Charli XCX has at all times thrived in contradictions, however “Chains of Love” finds her exploring darker, extra visceral emotional territory than ever earlier than.
Launched because the second single from her forthcoming Wuthering Heights soundtrack album (dropping February 13, 2026, simply forward of Emerald Fennel’s movie adaptation), this monitor marks a pointy departure from the chaos-driven hyperpop that outlined BRAT.
As a substitute, it embraces a haunting, melancholic aesthetic that feels each well timed and inevitable.
The monitor opens with Charli speak-singing a sequence of masochistic declarations: “I’d moderately lay down in thorns/I’d moderately drown in a stream/I’d moderately gentle myself on hearth.”
These aren’t idle metaphors. They’re the determined calculations of somebody trapped in an all-consuming relationship.
The imagery is brutal, bodily, and uncomfortably vivid, capturing the self-destructive impulse that love can set off when it turns into obsession.
The road “I’d moderately watch my pores and skin bleed/Within the eye of your storm” crystallizes this theme completely, positioning the narrator as somebody who would moderately endure bodily ache than emotional abandonment.
Producer Finn Keane (who beforehand crafted BRAT highlights like “Von Dutch” and “Sympathy Is a Knife”) strips away the maximalist manufacturing Charli is thought for, changing it with orchestral preparations that really feel sweeping but suffocating.
The strings add weight and drama, whereas Charli’s vocal supply stays measured and managed, creating stress between the rawness of the lyrics and the restraint in her efficiency.
The refrain hits hardest: “My face is popping blue/Can’t breathe with out you right here/The chains of affection are merciless/I shouldn’t really feel like a prisoner.”
Right here, Charli articulates the central paradox of poisonous attachment: the popularity that this relationship is harmful, but the lack to interrupt free from it.
The metaphor of chains is direct however efficient, capturing each the bondage and the permanence she feels.
The repetition of “I shouldn’t really feel like a prisoner” suggests self-awareness with out company, a typical expertise for these caught in patterns they know are dangerous however can’t escape.
The chorus (“I do know the chains of affection gained’t break”) features as each resignation and acceptance. There’s no hope for freedom right here, no promise of future liberation.
Charli presents love not as one thing that heals or fulfills, however as an inescapable pressure that damages and transforms.
This aligns completely with Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, the place Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship is much less about romance and extra about obsession, revenge, and the methods love can warp folks past recognition.
What makes “Chains of Love” significantly hanging is the way it features as a sonic buffer between BRAT and no matter comes subsequent.
The soundtrack framing permits Charli to experiment with out the burden of expectation that may accompany a regular follow-up album.
She’s exploring new textures and moods with out abandoning her core id as a pop provocateur. The orchestral components and gothic ambiance show her vary whereas sustaining the emotional honesty that has at all times outlined her strongest work.
Charli has confirmed again and again that her melancholic materials usually surpasses her extra chaotic output. Tracks like “Observe 10” and “Visions” showcase her skill to channel vulnerability into one thing each stunning and unsettling.
“Chains of Love” belongs on this lineage. It’s a track that lingers, that makes you sit with discomfort moderately than providing simple catharsis.
The bridge strips issues again to wordless vocalisations (“Oh, oh, oh, oh”), a second the place language fails and solely uncooked emotion stays.
It’s a quick respite earlier than the outro returns to that haunting chorus, driving dwelling the inevitability of being trapped on this cycle.
“Chains of Love” doesn’t romanticise the very factor it’s named after, as an alternative Charli presents love as one thing soiled, darkish, and tinged with nostalgia: stunning in its depth however harmful in its permanence.
The track captures the frustration of wanting escape whereas concurrently craving imprisonment, of recognising toxicity whereas being unable to withstand it.
This isn’t a track about heartbreak. It’s concerning the second earlier than heartbreak, once you’re nonetheless tethered to one thing you already know will destroy you.
It’s gothic pop at its most interesting: twisted, profound, and uncomfortably sincere. As Charli continues constructing in direction of the complete Wuthering Heights venture, “Chains of Love” establishes her skill to inhabit the supernatural and tormented world of Brontë’s novel whereas making it really feel startlingly modern.
