Camila Cabello C,XOXO Album Review: Overshadowed by Her Own Taste

Steffanee Wang
·5 min read

Dimitrious Giannoudis/Courtesy of BT PR

In this album review, writer Steffanee Wang unpacks Camila Cabello’s fourth album, C,XOXO and what it says about where Cabello is now and where she’s headed.

In 2021, Camila Cabello put her house in the Hollywood Hills up for sale. It was the closing of her Los Angeles chapter, coinciding with the end of her relationship with longtime boyfriend Shawn Mendes. But in hindsight, it was likely the beginning of another; she was spending more time in her hometown of Miami, the result of which would shape her new fourth studio album C,XOXO. Earlier this year, she emerged, declaring that the dark-haired, radio Cinderella was dead and a new girl — blonde, chaotic, and ready to party — had taken her place. She was rebranding, she said, and this was the real her.

Of course, much has already been said about this “real” Cabello. From the second she unveiled her bleached tresses and the thumping snippets of the album’s first single “I Luv It,” fans (and casual purveyors) accused her of copying the cool-girl visions of left-of-center pop stars like Charli XCX. But the reality of C,XOXO is more confusing and weirder than mere mimicry. With its three-pronged thesis of finally revealing the authentic Camila, being a love-letter Miami, and offering her the chance to build “a world,” it’s an overly ambitious project that more often than not gets in its own way.

Per Cabello, C,XOXO is set in the 305 — famously Miami’s original area code — though you’d be hard-pressed to glimpse that from its credits. It’s executive produced by Spanish producer El Guincho (known for his impeccable work on Rosalía’s Motomami, another pop star rebrand) and Los Angeles producer Jasper Harris (Doja Cat, Kendrick Lamar), and calls on a global host of voices from Atlanta, Los Angeles, London, and more to help build its “big baddie energy vibe,” per the singer. All of that, of course, is fine and on par for a major label record trying to compete with the competitive nature of releasing pop music nowadays. But it is strange that for an album serving as a reintroduction of sorts how much of it she cedes to voices that aren’t her own.

Some of the features make sense, like bringing on Miami’s biggest energy raisers, City Girls. But “Dade County Dreaming,” a bass-buster that starts off like a major club moment with bars from JT and Yung Miami, inexplicably trails off into a muted sad girl meditation that ultimately feels like a misuse of their talents. It’s an odd creative choice, a quality that plagues most of the album’s features. A baffling interlude from Jewish rapper BLP Kosher, the one other Miami artist on the album, is nothing more than a gushing, 46-second fan letter to Cabello, not really saying much about him or the pop star. PinkPantheress’s inconsequential interlude flies by without you even clocking her presence.

It makes you wonder if their time was given to Drake, whose presence on the record subsumes not one but two songs for no other reason because Cabello “just want[ed] to hear Drake on my own album.” Per Cabello, their duet, “Hot Uptown,” immediately reminded her of Miami. You ask how? Well, duh, because Drake is singing about picking a girl up in… faux Jamaican patois? Unfortunately, it’s just another example of the album seemingly operating with no identifiable logic (and this isn’t even getting into Drake’s questionable status in pop culture right now).

Because, once you get this far through the tracklist, the biggest question that comes to mind is: What is the reason? For these features, for Drake? Obviously Cabello can do whatever she wants — no one is contesting that — but as a listener it feels like whiplash. It makes me think about a different pop star who recently released an album and is known for utilizing a robust cache of collaborators, and wonder if Cabello is trying to tap into that same “artist as curator” identity.

But whereas the other artist used features as a way to progress commentary on female friendships or shine a spotlight on smaller voices, Cabello’s attempt is seemingly just to prove she has… good taste? If I were even more cynical, I’d look at her heavy hand in selecting predominantly Black musicians as features as her attempt to rectify the harm of her past, while adding another clunky footprint in the long history of pop stars using Black culture to “evolve” their image into a realm of edgy maturity.

It’s confusing because Cabello has the chops to ostensibly carry a rebrand solo, as evident by the few songs on the record unencumbered by the baggage of outside voices. “Chanel No. 5” is admittedly kooky, with its abrupt beat bait-and-switch, but it shows promising experimentation on Cabello’s part. “Twentysomethings” and “B.O.A.T.” are two genuinely affecting ballads that highlight her personality-driven songwriting: “When it comes to us, I don’t know what the f*ck I’m doing,” is destined to be screamed at stadiums. “Dream-Girls,” though arrives with a Drake-reminiscent roll-call hook, is still a major bop.

The problem with creating a “world,” as Cabello has consistently described the undertaking of this album, is that it needs to be populated, whether through other strategic voices or by the sheer visionary strength of the artist itself. Cabello’s attempt to heed that direction only leaves her shrouded and overshadowed, lost amid the clutter of her own moodboard.

Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue

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