anthems

Charli XCX's "anthems," from 2020's lockdown-made *how i'm feeling now*, is a hyperpop howl of pandemic restlessness, produced with A. G. Cook and Danny L Harle at PC Music's abrasive, sugar-rush frontier. It detonates with distorted synth stabs, a pummeling four-on-the-floor kick, and metallic textures that sound simultaneously euphoric and corroded — a rave anthem for a party that can't happen. Charli's vocal veers from deadpan verse ("I'm so bored / wake up late, eat some cereal") to a soaring, Auto-Tune-glossed chorus screaming for connection, sweat, and "just some fun." The lyric is brutally relatable to its moment: stuck inside, craving strangers and dancefloors, mourning the mundane thrills of nightlife. It captures quarantine's specific ache — the collision of numbing boredom and desperate yearning — with more honesty than most "official" pandemic art. Charli, pop's restless futurist, made the whole album in six weeks with fan input, and "anthems" became its emotional peak, a communal scream released alone. The production's maximalist noise is the point: overwhelming, cathartic, almost painful. It's music for dancing hard in your bedroom, headphones cranked, imagining the crowd you can't touch — a document of collective isolation that somehow makes solitude feel shared.