Charli XCX Shares Balladic New Single “Wall Of Sound”

Singer-songwriter Charli XCX has released a new single titled “Wall Of Sound” today. As Pitchfork reports, the single is the most recent single released from Wuthering Heights, the soundtrack album accompanying the upcoming film of the same name by director Emerald Fennell. “Wall Of Sound” follows past Wuthering Heights singles “House” and “Chains of Love.” An official upload of “Wall of Sound” can be found on Charli XCX’s YouTube channel.

The song begins with Charli XCX’s vocals over a stripped back instrumental, comprised mostly of orchestral sounding strings. As the instrumentation swells, various different takes of Charli XCX’s singing are played over one another for an overwhelming, all-encompassing and dramatic effect. Towards the end, as the singer repeats “Tell me that you love me/Tell me that you need me,” she reaches high notes before returning to the repeated line “Unbelievable tension, wall of sound,” first starting muffled before slowly clearing up alongside dramatic strings. It all comes together for a more cinematic and abstract track.

Charli XCX described the sound and atmosphere of the upcoming soundtrack as a “dive into persona, into a world that felt undeniably raw, wild, sexual, gothic, British, tortured and full of actual real sentences, punctuation and grammar. Without a cigarette or a pair of sunglasses in sight, it was all totally other from the life I was currently living.”