Charli XCX - Vroom Vroom EP Review
Almost a decade before BRAT put Charli XCX at the centre of a new wave of pop provocateurs, the Vroom Vroom EP saw the British musician lead a very different musical, and cultural revolution.
The last couple of years have seen Charli XCX go from the kind of popstar probably most recognisable mostly for her features on tracks like Iggy Azalea’s ‘Fancy’ and Icona Pop’s ‘I Love It’, her own track ‘Boom Clap’ featuring in massive box office hit movie The Fault In Our Stars and charting as a result to being a global megastar whose name is on everyone’s lips. Her 2024 record BRAT caused a total frenzy online: that summer was declared ‘BRAT summer’, the highly saturated green of the cover became known as BRAT green, it’s impossible to go anywhere without hearing the now familiar melodies of the album’s most popular tracks and her impact on culture has been so monumental that she exchanged the world of singing about social media It Girls, hard drugs and partying your life away for the Yorkshire Moors and the extreme yearning of Cathy and Heathcliffe in Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights”.
But before all of this, she was a young 20-something trying to make her way in a world heavily dominated by already powerful women in pop. 2016 was a massive year: you had Beyonce’s Lemonade, Rihanna’s Anti, Lady Gaga’s Joanne and Ariana Grande’s Dangerous Woman - everywhere you looked there was a woman trying to shift pop music as we knew it but it was Charli that was really doing something different.
Produced in its entirety by PC Music’s SOPHIE, Vroom Vroom was wildly different to the almost bubblegum pop that litters Charli’s earlier discography. A move that confused critics. Pitchfork labelled it ‘pointedly uncommercial and abrasive’ and gave it a low score of 4/10 as seemingly it didn’t speak to the masses, a move Laura Snapes has since apologised for.
It is a bold move to take all the tropes of pop music and blend them with elements of EDM and trap beats but this boldness was nothing but a marker of the kind of artist Charli is. She’s someone who won’t take shit from anyone and if she has a vision, then she’ll sure as hell do whatever it takes to make sure it’s executed correctly. The entire EP centres around being young and free to do whatever you please as long as enjoyment is at the core of your actions, the title track somewhat sets the tone for the songs that follow. Characterised by a clunking snare drum and conjuring up images of ‘lavender lamborghinis’ and a life free of consequence, it’s one of those tracks that I can never pinpoint actually learning the lyrics to but they’re ones that are forever embedded somewhere deep in my psyche.
Remember back in the 2000’s when people would make those ‘covers’ of songs where they’d just get the original and turn up the pitch of the vocal to sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks? Well, if you’re not ‘in the know’ when it comes to PC Music, you’d probably think that ‘Paradise’ was Charli and Hannah Diamond having a laugh but instead, it’s a feature that dominates a lot of the label’s releases and fits just right here.
Charli’s lyrics have long been dominated by sass and a level of self belief that could otherwise be mistaken as total arrogance if she hadn’t reached the level of global success she has now but the pulsing energy that runs through ‘Trophy’ as she makes references to ‘Fancy’ reaching Number 1 and samples Uma Thurman’s ‘I want that trophy’ line from Kill Bill implies that she has always known that she would be destined for a level of greatness whether that was world domination in the pop world or otherwise.
‘Secret (Shh)’ is an almost uncomfortable listen thanks to the scraping industrial synth that sits in the instrumental but it’s almost as if that was the intention of both Charli and SOPHIE, cheeky and seductive it rounds off the rest of the EP perfectly.
It’s incredibly important to note here SOPHIE’s role in Charli’s success as an artist, how rare it is to find someone who believes in you and your vision as ferociously as SOPHIE did Charli. They pushed each other in directions a lot of people at the time the EP came out, didn’t believe would be successful in the long run. 10 years on, despite Charli’s sound not being as deeply rooted in the hyperpop genre anymore, its influence still appears across all of her most recent works but particularly on how i’m feeling now and occasionally on BRAT. Every time you hear a quirky synthesiser sound or clunky beats, it’s almost impossible not to think about all the versions of Charli and her music that existed for it to be at this stage. The Vroom Vroom EP marked a new beginning of sorts and ultimately led to the creation of the world’s biggest popstar all because she found someone that really valued her vision in SOPHIE.