How I'm Feeling Now
| Charli XCX
How I'm Feeling Now
How I'm Feeling Now is the fourth studio album by English singer and songwriter Charli XCX, released on 15 May 2020. The album was released eight months after her previous album Charli(2019) and was made in a "do-it-yourself" collaborative process with her fans in the span of six weeks. The recording and title were inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Charli XCX, A. G. Cook and BJ Burton served as the album's executive producers. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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The Guardian
truly a work of its time.
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NME
Written and recorded in just five-and-a-half weeks, this wonky pop record perfectly encapsulates the disorientating mood of our current, bizarre times.
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Variety
Considering its short and spontaneous gestation period, “How I’m Feeling Now” is more like a collection of short stories than the novel-scale “Charli” — it’s a challenge to herself, a productive way to fend off stir-craziness during lockdown.
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PopMatters
How I'm Feeling Now captures the frustrations and pleasures of confinement with a feisty attitude.
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Paste
You can hear the authenticity and work ethic in every fuzzy beat of music's first major quarantine album.
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Slant Magazine
Heartbreak and despondency will always have a place in pop music, whether inflicted by a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic or the day-to-day vicissitudes of emotion. Though How I’m Feeling Now was born out of the former, it finds something interesting to say about the latter.
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Vinyl Chapters
Credit has to be given to Charli XCX and the producers for creating a solid time capsule of an album, in extreme circumstances, without any physical interaction. With the (what should be) the festival season approaching, pull your household into the sun and blast How I’m Feeling Now, it’s the closest you’ll get to feeling like you’re at Glastonbury.
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Uproxx
Charli XCX’s Glitchy And Chaotic Quarantine Album Is Her Best Work To Date.
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Pitchfork
The British electro pop artist sings of love, loneliness, and solo partying across an album built in and made for this very moment.
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The Post
Still, the actual tracks themselves, with no real depth or range within her voice, are nothing near musical masterpieces. Unfortunately, maybe Charli XCX should reconsider producing an album in 39 days if the situation presents itself again.
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Stereogum
For an album made in a month entirely in quarantine, that’s a remarkable achievement.
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No Ripcord
From where we currently sit, it’s another intriguing entry into the Charli XCX canon, even if it does feel like more of a stopgap than anything. But hey, right now, that’s okay too.
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The Independent
Just like lockdown itself, How I’m Feeling Now can be overwhelming – panic-inducing, even – when taken as a whole. But there are snatches of brilliance here, and as perhaps the very first album to be produced under lockdown, it is really quite an achievement.
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The Line of Best Fit
In essence, the album is a collection of mechanical cacophony tempered at opportune times by Charli’s melodic touch.
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Hotpress
It's not just a unique experiment in her discography, but a record that will be looked at for years to come as a zeitgeist of 2020.
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Afterglow
The result is an album that sees the singer at the absolute top of her game and continuing in her most promising directions — to think that it was all done in six weeks.
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Medium
Trust in Charli XCX to deliver perhaps one of her best albums whilst locked up in quarantine — but who could ever really doubt her? She’s the best and most qualified person for the task.
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All Music
More than just an interesting social media experiment or a way to fend off quarantine boredom, it's an artistic challenge that's true to the very best parts of XCX's music.
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Clash Magazine
Charli starts and ends with hard disorienting club bangers, leaving the middle of the album space to expose her tenderness and vulnerability while still retaining her futuristic, unpredictable sound and penchant for an irresistible pop hook.
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musicOMH
Here then is a cultural landmark, a record of what we’re all going through together, something to show our grand-kittens and, at its core, just a really good record.
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DIY
It’s the lockdown soundtrack we all need.
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The Student Playlist
In writing, recording and producing a masterpiece in conjunction with collaborators remotely during a lockdown, Charli XCX shows herself to be one of pop’s most industrious and imaginative stars.
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The Indiependent
how i’m feeling now is a beautifully raw pop masterpiece that only Charli XCX could create. Unique, forward-thinking in both its futuristic human sound and its production process, and authentic, this record highlights Charli at the top of her game and as one of the boldest, smartest, and innovative artists currently producing music, particularly within the pop mainstream.
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The Times
Created alone in isolation, this is a riotous hit.
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The VLM
There are multiple energies at play in this trippy journey of isolation, breaks and assorted EDM, which make for a caged and frenzied album, alongside a level of anxiety that frames the current times perfectly.
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The Quietus
While not life-altering, how i’m feeling now is fun, fast and thoroughly listenable. It’s absorbing as a document from a strange period, and its diaristic, vloggy aspects provide an intriguing peek into artistry under pressure.
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The Arts Fuse
how i’m feeling now grows more interesting with each successive listen. Charli has successfully dramatized her impatiently jagged state of mind, supplying an emotionally honest stream of consciousness that suggests what she (and no doubt many others of her generation) is feeling and thinking in quarantine.
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Stereoboard
‘How I’m Feeling Now’ demonstrates Charli XCX’s talent as a songwriter and the idiosyncrasies of her corrosive pop brand, helped by a team of erudite producers including frequent collaborator A.G Cook. It’s testament to how creativity can thrive under these conditions, producing a body of work that will be regarded as one of the year’s best pop albums.
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The Telegraph
ultra-plastic pop becomes cutting-edge sonic art.
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Backseat Mafia
With How I’m Feeling Now a nd last year’s Charli, it sure seems like the pop phenomenon is heading in a much bolder and unique direction, which is such a terrific thing to see.
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Campus Times
The album picks up exactly where “Charli” left off, embracing the PC Pop genre that defines her sound. The album evokes sensations of a bubblegum pop world layered with different emotions that Charli XCX is currently experiencing while in quarantine.
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Daily Bruin
Charli XCX masterfully captures moment in lyrical journey of ‘how i’m feeling now’.
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Mystic Sons
'how i'm feeling now' plays as more of an experiment into how quickly an artist can force themselves to be creative without external stimuli. The result is a fresh and exciting release that shows she doesn't need to leave the house to be the experimental and ever-evolving artist she is.
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The Star
Glitchy and restless, but breeds optimism.
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Crack Magazine
The album is, by definition, an archive of both quarantine conditions and of, well, how she feels within them. What’s incredible is how effective of an archive it is.
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Loud and Quiet
Long dismissed as a weird starlet in pop’s ordered constellation, Charli XCX suddenly has the entire world on her wavelength and admirably in this unprecedented chaos she has emerged with her most consistent, rewarding and relatable album. This is undoubtedly next level Charli.
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Soul Feeder
Even if initially teased as a “quarantine album”, how I’m feeling now is far from a concept album. But still, it perfectly captures the present zeitgeist, made by the internet warping every aspect of our locked-up lives, missing hanging out with friends and great love stories to celebrate.
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mxdwn
Those familiar with Charli XCX’s sound and history know she tends to try out new things with her music whenever she can. She’s constantly evolving and growing. However, the project’s lack of diversity and overuse of repetition comes across as quite bland and definitely not up to Charli’s usual standards.
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Gigwise
how i’m feeling now, is a perfect distillation of the anxieties we must face and the fragile hopes we dare to hold tightly. It’s a glittering headrush – perhaps her most challenging work of all, in fact.
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Sputnik Music
“How I’m feeling now” perfectly encapsulates the idea that music brings us together, as it has constantly done throughout genereations and will do for centuries to come.
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Indiana Daily Student
Charli XCX’s new album is a beautiful encapsulation of human emotion.
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London Evening Standard
A fully formed lockdown love album.
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Our Culture
We might not be able to party like we used to, but how i’m feeling now leaves us with the hope that this kind of unadulterated joy is just out there on the horizon, and makes sure to give us a taste of what it could be like.
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megsthoughts
Charli XCX’s ‘how i’m feeling now’ is, so far, one of my favourite albums of the year. It reflects a period of many of our lives in which we are uncertain, anxiety-ridden and unsure of the future. The delve into more experimental pop is a welcome distraction.
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East Side Vibes
It really is no surprise to me at all that Charli XCX was able to create one of the best albums of 2020 while locked in her house during a quarantine, because there are not many artists that are as talented, cutting edge, and hard-working as her.
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The Rich Report
This is the perfect quarantine album. It captures all the feelings that one would have during this time, and will serve as a time capsule and a piece of music history for these unprecedented times.
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Key Change
The British experimental pop star releases an outstanding, quarantine-born album that could not be more of the moment.
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Quai du Commerce
This quarantine inspired release rarely amounts to more than a sketchbook with unfinished drawings.
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Aura
Collaboration is at the heart of the Charli XCX brand, and despite being confined to self isolation she still manages to bring together a cohort of creatives.
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Insider
'How I'm Feeling Now' is a masterclass in experimental pop for the genre-less generation.
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The Cultured Nerd
The pop star and her collaborators were able to meet their deadline, and the results are impressive.
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