It’s tough to imagine a more unlikely superstar than Charli xcx. Despite her almost unwavering reluctance to slot herself into any of the preconceived ideas of what a pop artist should sound like, she managed to score what was inarguably the biggest album of 2024 with Brat, a collection of tracks that took Charli’s already maximalist pop ideas and dialed them up to 100. Rewind just a few years, however, and you’ll see the early signs of her burgeoning ascent in her brilliant 2020 release how i’m feeling now, an album that makes grungy, distorted synths and clanging drums sound prettier than I ever thought possible.

The opening track, “pink diamond,” gives the uninitiated the clearest sense of what Charli’s about. It’s a loud, abrasive track that zaps the listener into a dark club, with strobe lights flashing just enough to spot the sea of sweaty dancers beside you. It’s pure party-girl music, designed to get your blood pumping. But the brilliance of this album lies in how it can take these same sounds, along with Charli’s mastery of her voice as an instrument, and channel them into something as sweet as “party 4 u,” possibly the best pure pop song of the bunch. She pulls off a similar trick on “c2.0,” where glitchy percussion and manipulated, stacked vocals threaten to explode into something overpowering before settling into an insanely catchy refrain.

how i’m feeling now does a masterful job of throwing unexpected ingredients together to create something exciting. Even on a track like “enemy,” which relies on fewer electro-pop eccentricities, Charli finds a fun way to deliver the lyrics and slips in a killer chorus that’ll demand extra listens. Whether you want to get drunk and dance til you pass out or lament past (or present) relationships, there’s a song here that could easily become your soundtrack.