Charli xcx Wuthering Heights
Charli xcx's Wuthering Heights arrives as a windswept, gothic pop spectacle that foregrounds drama and dread as compositional choices, and critics largely agree it succeeds. Across seven professional reviews the record earned a 79.43/100 consensus score, with reviewers repeatedly pointing to the John Cale–assisted opener “House featuring John Cale” and the Sky Ferreira duet “Eyes of the World featuring Sky Ferreira” as showstoppers. Those tracks, along with “Dying for You” and “Wall of Sound”, recur in critics' best-of lists as the clearest examples of Charli's fusion of theatrical orchestration and pop songwriting.
Critics' Top Tracks
The standout songs that made critics take notice
House featuring John Cale
7 mentions
"On "House" he delivers a slow, spooky poem over ominously moaning strings."— Rolling Stone
Chains of Love
5 mentions
"On "Chains of Love" she sings about wearing scars like armor over a swooning track"— Rolling Stone
Wall of Sound
6 mentions
"The bleary "Wall of Sound" sucks you into its black pool of droning orchestration"— Rolling Stone
On "House" he delivers a slow, spooky poem over ominously moaning strings.
Track Ratings
How critics rated each track, relative to this album (0-100). Only tracks that made critics feel something are rated.
House featuring John Cale
Wall of Sound
Dying for You
Always Everywhere
Chains of Love
Out of Myself
Open up
Seeing Things
Altars
Eyes of the World featuring Sky Ferreira
My Reminder
Funny Mouth
What Critics Are Saying
Deep insights from 8 critics who reviewed this album
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Critic's Take
Charli xcx makes a deliberate left turn on Wuthering Heights, leaning into moors-core and Gothic-romantic drama with bruised tenderness and theatrical heft. The review keeps returning to the album’s showstoppers - “House” and “Eyes of the World” - where John Cale’s ominous oration and Sky Ferreira’s vicious cameo supply the album’s biggest thrills. Jon Dolan’s voice relishes the mood shifts, praising how songs like “Wall of Sound” and “Dying for You” trade hyper-pop gloss for dread and intimacy. The result reads like Charli’s most tradition-minded record, equal parts Kate Bush homage and modern pop transgression, which answers the question of the best songs on Wuthering Heights by pointing to those high-drama, vow-to-die moments.
Key Points
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The best song is "House" because John Cale’s ominous oration sets a bone-chilling tone that defines the album.
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The album’s core strengths are its moors-core atmosphere, dramatic vocal commitments, and successful melding of Gothic tradition with pop textures.
Themes
Critic's Take
There is a clear sense that Charli xcx's Wuthering Heights finds its strongest moments in theatrical, gothic pop - songs like “Wall of Sound” and “Eyes of the World” tower as the album's best tracks, and “Chains of Love” and “Always Everywhere” keep the momentum cinematic. Robin Murray writes with a relish for the album's darkness and melodrama, calling many pieces "gorgeous" and "deliberately grotesque" while praising Charli's direct songwriting. The result is an album where the best songs are those that fuse bold production with frank, literate hooks, making queries like "best tracks on Wuthering Heights" point to its dramatic duets and anthemic mid-tempo moments.
Key Points
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The best song is the duet “Eyes of the World” because the reviewer calls it a "true skyscraper moment" and "phenomenal".
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The album's core strengths are its cinematic gothic production and Charli's direct, literate songwriting that balances gorgeous and grotesque.
Themes
Critic's Take
Charli xcx treats Wuthering Heights as a bold reset, where “House” (featuring John Cale) sets a gloomy, Velvet Underground-tinged tone and “Eyes of the World” (with Sky Ferreira) emerges as a standout. The review’s voice lingers on the album’s jagged strings and industrial drums, noting how tracks like “Dying for You” and “Funny Mouth” marry rave and atonal textures to pop smarts. The writer insists the songwriting is uniformly fantastic, so the best songs - led by “House” and “Eyes of the World” - feel both adventurous and unmistakably Charli. It reads as praise that this soundtrack functions as more than a side-hustle, delivering some of the best tracks on Wuthering Heights while keeping her pop instincts intact.
Key Points
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The best song is "House" because it sets the album’s tone with Velvet Underground-tinged strings and John Cale’s influence.
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The album’s core strengths are its blend of adventurous, industrial textures with uniformly strong pop songwriting.
Themes
Critic's Take
Charli xcx’s Wuthering Heights is at its most vivid on songs like “House” and “Wall of Sound”, where metallic thuds and throat-cutting lines make the best tracks on Wuthering Heights feel cinematic and immediate. The reviewer's voice lingers on “House” as a jolting, climactic death letter, and on “Wall of Sound” for its aching line, both reasons these are the best songs on the album. Yet the record falters as its second half wallows in the same intense motif, which weakens otherwise striking moments like “Eyes of the World” and “Always Everywhere”. Ultimately the album reads as a transitional, retrospective project that finds its clearest triumphs in those early, aggressively vivid tracks.
Key Points
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The best song is "House" because it is described as a jolting, climactic death-letter that anchors the album cinematically.
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The album’s core strengths are its dense, claustrophobic production and sharp, punchy lyricism that recall Charli xcx’s early sound.
Themes
Critic's Take
Charli xcx's Wuthering Heights thrives in its gothic grandeur and pop immediacy, with standout moments like “House” and “Open Up” delivering the album's most unforgettable emotions. The reviewer's voice savors the drama - calling the John Cale-assisted opener a "witchy, cello-laden darkwave concoction" while praising “Open Up” as the most romantic and devastating track. Yet the critique is measured and specific, noting how songs like “Seeing Things” and “Altars” are circumscribed by pop structures even as sweeping strings and production elevate much of the material. Overall, the best songs on Wuthering Heights are those that let the orchestration and Charli's warped vocals collide into cinematic, bodice-ripping moments.
Key Points
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The interlude "Open Up" is the emotional centerpiece because it condenses the album's fatalistic heartache into under 90 seconds.
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The album's core strengths are its cinematic strings, bold production collisions, and Charli's altered vocals that render a gothic, pop-forward soundtrack.
Themes
Critic's Take
Charli xcx’s Wuthering Heights is a windswept, gothic triumph that finds its best tracks in the haunted drama of “House”, the writhing anguish of “Chains of Love” and the club-urgent “Dying for You”. Helen Brown writes with a relish for grimy friction and atmospheric soundtrack detail, noting how “House” gains deeper time from John Cale while Charli’s howls and mutters thread through songs like “Wall of Sound” and “Seeing Things”. The review argues these best songs conjure Brontë’s terrible complexity without theatrical quotation marks, trading neon hyperpop for pixelated, violin-stung gothic modernity. Overall, the critic presents the album as emotionally direct and sonically daring, the best tracks proving both weird experimentation and irresistible hooks.
Key Points
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The best song, "House", is best for its John Cale feature, weathered vocal and Charli’s corrosive howl that conjure deeper time.
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The album’s core strength is its gothic atmosphere that marries classical strings with industrial electronica to realize Brontë’s emotional complexity.
Themes
Critic's Take
Charli xcx leans into the film's lush eroticism on Wuthering Heights, making the best songs feel like cinematic set pieces. The middle section - especially “Dying for You”, “Always Everywhere” and the trailer-ready “Chains of Love” - is where the album soars, marrying orchestral swells to electro edge in a way that captures Cathy and Heathcliff's all-consuming passion. There is a gothic hush to the opener “House” that sets the mood, and smaller moments like “Out of Myself” and “Seeing Things” add bruised intimacy. The ending tracks falter a touch, but the record's front-loaded drama makes it easy to name the best tracks on Wuthering Heights as those middle songs where Charli finds epic pop in tragic romance.
Key Points
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The best song is "Chains of Love" because its trailer use and tortured-romance production make it the album's standout.
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The album's core strengths are its sensual, gothic atmosphere and the middle section's orchestral-electro blend that captures tragic passion.