Final rating: 2/5
For fans of pop music, Charli XCX is either someone you can only relate to the ICONA POP song “I Love It” or you think she is the queen for the inevitable sound of the future. Back in 2019 she had put out her biggest album to date, Charli, and was on the verge of a breakthrough. Her idiosyncratic blend of hyperpop and mainstream RnB seemed to be the future of pop music. She netted features from A-listers like Lizzo, Haim, Troye Sivan, Christine and the Queens, Kim Petras, Skye Ferreira and others. While she had headlined her own tours before, she was going on her biggest one yet and looked poised to become a new main girl. Then as we all know what happened next, the world went to shit and everything locked down in early spring 2020. It halted Charli’s tour and forced her to be confined in her house as stay at home measures were installed. Charli XCX: Alone Together chronicles the chapter in the singer’s life where instead of just being stuck inside, she decided to make an album while also opening up the process to her fans for them to see how a record is made.
The film opens with the spiel above and shows the British singer seemingly about to hit a new peak career wise, then how it all came crashing down. She decided to self isolate at her Los Angeles home with her boyfriend Huck Kwong, who she has been dating on and off for a decade and who usually lives full time in New York on his own, and one of her managers and best friends Sam Pringle. Charli is a creative who has been working in the industry since she was 16 when she began posting her music to MySpace. She outlines how she nary has had a moment of solitude since then. If she isn’t writing, producing, singing, touring, shooting, dancing, guesting or anything else career related she doesn’t know what to do, and even when she is doing all the above, it’s in the service of the future and never enjoying the moment. So like many people, when lockdowns started and you literally couldn’t do anything, Charli felt a massive void. When she publicly announced she would use this time to make a new album (back then it was expected a lockdown would only be a few weeks because the world was so naive) directors Bradley & Pablo, who made their name directing music videos, including previous ones for Charli, decided to make their documentary debut by asking Charli to film the process for them. The three people living in the house all use camcorders to document Charli writing, singing, editing, taking business meetings and private moments of love, frustration and sadness.
The wrinkle in all this is that Charli decided to allow her fanbase, known as Angels (in reference to her 2017 album Number 1 Angel) to not only view her process through live streams on Instagram but also be invited onto Zoom meetings to help collaborate with lyrics and provide direct feedback in real time to the creative process. We get plenty of footage from her Angel’s perspective. They are a group of people who feel like they don’t fit in, whether it is because their queer or trans identities aren’t accepted where they are, to people who are bullied to others who live in rural areas that are just too small for them, they find a common and accepting group of like minded fans. We see them get excited by daily updates, interact with Charli on social media, complain how the lockdown is affecting them and more. We live in a moment where unprecedented access is available now and Charli lays everything bare for her fans.
Charli deciding to be so open and available to her fans on the surface is a good thing. It also seems to take a toll on her mental health. We get to listen in on telephone therapy sessions and see the self doubt that Charli suffers from. She breaks down when her therapist tells her to write down and repeat three simple sentences about accepting her self worth and later posts a voice memo calling herself a bad person who is unworthy, to which her mother video calls her in tears as her boyfriend is in shock in the background. To some, this will seem like a fascinating expose that celebrities are just like us, but to others, it might be a mentally unstable person putting far too much online purposely as a cry for attention. As someone who personally believes not everything needs to be shared with the world, seeing someone consciously decide to turn on their camera whilst they are crying to talk about how unhappy and unsatisfied they are only to purposely post it for everyone to see, is not enjoyable to witness nor was it something healthy for Charli to do.
The actual film itself feels like a teenager’s phone has exploded. We get text messages overlaid on the screen as it frantically cuts from one dancing Angel to another, never allowing a moment to settle down. What likely is most interesting is how this is such a time capsule of a film. It entirely takes place in spring of 2020 at the height and panic of COVID-19. The album Charli was working on how i’m feeling now was released on May 15th of that year and that is when the documentary ends. At that time period it had been less than two months of stay at home orders. People were still panic buying toilet paper and were unsure if you should be sanitizing your groceries before bringing them in the house. Looking back it is fascinating to see how much the world unraveled for a few short months before picking themselves back up and trying to pretend like most people didn’t become doomsday preppers during the time. It is all especially interesting considering how quickly the United States just tried to pretend the pandemic wasn’t a thing and opened nearly everything back to where it was before despite hospitals being over capacity and hundreds of thousands of people dying.
The final product that Carli XCX made was eventually short listed for the Mercury Prize that year for Best British Album and this documentary is a fascinating look at a time when we didn’t know if the world was legitimately going to end or not, even if a lot of what is on screen doesn’t quite work out.
The film is now available to watch in theaters and on VOD. Thanks to Shore Fire Media for the screener.
