Charli XCX truly is the savior of modern pop music. At first glance, it doesn’t look like she is doing anything that different from her peers. She has the same synth-heavy bass line, the same heartbreak ballads, and love songs. Maybe it’s her undeniable vocals and range. Maybe it’s the way that even when you are listening to the same song about lost love that you hear from almost everyone, somehow you know that Charli takes her subject seriously.
In her latest single “Miss U,” when she croons about “not knowing what [she] keeps running from, you can feel her confusion, that real fear that maybe she has sabotaged something she really cares about. There are a lot of songwriters and singers out there, feeding music into the machine, going through the motions on autopilot. Not Charli. Her paranoid, slow burn of a track bleeds with self-blame and denial.
“Some nights, I go back there / Right back where we used to love / Think I messed up somewhere.”
We’ve all felt that regret. And I believe that Charli feels it too in this particular song.
