Top 10 Underrated Charli XCX Songs
Charli XCX, photo by Paul Kooiker
Charli XCX built her reputation on mainstream hits like "Boom Clap," "1999," and the chart-topping "Fancy," but her most compelling work lives in the deep cuts. While streaming platforms push her most popular tracks, the British pop artist has spent the past decade crafting boundary-pushing experimental songs. From Pop 2's hyperpop blueprint through how i'm feeling now's quarantine vulnerability to 2024's BRAT, these tracks showcase the sophisticated songwriting and production innovation that critics celebrate but casual listeners rarely discover.
These underrated songs trace Charli's evolution from indie-pop newcomer to hyperpop pioneer across her experimental era (2017-2024):
Key collaborators: A.G. Cook, SOPHIE, Danny L Harle, Dylan Brady (100 gecs), and Stargate
Themes explored: substance use anxiety, relationship turbulence, motherhood concerns, and industry paranoia
Production approach: boundary-pushing experimentation paired with unusual emotional vulnerability
For music explorers seeking the best tracks beyond algorithmic recommendations, these songs capture Charli XCX at her most creative, emotional, and sonically adventurous.
1. "So I": BRAT's most underrated emotional core
"So I" stands as the most powerful moment on BRAT, yet Charli and her team gave it no single release while club tracks like "360" dominated promotional efforts. The song mourns collaborator and friend SOPHIE through auto-tuned grief, directly quoting SOPHIE's track "It's Okay To Cry" with the lyric: "And I know you always said 'It's okay to cry' / So I know I can cry, I can cry, so I cry."
The production honors SOPHIE's legacy through sophisticated electronic textures while maintaining emotional directness. NME describes how the track "So I" explores Charli's relationship with the late electronic pioneer: "Always on my mind (every day, every night) / Your star burns so bright (why did I push you away?)" This combination of vulnerability and forward-thinking production exemplifies why Charli's most emotionally direct work receives minimal commercial support despite major publication acclaim.
2. "Backseat" featuring Carly Rae Jepsen: spacious hyperpop experiment born from gabber origins
Originally "much faster, almost gabber-influenced," this Pop 2 standout transformed when Carly Rae Jepsen's contributions demanded the production breathe more. As A.G. Cook explained in The Fader interview, he "used a lot of granular synthesis on this one, taking Charli's vocal takes and stretching them into these ambient pads that sit underneath everything. The production is actually very dense, but it feels spacious."
Best Moment: The chorus builds with Carly Rae's layered harmonies floating above Cook's granular textures, creating an emotional swell that rewards repeated listens.
3. "Thoughts": Danny L Harle's euphoric yet melancholic production
Danny L Harle's production signature of pitched-up, cascading synths gives this Charli album track its trance-like quality while addressing Charli's most direct exploration of substance use and anxiety. Genius verified annotations confirm the song explores "taking too many pills, drowning yourself in work and partying that feels like work, surrounding yourself with people."
Charli told The Guardian that Danny L Harle "has this ability to make things feel euphoric and sad at the same time" on the track "Thoughts," which explores anxiety: "This song is about anxiety, but the production makes you want to dance." This tension between sonic euphoria and lyrical darkness represents Charli's sophisticated approach to pop songwriting, using accessible production frameworks to communicate excluded experiences. Despite its artistic merit, the track remains overshadowed by Charli's more commercially viable material.
4. "Party 4 U": five years from release to recognition
Released on how i'm feeling now in 2020, "Party 4 U" required five years to achieve mainstream recognition. The song's journey illustrates how initial chart performance fails to measure a track's true impact:
Billboard debut: March 2025, despite accumulating over 439 million Spotify streams
Production context: A.G. Cook collaborated remotely from London during COVID-19 lockdown
Thematic focus: Relationship dynamics during isolation captured through intimate production
Commercial breakthrough: The track's viral success contributed to how i'm feeling now's 2,600% sales surge following vinyl reissue
This delayed recognition proves quality sometimes requires years to find its audience.
Best Moment: The chorus's yearning vocal delivery captures isolation's emotional weight with devastating precision.
5. "Tears" featuring Caroline Polachek: PC Music meets mainstream pop production
This Pop 2 track achieves what seemed impossible: merging PC Music's digital experimentation with Stargate's mainstream pop sensibilities. The unlikely pairing created one of the album's most ambitious moments. A.G. Cook explained to Vulture how Charli wanted to demonstrate "you could have this very digital, PC Music sound but still work with traditional pop hitmakers. Stargate brought these huge chord progressions, and we made them sound futuristic."
Caroline Polachek's contribution transformed the chorus entirely. According to Charli, Polachek "has this insane ability to write melodies that feel classic but also totally new." The track embodies Charli's vision of pop music's future: innovative production techniques supporting songwriting strong enough to transcend underground limitations.
Best Moment: When Polachek's vocals enter the chorus, the production opens into something simultaneously alien and deeply familiar.
6. "7 years": intimate quarantine reflection
Charli created this track during lockdown isolation, abandoning her typical club-ready production for something unusually vulnerable. A.G. Cook explained the minimalist approach: "We used almost no drums on this one. It's mostly just synth pads and Charli's voice, very close and personal. The loudest sound in the whole track is probably her breath."
Charli told NPR she'd been thinking about her relationship "and how much time we'd spent together. The lyrics are very direct, and A.G. made the production feel really intimate." This stripped-back aesthetic reveals Charli's range beyond hyperpop maximalism, proving her songwriting strength doesn't require elaborate production.
7. "Stay Away": True Romance's dark synth-pop foundation
This track laid the groundwork for everything Charli would become, establishing the darker sonic aesthetic that would shape her artistic identity. Working with producer Ariel Rechtshaid, Charli explained to Coup de Main: "Working with Ariel was about finding this balance between something really aggressive and punk, but also melodic and poppy. We wanted it to feel dangerous." The production features distorted guitars layered with synth work.
NME's retrospective confirms True Romance established everything artistically, building credentials before the commercial pivot of Sucker. "Stay Away" remains overshadowed by later commercial success, yet understanding Charli's artistic evolution requires hearing where it began.
Best Moment: The chorus hits with distorted guitar and synth collision, sounding simultaneously dangerous and irresistible.
8. "I Think About It All the Time": BRAT's motherhood anxiety
Contemporary pop songs rarely address fertility anxieties with BRAT's directness. According to NME, "I Think About It All the Time" explores the worries of running out of time for motherhood, with Charli asking: "should I stop my birth control / because my career feels so small, in the existential scheme of it all."
The production balances BRAT's characteristic quirky vocal delivery with vulnerable exploration of career-motherhood tensions rarely addressed in mainstream pop. This thematic territory marks Charli's maturation as a songwriter: she uses pop's accessible framework to explore psychological complexity excluded from commercial music. The track received no promotional support despite containing some of BRAT's most emotionally sophisticated writing.
9. "Unlock It" featuring Kim Petras and Jay Park: twenty-minute freestyle magic
Charli and collaborators wrote the hook "in like 20 minutes" during a freestyle session, yet "Unlock It" features production innovation disguised as effortless pop. A.G. Cook revealed the song's intricate construction: "The instrumental has all these locked grooves and loops that feel almost restrictive, which mirrors the lyrical theme about unlocking." He further explained that the bass line consists of pitched-down vocals: "The bass is actually pitched-down vocals."
This technical creativity shows why Charli's collaborations with A.G. Cook produce her most sonically interesting material. The track balances innovative production with immediate hooks, creating accessible entry points to hyperpop for listeners unfamiliar with PC Music aesthetics. However, Pop 2 material like "Unlock It" remains known primarily to devoted fans rather than casual listeners, despite its sophisticated production.
10. "Sympathy is a Knife": BRAT's unhinged industry paranoia
Peanut Butter Pope describes "Sympathy is a Knife" hits as one of the album's bruisers, with Charli going ugly where her paranoia and combativeness are concerned. The track features disco strings juxtaposed with one of Charli's most unrestrained vocal performances; she sounds frightened even as she confronts.
Charli is so online in this track that she wishes for strife to come to her enemy whilst admitting to wanting to blow her own brains out at the same time. This darkness, communicated through pop aesthetics including disco strings against a frightened, distant vocal performance, exemplifies why Charli's most emotionally complex work receives minimal commercial promotion despite album-level success. The song challenges pop music's escapist function with uncomfortable psychological honesty.
Best Moment: The disco strings surge beneath Charli's most vulnerable admission, creating a disorienting contrast between glamour and despair.
Why these songs matter
These ten tracks capture different facets of Charli XCX's artistic evolution, and together they reveal the creative range that makes her catalog worth exploring beyond the hits:
True Romance's darker indie foundations established her artistic identity before commercial pivots
The PC Music partnership beginning with Number 1 Angel (2017) introduced hyperpop experimentation
Pop 2 and Charli pushed production boundaries with granular synthesis and pitched-down vocals as bass
BRAT's recent explorations tackle grief, motherhood anxiety, and industry paranoia with rare directness
Together, these elements reveal an artist whose creative ambition consistently exceeds commercial expectations.
For music explorers seeking deeper connections beyond surface-level hits, these underrated songs reveal an artist who consistently prioritizes artistic growth over commercial safety. They feature collaborators like A.G. Cook, SOPHIE, and Dylan Brady who shaped hyperpop's sound; lyrics addressing experiences excluded from mainstream releases including grief, substance use, motherhood anxiety, and industry paranoia; and production techniques that push electronic music's boundaries.
Start your deep dive into Charli's catalog
These underrated tracks prove Charli's most innovative work exists beyond algorithm-driven playlists. They feature production experimentation and emotional vulnerability that mainstream singles deliberately avoid. From SOPHIE's distorted bass textures to A.G. Cook's granular synthesis, these songs occupy the creative frontier where pop music challenges its own commercial boundaries.
Streaming algorithms miss the songs that define an artist's creative vision; they surface only what performs well in the first 30 seconds rather than what resonates across repeated listens. Exploring beyond hits reveals the full scope of an artist's creative vision, where artists like Charli XCX push genre boundaries without sacrificing emotional authenticity.
Ready to discover more overlooked gems? We surface the songs algorithms miss.
