop punk sound on her sophomore release.
Arriving only one year after her debut album, True Romance, Charli’s second album finds the U.K. pop queen expanding on her synthpop sound with more of a pop punk influence this time around.
The vulgar title track is quite cheeky and displays Charli xcx’s defiant and rebellious attitude, though the song itself feels a little childish in its execution. Break the Rules has a decent instrumental, but once again, the lyrics sound like they were written by a high schooler. London Queen is a pop punk rocker about being a brit in America.
Boom Clap was one of the biggest pop hits of 2014, with it’s appearance in the drama film The Fault in our Stars helping to bring her extra exposure, and while its chorus is rather meaningless nonsense, it’s admittedly quite catchy and has more staying power than any of the other tracks on the album. Upon first listen, Hanging Around reminded me of Weezer’s Beverly Hills, which made all the more sense when I saw Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo in the writing credits.
SUCKER feels like a marginal step down from True Romance (which itself wasn’t particularly amazing), and though it’s far from being a failure, I feel like Charli xcx is capable of something better and more inspired than this.
6.5/10
#10
True Romance (2013)
A new pop star in the making.
Named after the 1993 Quentin Tarantino-written and Tony Scott-directed film True Romance, British singer Charli xcx’s debut album is 1980s synthpop with modern pop sensibilities.
Nuclear Seasons is a solid opener with a slight experimental edge, evoking the spirit of 1980s Kate Bush art pop (it was originally released as a single two years prior). You (Ha Ha Ha) has these chopped-up chipmunk vocals in the spirit of Kanye West, though they are a little annoying. Charli ponders how she can fix what she’s fucked up on the introspective How Can I. You’re the One is a banger. There’s also some hip-hop influenced songs like What I Like and Cloud Aura.
True Romance is a good debut album that shows a lot of potential, though Charli would get significantly better on her later albums.
7/10
#9
Number 1 Angel (2017)
Charli’s first mixtape of 2017.
Compared to the somewhat dark and experimental Vroom Vroom, Charli is a little more grounded in pop on Number 1 Angel, though the deep bass and influence of that EP is still present here.
Number 1 Angel can get a bit repetitive throughout its runtime and it does feel a bit regressive from Vroom Vroom, but tracks like Dreamer, Blame It on U and ILY2 are all solid pop songs and the general production is still fantastic across the mixtape.
7.5/10
#8
Pop 2 (2017)
Charli’s second mixtape of 2017.
Released about half a year after Number 1 Angel, Pop 2 has Charli continuing with the electropop sound of that mixtape and includes a long list of features, including Carly Rae Jepsen, Caroline Polachek, and Kim Petras.
The Carly Rae Jepsen featuring opener, Backseat, is a romantic love song told from the back of a car — it’s one of Charli’s best songs yet and both women sound dynamic together here. Porsche continues with Charli’s obsession with fast and stylish cars. Femmebot is a tale of synthetic love. I Got It has hard hip-hop beats and shows Charli leaving her comfort zone.
Pop 2 was an improvement over Number 1 Angel and another step towards her eventual greatness.
8/10
#7
Charli (2018)
Charli reinvents herself again on her feature-heavy self-titled album.
Despite releasing an EP and two mixtapes in the interim, it had been five years since Charli xcx’s last proper LP, which was 2014’s Sucker. Here, Charli reinvents herself with an album that’s more experimental than anything she’s done yet, along with plenty of big features, including Christine and the Queens, Sky Ferreira, Lizzo, and Haim.
Next Level Charli is a great opener and one of her best songs. The nostalgic 1999 was the lead single and love letter to the end of an era (see its The Matrix-inspired single artwork). Cross You Out (featuring Sky Ferreira) and Gone (featuring Christine and the Queens) are other highlights. Shake It is quite awful and should never have been released in the first place, and Blame It On Your Love (a remake of the Pop 2 song, Track 10), is an inferior to Charli’s earlier version.
Even though I like it less than the laser-focused four song EP Vroom Vroom, Charli is still a strong album and a great way for Charli xcx to end her first decade with.
8/10
#6
CRASH (2022)
Charli releases a more traditional pop album, foregoing her usual experimentation.
After releasing her best album yet with how i’m feeling now, an album that balanced both hooks and experimental production, Charli xcx released CRASH, her most conventional project since her first two albums (at least relatively-speaking). Although it foregoes much of her experimentation, it’s still an album ripe with accomplished pop, sublime production and hooks galore.
The title track is probably the first thing to make car crashes sexy again, since the controversial 1996 David Cronenberg film of the same name. Christine and the Queens features on the deliciously eighties, New Shapes. The synths in Good Ones bring to mind Eurythmic’s Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This). Baby sounds a bit like the late 2000s Britney Spears track, Toxic. Charli seems disgusted by love on Yuck.
CRASH produced six singles (Good Ones, New Shapes, Beg for You, Baby, Every Rule, Used to Know Me), but any song here had the potential to have been one. The album may lack the experimentation that made her last album such a masterpiece and indulges a bit too much in 1980s revivalism, but this is still superb pop that few of Charli’s contemporaries can match and one of her most underrated albums.
8.5/10
#5
Vroom Vroom (2016)
Charli shifts into gear.
After crafting hit songs, like Boom Clap, Charli xcx was becoming a pop force to be reckoned with, but that wasn’t enough for her. Her first two albums provided some decent pop music, but neither was quite good enough to become classics, but with Vroom Vroom, Charli levels up her artistry and game, branching off into more experimental pop territory.
The title track is definitive Charli, and is as sexy and sleek as a Lamborghini, but with a hint of danger; like getting road head while driving 200km/h down the autobahn. Paradise is like something out of Dance Dance Revolution. Trophy samples Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) from the Jack Rabbit Slim’s scene in Quentin Tarantino’s Academy Award winning Pulp Fiction (Charli’s second nod to Tarantino after True Romance). Secret (Shh) brings sultry thrills.
Although it’s only an EP, Vroom Vroom is both a significant release and in my opinion, Charli’s best project of the 2010s — this is where the Charli xcx story really started to take off.
9/10
#4
Wuthering Heights (2026)
Charli experiments with an orchestra on this brilliant and ambitious film soundtrack.
Released as the soundtrack to the latest adaptation of Emily Brontë’s famous and controversial work, Wuthering Heights sees Charli xcx experimenting with orchestral instruments and noise on this compelling album.
The opening track, the gothic and haunting House, which features spoken-word vocals from John Cale of The Velvet Underground, minimal instrumentation and a distorted industrial climax, was an incredibly bold choice for a single, let alone the first single since Charli xcx’s critically and commercially successful BRAT era. This song sees a surreal combination of two musicians whom are separated by half a century of age and by various generations, from completely opposing ends of the musical spectrum, but sees Charli thinking outside of the box of pop confines by having sought out a collaboration with such an artist in the first place, seeking a sound that was both elegant and brutal (as John Cale had described VU). Considering John Cale’s production work with the late German chanteuse, Nico and with New York City punk rocker Patti Smith (on her seminal 1976 album, Horses), he’s had a legacy of working well with women.
Chains of Love was a slightly more conventional single that followed House only a few days later, but is no less rich or exquisite. Wall of Sound is appropriately-titled, with a wall of strings that push up against Charli’s vocals. Dying for You and its delayed synth intro feel like something Kate Bush would have made in the mid-eighties. Altars is a grandiose romantic ballad with a sensual drum beat. Eyes of the World sees an appearance from singer/actress Sky Ferreira, (who will do anything but release her second album!). Funny Mouth is an dramatic closer, with some intense industrial flourishes.
Charli promised that her next album would be the anti-BRAT and while she seemed to have been referring to Music, Fashion, Film, Wuthering Heights also fits that description, as the instrumentation is mostly vintage, rustic and a little bit industrial, so it doesn’t feel much at all like BRAT, though it does still feel 100% like Charli. There are still flavours of eighties revivalism throughout the album and no other song gets quite as dark and strange as House, but this is far more experimental than most pop artists would ever dream of becoming. If Charli’s goal was to make an album that was both elegant and brutal, I’d say she succeeded. Every track here was immaculate and theatrical and I love seeing pop artists be this adventurous and unpredictable.
Charli xcx’s Wuthering Heights works very well as a standalone album, something many soundtracks fail to do and while I’m yet to see this music in the context of the film, I can still say that this has the potential to become one of the memorable film soundtracks of all time, that’s how great it is.
9/10
#3
how i’m feeling now (2020)
Charli makes a DIY pandemic album.
Recorded in a matter of weeks during COVID lockdown, how i’m feeling now was a reflection of the times we were living in during the 2020 pandemic. The album was made with input from both fans and producers, providing Charli with some contact with the outside world during the lonesome writing and recording sessions.
pink diamond and its industrial synths start off the album in a surprisingly heavy fashion, but then again, Charli is known for experimenting and pushing boundaries more than most pop stars are willing to. forever is a romantic ear-worm that burrows itself deep into your brain. claws would be annoying if anyone else made it, but Charli has become a master of taste and does all the right things to make it work. enemy sounds like it belongs in a John Hughes film from the eighties.
i finally understand is one of Charli’s best songs yet, with its bouncy synth riff. c2.0 is a remake of Click from Charli’s 2019 self-titled album, and is superior to that version. anthem is ripe for raves, which was where Charli got her wings. The final track, visions, starts off innocuously enough, but then it ends with chaotic synths, reminiscent of the first track, and could be mistaken for something by an Aphex Twin or Daft Punk.
how i’m feeling now is pop music with an experimental edge and goes to show that Charli xcx can blend pop and experimentalism better than any of her contemporaries. If only all pop stars had these kind of cojones, then I wouldn’t be so critical about the usually bland and restrictive genre. While it may have been topped by albums that came since, at the time of its release, this was Charli’s best album and her first album that I’d give a perfect score.
10/10
#2
Music, Fashion, Film (2026)
Charli xcx crafts a candid, experimental, art rock masterpiece.
Charli wasn’t lying when she said that her next album after BRAT was going to be the “anti-BRAT“, as Music, Fashion, Film is an art rock album first and foremost, one that features three men on the cover instead of her, one that ditches the synthesizers that filled the clubs for distorted guitars, one that takes the introspective lyrics of BRAT to a new level, one that will divide fans who weren’t ready for such an album — it’s a brutally honest and naked record, filled with experimental and raw production, but that doesn’t mean it’s not catchy or something you can’t dance to either.
After conquering the world with BRAT two years prior, Charli announces that the dancefloor is dead on the opening track, Rock Music, a song that will make you want to headbang as much as dance, and which was guaranteed to alienate/piss off a large segment of her fanbase who were hoping for more of the same. In the laidback SS26 and the grungy Card Declined, Charli uses fashion and shopping as metaphors for masks in which she hides behind. Charli confesses to her disillusionment with fame on Camera, as well as the criticisms she’s had aimed at her for trying to transition into film, with the somewhat mixed reception of The Moment, a film in which she starred — there’s also a duality at play, where she feels like herself when she’s in the spotlight, but is simultaneously vulnerable, with every move she makes being judged by her fans and critics alike.
On 2007, Charli looks back at a simpler time, when she still had her entire music career ahead of her and was yet to become the pop star she would inevitably become, back when she was only a star in her own mind. On I’m Afraid, Charli admits to the her own anxious insecurities with her marriage, that despite how much she loves her husband, she’s scared she will find a way to screw it up. A cheekiness permeates Wink Wink, as evident by the title, where Charli claims she has grown up and changed, but still has a devilish/childish side inside of her.
On Persona, it initially seems like Charli is accusing somebody else of hiding behind a façade, but perhaps it is herself that she is trying to keep grounded. Charli’s producer A.G. Cook is at the center of Magic Metal Montana, where she offers her gratitude to everything he’s done for her as her secret weapon, admitting that sometimes she wishes she was the one behind the curtain, able to hide from the public eye. Canadian film director David Cronenberg offers a spoken word dialogue at the end of Nothing Lasts Forever, where he argues that art is about capturing a moment in time rather than leaving behind a legacy, as what’s the point of being remembered if you’re not there to experience it? It’s an ego death of a song.
Based on the reception of the singles and the immersion into rock instrumentals, a lot of Charli’s fans were expected to hate Music, Fashion, Film, as will the rock purists who think she’s a poser, but this record wasn’t made for them, it was made for her. Unlike most artists who would play it safe by whoring themselves out for the approval of their fans, Charli did what a controversial artist like Lou Reed would do, which is stick to her guns and do what’s instinctual, even if it means losing fans in the process. While nothing lasts forever and Charli may someday be forgotten, she is without a doubt the most important and interesting woman in music today.
Music, Fashion, Film might not be Charli’s greatest achievement, but in many ways, it’s her most artistically important one yet.
10/10
#1
BRAT (2024)
Charli becomes the zeitgeist of summer ’24.
BRAT was simply the biggest album of summer 2024 and it’s easy to see why — from the vibrant production, to the simplistic graphic design and marketing, to the mix of boastful and vulnerable lyrics, as well as the overall confidence exuded from Charli, BRAT was destined to flourish, turning Charli xcx from a critical darling to the pop star to beat.
360 and 365 bookend the album, incorporating similar musical and lyrical motifs, giving the album a conceptual feel, but without them seeing derivative of each other either. Von dutch was the first single off the album, and shows Charli at her most playful and confident. The synths in Sympathy is a knife could cut through metal like a plasma cutter. Mean girls has a terrifically tasteful piano lick.
The production in Club classics is like a rollercoaster, only better. Rewind and I might say something stupid show Charli’s introspective and vulnerable side, something most pop artists don’t seem to be capable of. Girl, so confusing is a self-aware banger about how confusing women are, even to other women. The experimental Everything is romantic is one of Charli’s best songs yet and finds a new use for the same sample found in Ye & Ty Dolla $ign’s VULTURES, which released several months prior.
Where 15 tracks would be too many on most albums, BRAT is so good that the album breezes past you, making you want to relisten to it again and again. BRAT is Charli xcx’s magnum opus and one of the best pop albums of the millennium — it’s deserving of all the praise and attention it has gotten and while I think that she has other perfect albums, this is by far her most definitive one.
10/10
Trivia: Brat won Best Dance/Electronic Album at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards.