True Romance (Charli XCX album)

True Romance is the debut studio album by English singer Charli XCX. It was released on 12 April 2013 by Asylum and Atlantic Records. Originally scheduled for release in April 2012, the album's release was delayed for a full year and had been in the making since early 2010 when Charli met with producer Ariel Rechtshaid in Los Angeles. To promote the album's release, Charli embarked on a three-date UK promotional tour in April 2013.

Background and recording
At 14, Charli XCX persuaded her parents to grant her a loan to record her first album, 14, and in early 2008, began posting songs from the album, as well as numerous other demos, on her official Myspace page. This caught the attention of a promoter running numerous illegal warehouse raves and parties in East London, who invited her to perform at them. She was billed on flyers under the stage name Charli XCX, which was her MSN Messenger display name when she was younger. Despite the illicit nature of the gigs, her parents were supportive of her career and attended several raves with her. In late 2008, while 14 was never commercially released, she released the two singles "!Franchesckaar!" and double A-side "Emelline"/"Art Bitch", under Orgy Music. She has since frequently expressed her distaste for her music of the time, going as far to call it "gimmicky dance tracks" and "fucking terrible Myspace music". At the age of 18, Charli moved to London to study for a fine art degree at UCL's Slade School of Fine Art but dropped out in her second year.

In 2010, Charli XCX was signed to Asylum Records. She later described herself as being "lost". In an interview with The Guardian, Charli XCX said: "I was still in school, I'd just come out of this weird rave scene, and I wasn't really sure what to make of that. And when I got signed I hated pop music; I wanted to make bad rap music. I didn't know who I was. I didn't know what I liked. Even though I was signed, I was still figuring it out." She eventually flew out to Los Angeles to meet producers, and found it "wasn't working out for me" until she met with American producer Ariel Rechtshaid. They had a two-hour session and wrote the song "Stay Away". She stated that's "when things started to come together". Early in 2011, she was featured on the Alex Metric single "End of the World". She left during the second year of her degree course at the Slade School of Fine Art to focus on her music career.

In addition to Rechtshaid, she began working with Swedish producer Patrik Berger. He sent her two beats, and she quickly wrote songs for each, one of which became "I Love It" and the other of which became "You're the One". She stated she didn't end up releasing "I Love It" herself as she could not reconcile it with her sound, but in 2012, Swedish duo Icona Pop re-recorded the song and released it as a single featuring her vocals. The song became an international hit, hitting number 1 in Charli's home country and climbing to number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2013.

Composition
"You're the One" has been compared to Siouxsie and the Banshees' 1991 song "Kiss Them for Me" and Charli agreed: "At the time, I was listening to a lot of dark pop, so I was inspired by a lot of the deep bass sounds. Sure, Siouxsie is there, too. We just kind of rolled with it." Charli said for Coupdemain Magazine that her preferred song of the album is "What I like": "just because all the lyrics are cute". Also mentioned that "What I like" is "about me unashamedly celebrating having a boyfriend and being in love. It's about being so happy with someone, like they're your partner in crime. It's about not caring about anything else but them."

Charli explained the meaning behind the album's title saying, "Every corner of my own romantic history is explored on this record, so for me, it's very raw, it's very honest, and it's very true." The majority of the album's tracks were previously released on the You're the One EP, and through the Heartbreaks and Earthquakes and Super Ultra mixtapes. The album is named after the Quentin Tarantino-written 1993 film of the same name, which is sampled on "Velvet Dreaming" from the Super Ultra mixtape.

Release and promotion
In May and November 2011, she released the singles "Stay Away" and "Nuclear Seasons" respectively, and gained attention from music website Pitchfork, where she earned "Best New Track" accolades for both; the former was eventually named to the site's "Best Tracks of 2011" list.

The majority of the album's tracks were previously released on the You're the One EP, and through the Heartbreaks and Earthquakes and Super Ultra mixtapes.

On 9 April 2013, the standard edition of album became available to stream on Pitchfork in full.

Critical reception
True Romance received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 76, based on 18 reviews. Pitchfork's Marc Hogan wrote that Charli "pull[s] from moody 80s synth-pop, sassy turn-of-the-millennium girl groups, and state-of-the-art contemporary producers to create something distinctive and immediately memorable", concluding that she "stamps her personality across the entire project, and True Romance suggests she'll be worth following for a while." Rebecca Nicholson of The Guardian found the album to be "surprisingly oddball and packed with production quirks that often resemble a smoothed-off Grimes", adding that "while there's still the odd remnant of Marina-lite pop, this sounds like an imminent star steadily staking a claim to her own turf."

Heather Phares of AllMusic noted that Charli "has a flair for combining a wide array of pop culture sources into something fresh and familiar, as well as a fondness for strong female characters." Phares continued, "Since quite a few of these songs were already road-tested, it's not surprising that this is a strong debut, but just how consistently catchy and personal True Romance is might raise a few eyebrows." Spin's Puja Patel viewed True Romance as "a strident departure from those frivolities so far as solid, true-to-aim songwriting is concerned, but the divergence and a touch of the silliness remains: Goth, she is not. Dramatic? A bit. Complicated? Like every budding pop starlet. Defiant? Absolutely." Despite stating that the album "is confusing at times and will most definitely require multiple listens", Enio Chiola of PopMatters opined that Charli is "the fun pop you don't have to be embarrassed about listening to, and she's definitely worth focusing your attention. True Romance is certainly the true beginning of an illustrious career." Lauren Martin of Fact commented, "Love, lust and longing are chronicled and dissected in True Romance through online relationships being gradually given tangible, tactile form, setting Charli up as a young pop star to be reckoned with." Rolling Stone critic Will Hermes described True Romance as "the pop-album equivalent of a wicked Tumblr".

In a mixed review, Nick Levine of NME felt that although the album "begins strongly" with "Nuclear Seasons" and "You (Ha Ha Ha)", the songs eventually "become samey and Charli [...] shoves some kind of speak-rap into almost every track", concluding, "At the moment, her music is best consumed in blog-sized chunks, not as a stodgy 48-minute album." Similarly, John Murphy of musicOMH expressed that "[t]here's much to enjoy on True Romance, although it's probably best sampled in small doses as it doesn't hang together that successfully over the course of an album." Paula Mejia of Consequence of Sound dismissed the album as "a valiant attempt that doesn't do much more than provide the soundtrack for 'getting ready to go out' songs on tinny laptop speakers." Slant Magazine's Kevin Liedel criticised the album as "a little too slickly produced and self-aware to deliver the kind of spontaneous creativity or carefree chic that Charli XCX aims for", while dubbing its music "almost incidental, a postscript to the larger brand, confirming that whoever 'Charli XCX' actually is, she's more product than artist."

Commercial performance
True Romance debuted at number 85 on the UK Albums Chart, selling 1,241 copies in its first week. By February 2015, the album had sold 6,302 copies in the United Kingdom. In the United States, it entered the Heatseekers Albums chart at number five, and fell to number 22 the following week. The album had sold 12,000 copies in the US as of May 2014. True Romance debuted and peaked at number 11 on the ARIA Hitseekers chart in Australia.

Track listing
Notes
 * $undefined$ signifies a vocal producer
 * $undefined$ signifies an additional producer
 * On the digital edition and vinyl repress of the album, "Set Me Free" is titled "Set Me Free (Feel My Pain)".

Sample credits
 * "You (Ha Ha Ha)" samples "You" by Gold Panda.
 * "So Far Away" samples "A Dream Goes On Forever" and "An Elpee's Worth of Toons" by Todd Rundgren.

Personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of True Romance.

Musicians

 * Charli XCX – vocals
 * Tom Boddy – additional programming (track 2); album remixes
 * Andrew Wilkinson – additional programming (tracks 2, 6)
 * Dimitri Tikovoi – programming (track 5)
 * Louise Burns – additional vocals (track 6)
 * Brooke Candy – vocals (track 8)
 * Hal Ritson – additional keyboards, programming (track 9)
 * Richard Adlam – additional keyboards, programming (track 9)
 * Miriam Stockley – additional backing vocals (track 9)

Technical

 * Ariel Rechtshaid – production (tracks 1, 3–5, 10, 12, 13); additional production (track 11)
 * Rich Costey – mixing (tracks 1, 4, 11)
 * Chris Kasych – mixing assistance, Pro Tools engineering (tracks 1, 4, 11)
 * Jocke Åhlund – production (track 2)
 * Mark "Spike" Stent – vocal production (track 2); mixing (tracks 2, 3, 5)
 * Matty Green – mixing assistance (tracks 2, 3, 5)
 * David Emery – mixing assistance (track 3)
 * Dimitri Tikovoi – production (track 5)
 * Blood Diamonds – production (track 6)
 * Dan Aslet – vocal production (tracks 6–9); mixing (track 8)
 * Neil Comber – mixing (tracks 6, 7, 9, 10, 12)
 * Paul White – production (track 7)
 * J£zus Million – production (tracks 8, 9); mixing (track 8)
 * Patrik Berger – production (track 11)
 * Dave Bascombe – mixing (track 13)
 * Stuart Hawkes – mastering
 * Jeremy Cooper – editing

Artwork

 * Andy Hayes – design
 * Dan Curwin – photography