Despite what others may have to say, pop music is on a hell of a run as Summer 2021 comes to a close. High-gloss bangers from Banks, Sigrid, and Kim Petras have heated up the season as we storm into Labor Day, and today (September 3), true queen Charli XCX has thrown down an alt-pop gauntlet with a new wave- and Italo disco-inspired rager called “Good Ones.”
And it’s got everything. “The first single of my new chapter embraces all that my life has to offer in today’s world — fame, glamour, inner demons, and global hits,” declares Charli.
Clocking in at a multiple stream-minded runtime of 2:16, “Good Ones” marks the artist’s first new music since last year’s quarantine-inspired How I’m Feeling Now LP. Produced by Oscar Holte, it’s a little bit Laura Branigan’s “Self-Control,” a dash of Stacey Q, and full of modern electro firepower that vaults Charli back to the forefront of pop music.
The stunning high-fashion video, directed by Hannah Lux Davis, at times the goth spender of My Chemical Romance’s “Helena”, placing Charli at a funeral scene lamenting all the ones that got away. We can’t take our eyes off it, so it’s probably us who are dead.
Here’s what she has to say about it: “The ‘Good Ones’ video sees me dramatically mourning the untimely loss of my partner as I battle with the realization that once again I’ve abandoned the goodness in my life, in favor of the sinister, with a visual aesthetic that marks a new era of me: Charli XCX.”
Sweet baby Jesus.
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