New year, new Charli XCX. You know how we do…
[Video][Website]
[6.70]
Edward Okulicz: Sorry Charli, but I lived through Shampoo, Transvision Vamp, and Crush’s eternal break-up classic “Jellyhead,” so your glossy triangulation of those things with none of their snot or spice is just not going to cut it.
[4]
Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Two minutes of snot and glitter, with XCX administering the expected shove-off over a Joan Jett riff. Its levity is a gift, mirroring the act of forgetting somebody that wasn’t worth it with a joyous shrut. It’s a New Year anthem of sorts: you reserve the right to dump that dick and make a break for it.
[7]
Alfred Soto: I don’t think anyone has combined Joan Jett and “Virginia Plain” yet, and who knew Charli would?
[7]
Crystal Leww: I, for one, welcome this change in Charli XCX’s music to be “I Don’t Give a Fuck I Don’t Give a Fuck No Seriously I Really Don’t Give a Fuck.”
[8]
Will Adams: Rock is a great look for Charli XCX — I’d go so far as to say even better than those scrapbook synths on True Romance. “Breaking Up” finds our star (and what a star she is) rattling off an ex-lover’s flaws before launching into a blustery chorus that cleverly flips a cliché on its head. It’s slight, but it needs to be.
[7]
Jonathan Bradley: Memories of old Rogue Traders singles still cause me to recoil from dance-pop tunes with garage rock guitars grafted on, but Charli is sloppy enough to sound genuinely impudent. It’s no “Boom Clap” or even “Break the Rules,” but she’s at her best when she cares less.
[6]
Patrick St. Michel: Like “Break The Rules” before it, “Breaking Up” is a shout-along rock song that the teens of today should rightfully blast when the situation is right. Charli XCX knows that, and probably could care less that some late-20s guy just hears the same garage rock revival-ish sounds I heard as a teen, and I only needed to live through that once.
[5]
Ramzi Awn: Immediately, when I hear “Breaking Up” for the first time, I want to listen to “Perfume” by Britney Spears instead. There’s something to be said for the “My Boyfriend’s Back” angle, and hey, Charli, you are so fine — but in the end, you leave me cold.
[4]
Rebecca A. Gowns: I’ve always sensed a dash of Toni Basil in Charli XCX, but this one especially reminds me of her; I’m also reminded of Disney sitcom opening montages and commercials for Claire’s. Which is to say, very coy and hip pre-teen — no doubt the demographics are on-target here! — with that ever-present nod towards po-mo rebellion (the Basil element). I wish she could err more on the side of irreverence than marketability, but how else is a girl to make money these days? Truthfully, the biggest marks against this single are her previous singles; I know she can do better, and it leaves me wanting more.
[5]
Alex Ostroff: I was terrified of Sucker, to be honest. True Romance is one of my favourite records, and I couldn’t imagine anything better than Charli scrawling crushes, comfort and heartbreak across the cosmos with widescreen synths & wider-screen feelings. Sucker, as it turns out, is equally and differently marvellous. Charli buries her thirty-foot tall feelings under affected sneers and a carefully calculated facade of disdain, and then uses the sublimated emotions to power her choruses. “Breaking Up” is all armour and no vulnerability, running from declarations of love by clinging to a catalogue of flaws chanted over chords until they stick. Life would be a lot less embarrassing if I dealt with break-ups more like this and less like “Stay Away.”
[7]
Dorian Sinclair: I’m 100 per cent on board with Sucker and its Ramones-meet-Aqua — Charli’s categorization, not mine — take on pop-punk. I even gave myself a manicure themed after this song’s video. The first verse in particular is pretty much the most withering takedown of an ex I can easily bring to mind — Charli’s delivery of “you had a friend in a band, but they’re not that cool” makes that line far, far more brutal than it reads on paper. What stops me from scoring this higher is that there’s not, ultimately, a lot of growth to the track sonically. I want there to be something in the music to match how caustic the lyrics are, something to give the overall package just a little more punch, and it’s just not there.
[7]
Danilo Bortoli: Charli XCX might know a thing or two about shifting aesthetics over the years — and, more importantly, her eras — since the eventful release of “Stay Away”, that moment in which she channelled both The Cure and Destiny’s Child. She’s since then mastered the bewitched art of choosing very carefully the context she’s later fitting in — the symbols she wants to evoke and the reactions she wants to trigger. Much like someone who attentively places the furniture in a room, I’ve always imagined Charli to be the kind of writer and performer that reckons every move made. Now I know that Sucker is a little more unpredictable than that — it’s still very calculated pop music indeed, but the trick Charli is pulling is that Sucker‘s punk roots lie in the lyrics (she did indeed record a punk album anyway), meaning, as predicted, that they are not exactly in the sound — it is too bratty to make the punk comparison hold itself. “Breaking Up” is the best example I can recall. After all, this is the album’s centerpiece. If there’s anything punk about it, it’s its striking simplicity. Her straightforwardness on the subject of breaking up with stupid boys is anything but a thoughtless move. But here’s the catch: it is indeed supposed to feel simple — we’re talking about a Shampoo kind of chorus in here — yet this is how genius songwriting is best showcased: it’s effortless until you figure out you’ve been tricked all along.
[9]
Megan Harrington: For years Charli XCX’s debut album loomed over her and when we finally heard True Romance it was heavy and dark and overworked. Charli sounded dwarfed by the central unhappiness and beyond that one note there wasn’t a strong sense of her persona. Sucker is a complete relief, both in contrast to True Romance and to the entire top 40 pop landscape. That unhappiness still informs her songwriting but she brightens the corners, especially on the feisty “Breaking Up.” This isn’t a song that seethes or mopes; for a kiss off it’s surprisingly flirtatious. Charli delivers the sort of caustic attitude that you wear on nights that sandwich bad behavior between dark lipstick and an Irish exit. Finally we’re treated to that missing persona and she’s fun.
[8]
Cédric Le Merrer: The tendency to view pop stars, particularly female ones, as playing a sort of game of thrones certainly has problems but it’s sadly not entirely inaccurate — and a bit self-fulfilling. Marketing 101 demands segments to be filled, and things look more and more like a Charli XCX rebranding in the wake of the success of “I Love It,” perfectly timed to fill a void left vacant by Kesha. But even if some of that space has been taken over by Miley, and if Sucker on some tracks suffers like Jessie J for sounding like rejected demos for others, “Breaking Up” is the perfect distillation of this cycle’s Charli XCX, the one character no one else can do better. It’s all whirlwind heat and Ramonish bubblegum, every subtlety of yore long forgotten, and for now it’s pretty brilliant.
[8]
Anthony Easton: I finally get the hype: a bratty, mid-’80s, joyfully spat track, with that amazing “breaking up” bridge and the definitive use of tambourines. Like early Avril, I imagine this being a pop-for-the-sake-of-pop hit, and one of those tracks that is absolutely critic proof. Sort of like 1989 all over again, but this one actually sounds like 1989.
[9]
Thomas Inskeep: The opening of this is reminiscent of nothing so much as Adam Ant’s “Vive le Rock,” which is funny-weird. The rest of the song is midtable XCX: she’s done better. That said, this kiss-off song is catchy as fuck and will likely be a massive hit no matter where you’re reading from.
[6]
Brad Shoup: A breakup list song is a dicey proposition, but it’s not like she’s switching to country. And anyway, the riff’s the point: a blunt buzzy object that supports Shampoo-style power pop in the verses and a less carefree, more orbital take on the refrain. The short runtime pretends like a concise song must follow.
[8]
Scott Mildenhall: Answer songs are usually topical, but Neil Sedaka has had this a long time coming. The shame is that it feels little more than an exhibition of style: one sentiment, one sound, showcased for only as long they need be to get their point across. All that would be fine if the hook was stronger, but instead this is a song that sounds like treading water.
[5]
Katherine St Asaph: I want to hate the idea of Charli XCX dismantled and rebuilt as Teenpop Synthpop British Avril. But for something that should be like Carly Rae Jepsen relegated to Owl City hook singer, Sucker is great: punchy, star-powered beyond its actual stardom, and smarter than it seems. “Breaking Up” has many clever moments and many obvious referents — girl groups, the Ramones, other acts who get by on maximal attitude and minimal chords — but the referent that made it click was one I didn’t expect: Haim’s “The Wire.” Both songs get called kiss-offs. They’re not. “Breaking Up” is closer but makes a terrible kiss-off, because it makes no sense: wouldn’t you notice his ugly tattoo and fucking cheap perfume well before he says he loves you-u-u-u? (Where is this tattoo exactly?) The other grievances are either equally silly or not grievances at all, and the timing’s odd — the song can’t decide whether this breakup is past, present, or future, but whenever it was it was sometime around “I love you,” hmm. Martin Kavka quoted Tremble Clef here once that “the repetition of a phrase in a pop song is best understood as a symptom of a narrator’s trying and failing to bring about a certain state of affairs,” and Charli sure goes on about breaking up; it’s fear of commitment disguised as confidence, and like “Your Kisses Are Wasted on Me,” it’s best played not after a breakup but before, when you know you’re going to do it eventually but meanwhile have to spin growing contempt into charm. Admittedly I parse a lot of songs like this — they can’t all be so nuanced, and Charli XCX was never known for irony — but she’s also a good enough songwriter to pull off “I knew you were no angel, but God/what did I do?” on her first big single, so I say it counts. She’s also a good enough songwriter to lodge you say you love me-e-e-e into my skull for the past month. That counts too.
[7]
Micha Cavaseno: I’m sorry guys I can’t hear you because I’m hijacking a car and I’m racing to Long Island to hunt down Joan Jett and ensure her and Charli’s future duet on this record for the next Grammys because I need to find some weird cosmic solace in the fact that I’m going to find a listenable and tolerable and actually fun Charli XCX song that doesn’t have weird Swedes hooting on it.
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