Charli XCX has shared details on working with John Cale for the “elegant and brutal” single ‘House’ from the Wuthering Heights soundtrack.
Announcing the track – which features Cale – on Instagram yesterday (November 6), Charli called it “the first offering from my album for Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights“. The song will be released on Monday (November 10).
Later, she shared a longer statement, saying she felt “immediately” inspired to start making music for the film.
“After being so in the depths of my previous album, I was excited to escape into something entirely new, entirely opposite,” she wrote. “When I think of Wuthering Heights, I think of many things. I think of passion and pain. I think of England. I think of the Moors, I think of the mud and the cold. I think of determination and grit.”
The video teaser shares a brief snippet of the track’s haunting violins and shows Charli being pinned down by an elderly hand while staring directly into the camera. “Can I speak to you privately for a moment?” an ominous voice then asks. Check it out below.
Detailing the collaboration with Cale, Charli called herself a “huge fan” of The Velvet Underground, and recalled a quote from Cale in the band’s documentary, when he said, “any song had to be both ‘elegant and brutal.’”
Charli wrote: “I got really stuck on that phrase. I wrote it down in my notes app and would pull it up from time to time and think about what he meant.” She explained that the phrase came up while she was making the music for this film, so she decided to reach out to him for his opinion, and they ended up collaborating.
“That voice, so elegant, so brutal. I sent him some songs, and we started talking specifically about House. We spoke about the idea of a poem. He recorded something and sent it to me. Something that only John could do. And it was… well, it made me cry,” she wrote. “I feel so lucky to have been able to work with John on this song. I’ve been so excited to share it with you all, sitting quietly in anticipation.”
Cale co-founded The Velvet Underground, and has since become an influential figure in avant-garde, rock, classical, and electronic music. Alongside his solo music and work with the band, he’s also produced for the likes of Patti Smith and The Stooges.
It’s not the first time she’s spoken of her love for the Velvet Underground, having previously called their 1967 album ‘The Velvet Underground & Nico’ “the apex of fine art”, during her acceptance speech at Variety’s Hitmakers Awards last year.
Wuthering Heights is being directed by Saltburn filmmaker Emerald Fennell. It’s an adaptation of Emily Bronte’s classic novel, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi as doomed lovers Catherine and Heathcliff. A test screening earlier this year reportedly caused controversy among the audience due to the graphic sexual scenes in the film.
Charli is set to release an accompanying album for the film, which has so far been previewed by a new version of her song ‘Everything Is Romantic’.
As well as the Wuthering Heights soundtrack, Charli additionally shared in 2023 that she was working with Jack Antonoff to write songs for upcoming A24 film Mother Mary.
Outside of music, Charli has kickstarted her career in film by playing a comedic version of herself in the TV show Overcompensating. She has also taken a lead role in Pete Ohs’ Erupcja, and starred in 100 Nights Of Hero, which closed this year’s London Film Festival.
Charli is also set to appear in the adventure-comedy Sacrifice alongside Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Evans, the upcoming erotic thriller I Want Your Sex alongside Olivia Wilde and Cooper Hoffman, and Dakota Johnson’s first film as director.
She will also produce and star in her upcoming A24 “mockumentary” The Moment that “follows the life of a pop star in the lead-up to her first headline arena tour”.
In May, she hinted that she was expecting her next album to go in a completely different direction than ‘Brat’, saying: “You can never really do the same thing twice and my next record will probably be a flop, which I’m down for to be honest.”
And in February, her producers A.G. Cook, Finn Keane and George Daniel – also her husband – said that the follow-up is shaping up to be “anti-Brat”, Keane saying: “Some of the conversations we’re having and music we’ve been playing around with the last couple of months have been completely the opposite.”
Recently, she revealed that she is “exploring a lot of stuff with strings” for the album.
