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Charli XCX: Alone Together review – singer’s intimate journal of lockdown album
Documentary follows the singer as she pulls together her record How I’m Feeling Now in close touch with her fans
“It’s so hard to focus, because I know that you’re watching,” complains Charli XCX to camera in this video diary about her lockdown project: cobbling together fourth album How I’m Feeling Now in an ad hoc home studio in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, that’s the predicament the pop star has made for herself, thanks to her hyper-intimate relationship with her fanbase; not just sharing her millennial insecurities freely with them on social media, but also the making of this record.
How I’m Feeling Now – recorded to a tight deadline – joins Bo Burnham’s Inside and Zoom slasher Host as quarantine-prompted creative endeavours to put our burnt banana bread and wonky tomato trellises to shame. Charli XCX, saying art is crucial for her mental wellbeing, rolls her sleeves up as soon she receives a box of mics from her producer. She massages her off-kilter lockdown emotions into zeitgeist-ready toplines over choice beats arriving in her inbox from around the world. Long-term boyfriend Huck Kwong, with whom she finds herself in sudden cohabitation after previously never having spent more than 11 days with him, is another source of inspiration.
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