Charli XCX Captures the Weird Intimacy of Quarantine
The pop star’s daring album <em>How I’m Feeling Now</em> tries to make online hedonism match the real thing.
What is the pandemic doing to the passage of time? Are the days blurring into one another? Plodding? Dissolving? Charli XCX, the crafty U.K. pop star, thought she had an answer. “The days are warping,” the 27-year-old sang in the rough draft of a verse she’d written for her made-in-quarantine album, How I’m. On her in April, while sitting in front of a funky brick fireplace in her L.A. home and fiddling with her gray hoodie, she debuted those lyrics—and she realized that she had a problem. sounded like when she sang it in her rapid-fire, Brit-accented cadence. Whatever the days are doing, they are not whopping.
