--- title: Review: Charli XCX's 'Sucker' Outdoes Her Peers description: 'Sucker' contains a dressing room’s worth of new styles and a Top 40 playlist’s worth of pop moves canonical: https://time.com/3633651/charli-xcx-sucker-album-review/ author: Katherine St. Asaph article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-12-15T16:52:11.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T02:51:34.832Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Review: Charli XCX's 'Sucker' Outdoes Her Peers og:description: 'Sucker' contains a dressing room’s worth of new styles and a Top 40 playlist’s worth of pop moves og:url: https://time.com/3633651/charli-xcx-sucker-album-review/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt67ee3b8355dd76e3/69876eb606f2c1927c332db5/charli_xcx_sucker.jpg?branch=production&width=1440&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Charli XCX Sucker og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Review: Charli XCX's 'Sucker' Outdoes Her Peers twitter:description: 'Sucker' contains a dressing room’s worth of new styles and a Top 40 playlist’s worth of pop moves twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt67ee3b8355dd76e3/69876eb606f2c1927c332db5/charli_xcx_sucker.jpg?branch=production&width=1440&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Review: On _Sucker_, Charli XCX Outdoes Her Peers > Sponsored content. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [Katherine St. Asaph](https://time.com/author/katherine-st-asaph/) ## Katherine St. Asaph Dec 15, 2014 4:52 PM UTC  Atlantic Records by [Katherine St. Asaph](https://time.com/author/katherine-st-asaph/) ## Katherine St. Asaph Dec 15, 2014 4:52 PM UTC To those who know Charli XCX from “Boom Clap” — the sugary, besotten cut from _The Fault in Our Stars_ turned breakout hit — she’s a newcomer: another bratty new face from a pop machine that stamps out bratty new faces. In reality, Charlotte Aitchison is already a pop lifer at 22, on about her [fourth reinvention](http://www.mtvhive.com/2013/04/23/charli-xcx-true-romance/). First, she was a [Myspace DIYer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZU7hw-JbUc), then a [gothy ‘80s maximalist](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGmM2l39LEs), then a [crushed-out chillwave purveyor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsqNvy9v93s), and now an unlikely teenpop starlet. Madonna would be dizzied by reinvention at this pace: _Sucker_ is not Charli XCX’s debut album but her _third._ It’s also the normal pace pop runs at in 2014, where artists’ A&R reinventions – the retoolings upon retoolings that precede artists’ debut – take place not behind label doors but on SoundCloud, across blogs and otherwise in public, allowing each successive style to sweep in a new microdemographic of followers and fans. “Tweenage spitfire” might seem a stretch for someone whose prior demographic was mostly pop nerds and indie fans, but you could hear it coming. You could hear it on one-off “[SuperLove](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPWcX-16A9Y)”; you could definitely hear it on radio smash “[I Love It](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxxajLWwzqY)” (which Charli gave to Icona Pop thinking it didn’t fit her sound — so much has changed in so little time); and you could infer it from her entry into the major-label songwriters’ gallery, penning tracks for up-and-comers like [Ryn Weaver](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68wuJ2ACi5s) and [Bella Thorne](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaRP%5FA1jN5Y), her Disney doppelganger. Even her earliest shows in smallish venues, pulsed with bumping-and-grinding star charisma, made for huge arenas. “Boom Clap” is a songwriter’s pop song, a smart song – drunk as much on love as it is on form and onomatopoeia, and full of enough Charli touches to sound like hers. Still, it’s far more saccharine than career highlights “Stay Away” or “You’re the One.” It suggests a worst-case scenario of polishing away everything that made Charli XCX compelling, turning her into a could’ve-been story like _X Factor_ personality bomb Cher Lloyd (homogenized by Simon Cowell’s Syco) or British musical polyglot A\*M\*E (by Max Martin’s proteges). Fortunately, _Sucker_ is not that album; it only resembles a traditional teenpop debut during its draggy final stretch. It’s also not _True Romance._ That album was great for its deathly serious melodrama, but _Sucker_ is great because it takes _nothing_ seriously. Credit Aitchison, who’s proven herself adept both at musical reinvention and at industry politics. “I proved a point to my record label that I wasn’t f-cking around,” [she recently told TIME](http://time.com/3616754/charli-xcx-sucker/). “I can write big pop songs, but I can A&R myself as well.” What she’s A&Red herself into this time is something like a late-‘90s movie soundtrack, down to a Republica homage: lead track “Sucker.” The rhythms and sass come directly from “[Ready to Go](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgffRW1fKDk),” but the bridge — “Sitting on a plastic speedboat in the ultraviolet ocean, playing cool songs, trying to show off,” shouted singsong — is pure Charli, both in acid-trip surrealism and in attitude. Single “Break the Rules,” paced like an EDM stomper, takes ‘90s Shampoo and Garbage and turns them into ‘10s treasure. Icona Pop drove pop off this particular bridge years ago, and it’s thrilling to hear an artist revive these pleasures without the guilt. Even the bad ideas work. “London Queen” is like the Ramones as interpreted by Mary-Kate and Ashley, punctuated with Britishisms “Oi!” and “Wank!” like emoji. When she chirps things like, “When I’m driving on the wrong side of the road, I feel like J! F! K!” it’s embarrassing on the first listen. But on subsequent plays it’s exuberant, and great fun. Elsewhere, Charli XCX easily outdoes her peers. “Gold Coins” is Lorde’s “Royals” with the saturation and satire cranked up, and the broke bitterness even more acute. Throwbacks “Need Ur Luv” and “Breaking Up” (on the former, shades of [The Chalets](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OR5N7jQ-f4)) should render would-be doo-wopper Meghan Trainor entirely irrelevant. Given her younger fanbase, “Body of My Own” can’t go past PG-13, but smartly, it reserves its best euphemisms for the music – the “Turning Japanese” quotes, the effervescent bridge-as-climax. “Doing It” is pastiche worthy of last year’s Haim album, and fans of early Madonna will get much from “Dress You Up” pings and eerily reproduced vocal shimmer. And while Rivers Cuomo cowrite “Hanging Around” sounds exactly like early Weezer, its spoken-word bridge is as much a throwback to – again – Aitchison’s own “Stay Away.” _Sucker_ is full of callbacks like these: “Doing It” is like a sequel to “[Take My Hand](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7cOt-xFU8Y),” and “Body of My Own” outsulks anything on _True Romance_. It’s fitting. While _Sucker_ contains a dressing room’s worth of new styles and a Top 40 playlist’s worth of pop moves, Charli XCX is a smart enough songwriter to make them her own, and magnetic enough a presence to make that a winning prospect. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3633651/charli-xcx-sucker-album-review/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3633651/charli-xcx-sucker-album-review/"},"headline":"Review: On Sucker, Charli XCX Outdoes Her Peers","datePublished":"2014-12-15T16:52:11.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T02:51:34.832Z","description":"Sucker contains a dressing room’s worth of new styles and a Top 40 playlist’s worth of pop moves","url":"https://time.com/3633651/charli-xcx-sucker-album-review/","keywords":["Music","Album Review","Charli XCX","Album"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt67ee3b8355dd76e3/69876eb606f2c1927c332db5/charli_xcx_sucker.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Katherine St. Asaph","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/katherine-st-asaph/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt67ee3b8355dd76e3/69876eb606f2c1927c332db5/charli_xcx_sucker.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Charli XCX Sucker","caption":"Charli XCX Sucker","creditText":"Atlantic Records","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3633651/charli-xcx-sucker-album-review/","name":"Review: On Sucker, Charli XCX Outdoes Her Peers"}}]}] ```