Charli XCX's Vroom Vroom at 10: Track-by-Track (+ Russ on Music Fashion Film) (Patreon Preview)

Hey y'all, DJ Louie here just dropping a preview of this week's pop pantheon All Access episode. If you enjoy this snippet and you want to hear the rest of this episode, plus weekly bonus episodes of this podcast, you can subscribe at patreon.com/poppantheon or click the link in the show notes of this episode. If you're considering subscribing to pop pantheon All Access and you use Apple's App Store on your mobile device, we recommend not subscribing to pop pantheon All Access using the patreon app on your phone, where Apple is now charging unnecessary fees for new subscribers. Instead, go to patreon.com/poppantheon on your desktop to subscribe, you will still have access to all of the features of patreon, including listening to our bonus episodes on your Apple podcast app. We wish we had more control over this, but sadly we don't, so that's a recommendation to save you a couple bucks. You can also of course subscribe for the audio only directly here in the Apple podcast app. Enjoy this preview. Welcome to pop pantheon All Access, the podcast, where we do even more over-inalizing of all your favorite pop stars and do other stuff too. This is your host, DJ Lui, the 14th. Thank you all so much for being subscribers. I am here with my 4.5 on pitchfork. It's Russ Martin. Russ. I've got to pull back to my notes. I'm furiously trying to find the number that I have been re-ajudicated to. If that is my 2016 score, what is my 2026 score? Yeah, and it is a 7.8, Lui. 7.8, because we can just rewrite history on the internet apparently. We are going to check in on history and how we feel about it this morning, discussing Charlie XCX's EP Room Room. It turned 10 in January. I am thinking of myself as the AG Cook to your Charlie XCX. How do you feel about that? Yes, you are the music magic Montana behind the operation, as they say. Yeah, I kind of am your music magic Montana. Yeah. All three. All three. Do you know that I'm going to Montana next week? So I know that you're going somewhere because I do have access to your calendar. I haven't necessarily paid the closest of attention to the details around it. Sometimes I do lack in my very friendship to you, because I am very focused on that true at all. I don't feel that way at all. One time I was talking to your father, and I was just asking him to chat questions, and I go, "Oh, when are you finishing off on vacation?" He was working at his desk. I was in your parents' place, and he goes, "Oh, the 19th of December." And I was like, "Oh, wow. That's the same date that Lui is finished. That's what we're working to." And your dad looked at me like, "This is the dumbest kid I've ever known." No way! You're misreading this. I think that he just was like very confused. He is a highly non-judgmental person, and he was very confused. He goes, "Well, yes, we're going on vacation." Maybe he's a shock that you would think that he wasn't vacation alone, or something. I think he was shocked that he didn't know what I was saying. My family was so mad. Just functioned all the way. But yes, I did not know that you were going to Montana. That is news to me. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. We're room-rooming out to Montana. Room-room! Before we get into room-room, you were convinced that some of the listeners want to hear what I think of music fashion film. Convince, because I have concrete evidence that they did want to hear it. Shout out, Joan Summers. I loved our episode that we did on it, but I think many in the audience felt that they were missing a crucial piece of critical discourse by not hearing your thoughts on music fashion film. And frankly, I thought it was fun to take a listen to it a couple times, again. Now, as you know, in ideal world for me, I wouldn't have to talk about albums until I've listened to them over the course of many weeks. So I'd be like, I have more fully formed thoughts on music fashion film, but I will mostly seed the floor to you in this segment and let you give our listeners the Russ Hive out there what they've been waiting for. Well, from the jump, I was excited when the LoreSNames profile came out a cover story in British Vogue and Charlie reemerged with an entirely new visual aesthetic, a new pop star package, a new idea. One of the things that I enjoy so much about Charlie is that she is one of the few working pop stars today who does full scale Madonna style reinventions. And that is a type of 360 full coverage, everything and the kitchen syncs style of pop stardom that I really enjoy. I like the visuals. I like the aesthetic. I like the idea. And I like having a framework. She is an excellent brand manager. She is a really good marketer in addition to all of the music. Thankfully here, I do think the music is very good. I have been spending just a ton of time with this album. And I think it's quite thrilling that this is her blank check moment. This is the time in which she has finally achieved the commercial success that has eluded her through the majority of her career at least in a sustained way and at least in a way in which it was focused on this entire pop package that she has kind of always been producing. I think that most of her projects have a full idea behind them. There is one or two that I think that the idea might be a little lacking or that there is mess. There is always some mess with Charlie. But certainly the last few projects, the last four, I would say, all have the scaffolding fully in place. They all have unique, interesting ideas and they are all presented with a framework for how to enjoy them. She is somebody who, when she is creating her pop stardom, it's almost like she's a cartographer and she hands you the key to understand the map, right? So for those of us who are really plugged in, who are reading music profiles, who are reading the statements that come along with this that are diving through the lyrics sheets that are looking at the music videos and the photoshoots and the styling and we are considering the entirety of the package. There are few stars who are as interesting to follow as Charlie XCX. My question for you in light of those things is how does the music function for you on its own now that you have it? And if you had to sort of divorce it out from all of the narrative that she sells around it, does it still function completely on its own two legs? Because Charlie obviously is our consummate metapopstar and much of enjoying her can sometimes feel like as much about the world around it as it can about the music itself and sometimes maybe even the world around it can swallow up the music itself. I'm actually returning to our previous conversation about Brat Summer in which case you were actually arguing to me that ultimately the conceit of Brat Summer, the idea of Brat Summer was bigger to the Brat era than the Brat Music itself. So how do you fit music fashion film into that framework? I think that it's always impossible to divorce those things particularly with Charlie that and it goes against not only the audience reception of it the way it slots into culture but also the artist's intent, right? Charlie literally wants us to consume it with that. I think these songs as songs almost on their entirety function best within the context of the album and with it as I start to finish listen, I think that there's two, two, three max four songs that I would pull out of this and play somewhere that work out of context. So if that is the way that we are judging their quality as songs, I think that some of them feel more like exercises in her writing to project then they do like great songs and I was interested going back and listening to some of these room room songs and thinking about this time in her career when she was a hired hand more so before she has started. I think personally when I start to hear it is she unlocks something new in her writing style with how I'm feeling now and you don't hear it so much on crash because crash she's doing this mid-a-commentary unbeaten. But three out of four of the last records I think she's really doing something different as a writer than she was doing in the first half of her career. Yes. Does that answer your question at all? Yeah I mean I think that like that's just the interesting facet of Charlie XCX that has kind of like undergirded my relationship to this music, almost more clearly than any other album of hers in the past, which as I posited to Joan Summers maybe makes it the ultimate Charlie XCX album in the sense that like, it has so much narrative to respond to because of Brad, that like, it allows her to do her pop star, come metapop star thing, almost to like, it's maximal iteration, while also simultaneously feeling like someone of like a minor release in her canon at the same time. So it's just an interesting thing to always try to pull apart for me is like, if I were just to like, beyond a desert island and someone delivered me a CD of music fashion film, like, what would I think of this as an album? And I didn't have any of the context like, I just think that that's like a fun thought experiment. And I agree with you that it's probably an impossible, actual thing to try to figure out. But I do sometimes try to think about that. Like, is this music working for me as music, or is it working for me as meta narrative? Because there's no question that as meta narrative and as a piece of pop star theater, I think it's brilliant. As an answer to Brad, I think it's brilliant. She's very canny and wise. Like, of course, this is what she did to like deal with what she had to in the wake of Brad. But then I sort of think to myself, like, do I actually like love all of these songs? And that's the question that I'm still grappling with the two things that I'm that was just a preview. If you want to hear the rest of that episode, plus weekly bonus episodes of this show, you could subscribe at patreon.com/potpantheon. Click the link in the show notes of this episode or subscribe for the audio only directly in the Apple podcast app.