True Romance
| Charli XCX
True Romance
True Romance
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
The several songs on True Romance that hadn't previously surfaced in videos or other releases aren't quite as strong, but they're effective enough to suggest Charli XCX's best work might still be ahead of her. True Romance suggests she'll be worth following for a while.
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NME
Mixtapes and buzz tracks are trendy right now, but this is Charli’s chance to prove she’s a proper pop star, not just a blog idol.
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Consequence of Sound
For now, True Romance is a valiant attempt that doesn’t do much more than provide the soundtrack for “getting ready to go out” songs on tinny laptop speakers.
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Rolling Stone
her rhymes – all street swagger and steamy gothic heartache – flash like low-rent neon. The effect can be breathtaking, even when the pieces don’t cohere into memorable songs.
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Metacritic
True Romance may not match Aitchison’s high ambitions for her debut, but it’s a hell of a start.
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The Guardian
By not rushing out an album until now, however, she seems to have found the time to iron out the creases that made her seem like one of a dozen similar acts.
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PopMATTERS
All in all, True Romance, will most definitely require multiple listens. The good thing being that the record is so multi-layered that multiple listens will only pull you into her aural soundscape.
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Pretty Much Amazing
True Romance may not match Aitchison’s high ambitions for her debut, but it’s a hell of a start.
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Sputnik Music
The album is very impressive. Although Charli XCX may know exactly how she wanted True Romance to sound, she suffers the debut-album syndrome of wanting to showcase too much.
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The KEXP Blog
Charli gives us the best of her recent work with some fresh new surprises.
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Chicago Tribune
Charli XCX’s lyrics are direct explorations of relationships with all the associated swells of excitement, moments of vulnerability and bursts of post-breakup frustration.
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musicOMH
For True Romance sounds huge – big, swirling, epic synth songs with a liberal dose of swearing to keep up the ‘edginess’ quotient. It’s certainly a lot less goth and (shudder) ‘grindie’ than her previously released mixtapes.
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Slant Magazine
True Romance, despite its constant emittance of a drunk-n’-messy neon glow, is a little too slickly produced and self-aware to deliver the kind of spontaneous creativity or carefree chic that Charli XCX aims for.
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Huffington Post
True Romance is a work of art. It’s different (to the nth degree), and that’s what makes it so captivating.
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The Line of Best Fit
The album is effectively a gallery of XCX’s work so far – the introductory, defining goth pop tracks, the expanding artistry beyond what Charli herself defined as goth pop.
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All Music
Since quite a few of these songs were already road-tested, it's not surprising that this is a strong debut, but just how consistently catchy and personal True Romance is might raise a few eyebrows.
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Idolator
Despite none of these singles setting the charts afire, they define the Charli XCX sound: emotional electro-pop delivered over a blend of forward-thinking grooves and dreamy soundscapes.
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Pon De Way Way Way
Overall this is a solid pop album that I can listen to from beginning to end without skipping any tracks.
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Stereogum
True Romance succeeds because they’re almost all really good songs. The album doesn’t break molds; it shows how life-affirmingly great those molds can be.
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Album of the Year
Charli XCX gives an interesting and sugary first record. she shows a decent strength in songwriting, and a very good taste in production.
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Pop Crush
'True Romance,' on the other hand, flat out burns the envelope by pushing pop music into a sinister, deliciously decadent, new territory.
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Hot Press
A fiercely addictive, if a little mystifying, fusion of every imaginable genre under the sun, from hip-hop to pop to R&B to disco to house to new wave to grime, the highly ambitious LP has the makings of a dozen or more musical projects.
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Renowned For Sound
True Romance boasts the debut title for the star as she reaches a new-found commercial appeal for the masses, taking her time in crafting a truly memorable debut effort.
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Tiny Mix Tapes
True Romance is a wholly different animal than (or approach from) Charli XCX’s last two releases. It’s overwhelming from the very start, feeling like it’ll be a drawn-out affair, but it quickly proves to have an unrelenting, fast-moving, and fleeting quality, possibly due in part to the fluid continuity of the songs.
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Spectrum Culture
True Romance is a case of its variety and diversity hurting the album’s overall cohesiveness.
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Treble Zine
As the title of True Romance suggests, the romance on the album isn’t always perfect, but in spite of the massive production surrounding it, it always feels real.
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The 405
Charli XCX, in her delivery, forces you to feel feelings you'll wish you could repress. Nothing strips a glimmering pop record of its superficial veneer like lovelorn angst.
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SLUG Magazine
With the newer songs, the album lacks unity, but each track is filled with a great appreciation of both Y2K and contemporary pop.
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Spectrum Pulse
In the end, Charli XCX's True Romance is utterly, painfully mediocre, and yet another entry in the list of forgettable darkwave acts.
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Metro News
As moody, gobby, slyly subversive perfect pop goes, this is so good that no one will probably buy it.
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Mimo
True Romance’s confessional tales of love may alienate those without a subscription to Cosmopolitan magazine. Charli XCX has delivered a confident and intriguing record bursting with promise.
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MuuMuse
True Romance sees the 20-year-old goth-pop princess carving out a sound for herself that is undeniably unique: There’s no mistaking those hammering beats, floating ambient sounds and overly processed, weird vocals.
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SPIN
True Romance is a strident departure from those frivolities so far as solid, true-to-aim songwriting is concerned, but the divergence and a touch of the silliness remains: Goth, she is not. Dramatic? A bit. Complicated? Like every budding pop starlet. Defiant? Absolutely.
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theMusic.com
True Romance sees the artist throwing countless ideas onto the musical canvas and hoping they stick. For the most part, they do.
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Planet Notion
True Romance is a great aesthetic victory for Charli: it communicates a strong and unique sense of self.
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Love is Pop
This is a ground-shattering album on par with Kylie’s brilliant electro-opus X and Little Boots’ uber-catchy Hands.
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lip magazine
With the sweet sounds of 80s and 90s pop, her debut record True Romance puts a modern spin on a classic, almost timeless style.
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The Sights and Sounds Music Magazine
True Romance, was that we were seeing the development of a unique artist with a sound totally her own.
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Digital Spy
True Romance is an impressive effort from an extraordinary popstar in the making.
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Salacious Sound
True Romance eloquently showcases a blend a of musical influences from electronica to hip hop and in doing so gives it a sound all it’s own.
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Culture Addicts
Considering how many different places and timeframes these tracks come from that they all fit together so perfectly seems miraculous.
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contactmusic.com
'True Romance' encompasses all angles of the pop spectrum across its thirteen pieces, following on from last year's couplet of EPs and mixtapes respectively.
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Pressplay OK
True Romance isn’t so much a nod to Tarantino as it is an homage to that phrase in its purest sense: a singing continuation of the dreamy, dopey love we’ve all experienced at some point.
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Talkhouse
In True Romance, the 20-year-old Brit delivers an album packed with pop hits. There is rarely a dull moment, and even when there is, it’s not really dull, just slowed down so that Charli can complement Brooke Candy’s frantic rapping with a bubbly drawl.
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