Charli XCX – You’re The One

July 27, 2012

This song is rated: 2 Pills – intermediate musicologist level

Hi there, Dr. Whuzzerface here,

Oh the 90’s. I look around and I’m starting to see evidences of 90’s fashion creeping into the general populaces wardrobes. Guys shirts with dramatically cut-out sleeves, velvet turtleneck dresses, neon bicycle shorts…this kinda scares me. I can think of only a handful of unique 90’s styles that were ever flatting at all. Everything else was extreme, chunky, garish, ill-fited, boxy, too loose…the list could go on. With this video though, I’m kinda contemplating dusting off my pair of platformed Doc Martin combat boots. Yeah, yikes. Not only does little Charli XCX look very awesome in her 90’s-ish garb, this 90’s tilted song is rather bodacious itself.

The first thing that stood out to me of this song was how eerily similar Charli’s voice is to Marina (of Marina & The Diamonds). However, I’d classify her as a more goth version. A lot of the similar vocal timbre is attributed to the fact that they are both British lasses. There’s something about the water over there that makes certain singers very distinctive. I’m finding that this song is kinda driving me crazy, in a semi-good way, because it sounds like a mesh of so many bands/songs from the 90’s and I can’t quite pinpoint which ones exactly. I’ve come up with New Order, Depeche Mode, Madonna, Savage Garden, and  Janet Jackson, but I know there are more I’m missing. What bands does it sound like to you? My favorite 90’s element comes in at 2:30 where she does a spoken word portion that was requisite for so many songs back in the day. Priceless.

It shouldn’t be hard to surmise from the title that this is a song about certain people making you feel a certain way, seeing things differently (perhaps with a “Golden Light”?), basically being twitterpated.  I’m gonna just cut to the chase and let you see and feel the deep electro-buzz bass for yourself. This song makes me wanna bust out all of my old dance moves, so I’m going to go have a mini dance party for one right now!

As a side note: she has been opening up for Coldplay on their tour this summer so you might want to get her songs asap before she hops on the super-stardom train (and she’s only 19!!!).

Charli XCX – You’re The One EP – Amazon

Charli XCX – Official Site

Charli XCX – Wikipedia