Consequence Song of the Week highlights the latest and greatest new tracks every week. Find these new favorites and more in our Spotify best songs playlist and to see other great songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify new sounds play list. This week, Charli XCX returns with some fireworks.
Forget the '80s pastiche of “New Shapes” or the early '00s swagger of “You Used to Know Me”: Charli XCX is back in the present and sounding like the future.
About his new turbo single, “Von dutch”, the first offering from his next project Golf club, Charli returns to the bold and brash qualities of her early work while keeping her sights on a fresh, futuristic sound. Fittingly, “Von Dutch” was written and recorded during the same sessions that produced “Speed Drive,” Charli’s explosive, unhinged song for the Barbie soundtrack. Here, producer Easyfun keeps the tempo flying, and with surging synths that sound like something out of a jet turbine, Charli makes it sound like she's hurtling toward an accident.
It's not a new move for Charli XCX to embrace the idea that she's untouchable. On “Von Dutch,” she describes the kind of “hater” who can't stop paying attention: “It's okay to just admit that you're jealous of me,” goes the song's bratty opening, with Charli taunting: “Yeah, I know your little secret” later in the chorus. There's no use pretending otherwise, Charli suggests. She knows you're watching.
Charli has proven over the last decade that her voice is versatile and impressive. “Von dutch” does not add to that legacy. She runs through the entire track on a root note, ending phrases a half-tone higher or lower before returning to the same key. She lends a hypnotic air to “Von Dutch,” made more surreal and alluring by the icy industrial synths.
“Von dutch” is one of those songs whose music video captures its spirit. Parading through Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport as if she were an action star fighting the cinematographer, Charli crawls on planes, jumps turnstiles, and suffers cuts and bruises. It matches the high-speed, high-fidelity force that Easyfun imbues into the track, and Charli's sharp gaze makes her call of “I'm your number one” feel like a villain's selfish mantra.
In fact, Charli is both villain and heroine in “Von Dutch”: she is absurd and astonishingly real. She is the patron saint of the club and the demon of the pop machine. She is completely magnetic.
— Paolo Ragusa
Associate Editor
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