Ranking Charli XCX’s 8 Albums from Worst to Best

8. Sucker (2014)

We don’t take many risks with this one—she’d probably agree. Sucker, her second album, is the record of glory. The release that introduced her to the wider public, the one that soundtracked 2010s student parties with the tidal waves of Break the Rules and Boom Clap. In short, everything she disdains today. It’s also an album in which the Charli we know now is hardly present. A collection of pop anthems with a softly punk edge, very much of their era, mainly used to follow in the footsteps of Miley Cyrus or Avril Lavigne. We revisit it with affectionate, nostalgic warmth, but not much more.

7. Charli (2019)

After two essential mixtapes (Number 1 Angel and Pop 2), Charli signs her fifth album with a halfway confident, indecisive and somewhat underwhelming gesture. Bubblegum bass, trap, EDM, industrial electro and synthetic ballads collide without ever truly merging into a coherent whole. It sounds like an attempt to rekindle the magic of Pop 2 (indeed, she invites many guests who appeared on that record—Kim Petras, Cupcakke, Tommy Cash, Pabllo Vittar) but in a contrasted version, where the album’s peaks (Next Level Charli, Shake It, White Mercedes) shine less than its more questionable choices. Such as redoing Track 10 on Blame It on Your Love with Lizzo (why?), and on an EDM-dembow track that leaves something to be desired. The release a year later of How I’m Feeling Now would seal its obsolescence.

6. Crash (2022)

Sometimes, it all comes down to a contract. That is the case with Crash, a record that leans more pop than the others, and feels a touch more impersonal, crafted to satisfy Atlantic Records’ commercial demands before their collaboration ended. A successful bet, then, for an album that doesn’t disappoint, offering a handful of gems (Constant Repeat, Lightning, or even Beg for You with Rina Sawayama), yet leaving a sense of familiarity and comfort that seems at odds with the rest of her work. The stumble is narrowly avoided, especially thanks to the deluxe edition, which adds the striking What You Think About Me and above all Sorry If I Hurt You, helping reassure us that Charli hasn’t completely vanished into a sea of tame pop. The best is yet to come.

5. True Romance (2013)

This is where the hard work begins. For her debut album, Charlotte Aitchison makes her intent clear: a vision that is modern in tone, yet infused with elements that harken back, reviving synthpop ghosts of her eighties influences. All tempered by the artist’s more contemporary sensibilities, beginning with the goth-pop persona she embodies at the time. In this sense, True Romance acts as a true time capsule, housing some of her finest songs (Nuclear Seasons, Stay Away, Grins) largely overlooked by the public, and already crystallizing the obsessions that would shape the rest of her career: fall, her own fall, and the world around her.

4. Number 1 Angel (2017)

In 2017, in the midst of the XCX World fiasco, meant to be her third album before it leaked entirely, repeatedly delayed by the label and eventually shelved by the singer (a topic still delicate for her), Charli returned to the mixtape format, which didn’t count toward her Atlantic Records contract. Less pressure and fewer compromises, hence greater freedom, yielding a radical result: Number 1 Angel, a rebellious creative gesture produced under the PC Music banner that opened pop to new horizons. It’s also around this moment that Charli’s sound becomes more adventurous—from Sophie’s bouncy rhythm on Roll With Me, to Cupcakke’s ferociously subversive Lipgloss, to the garish synthetic guitar of ILY2… Number 1 Angel stands as the peak of what she could achieve at that time.

3. Brat / Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat (2024)

Hard to separate Brat from the enormous cultural phenomenon it has become. Largely produced with A. G. Cook, Finn Keane (Easyfun) and George Daniel, Brat draws on British club music — electro, techno, house, UK garage, trance and hyperpop — to build a sound that is abrasive, minimalist, and devastatingly effective. The heavy bass, the acidic synths, and the dry rhythms fuel a record where the euphoria of the dancefloor constantly collides with jealousy, mourning, and doubt. Then comes Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat, where Charli doesn’t simply revisit her album: she rewrites it. Songs change perspective, arrangements are radically reworked, and the collaboration between artists opens up new interpretations—Lorde, Ariana Grande, A. G. Cook… This is enough to transform her album into a collective, fluid, almost infinite work.

2. How I’m Feeling Now (2020)

It took the world stopping for Charli to deliver her most vulnerable record. Conceived during lockdown, written and recorded in a few weeks from home, How I’m Feeling Now is arguably her most intimate album. Behind the abrasive hyperpop productions of A. G. Cook, BJ Burton or Dylan Brady (half of 100 gecs), which never relinquish the bold digital excess that has defined the singer, she lays bare her anxieties, her love story, and her loneliness with a newfound honesty. A chaotic yet deeply moving logbook where the urgency to create meets the urgency to live.

1. Pop 2 (2017)

With XCX World mourned, Charli looked toward the future: this became Pop 2, a near-entirely collaborative mixtape produced by her now partner in crime, A. G. Cook. From this peak collaboration emerges a work that extends everything Number 1 Angel began a few months earlier, pushing it to its breaking point: bubblegum bass, futuristic trap, synth-pop, EDM, and electronic experimentation crash into each other in productions with saturated bass, constantly pitched vocals, and unpredictable structures. The era’s most essential pop voices—Tove Lo, Carly Rae Jepsen, Kim Petras, Caroline Polachek—join a cast ranging from rap (Cupcakke, Brooke Candy, Tommy Cash) to electro (Dorian Electra, MØ), culminating in Track 10, a masterwork that encapsulates the entire artistic approach of the Briton. A record that tasted of the future.