Much has been written about the need for female artists to reinvent themselves with every album cycle, starting a new “era” by wiping out their Instagrams and promising a different persona or sound. It’s why superstars like Lady Gaga or Kylie Minogue have proved so successful, by their refusal to be boxed in (even if it results in a few missteps). The allure of transgression, the flick of the switch to someone different, is most surely the catalyst of Camila Cabello’s latest disaster, C,XOXO — not a spiritual awakening but a desperate grab at attention.

She had to know. This winter, when she started teasing her lead single “I LUV IT” by hanging out of a car with her tongue out, beach-blonde hair in camcorder quality, that the repetition and digitized sound is reminiscent of Charli XCX’s brash hyperpop, especially the rhythmically similar “I Got It.” but in an interview with PAPER, Cabello said the two are friends, so comparisons are useless. Charli even posted a (friendly) rebuttal mimicking Cabello’s song.

But comparisons are still worth noting. In her solo career apart from girl group Fifth Harmony, Cabello has turned to her contemporaries more than once — her album art for Romance matched the album art for Caroline Polachek’s Pang; her C,XOXO wall art mimicked ROSALíA’s MOTOMAMI graffiti aesthetic and Charli XCX’s walls for Brat; she appeared on the cover of Complex with a similar aesthetic to Charli’s Crash album two years prior; vinyl variants for C,XOXO are similarly minimal to Brat. It all raises questions, but not for Cabello, who says this album is where she felt the most confident. “I tried to see what didn’t feel good,” she told PAPER, “And I didn’t do it again.”

Even though Cabello was (allegedly) influenced by Charli for the album’s aesthetics, it doesn’t read as a Charli project — its reggaeton and discombobulating switch-ups more resemble FKA twigs’ Caprisongs and ROSALíA’s MOTOMAMI (El Guincho, a producer for C,XOXO, worked on both of ROSALíA’s studio albums and a song on Brat). Songs like “Chanel No.5”, “Dade County Dreaming” and “I LUV IT” do their best to be interesting, with piano sections jabbed in the middle for the first two, and the buzzy sonics of “I LUV IT.” But she pulls the rug out from JT, who falls when the beat’s gone. Two ballads, “Twentysomethings” and “B.O.A.T.” — a rip-off of SZA’s more successful song and a break-up lament that interpolates Pitbull’s “Hotel Room Service” for some reason, respectfully — try to infuse the record with more depth, failing on impact. 

The odes to the Miami club scene are charming, if a bit unnecessary — she shouts out Collins Avenue, South Beach and Biscayne Bay on “Dade County Dreaming,” trying to cultivate a if-you-know-you-know aura around her hometown, but is anyone interested? She and her “Miami Barbies” roam the streets on “305tillidie,” one of four interludes that add nothing to the record (one taps PinkPantheress to say about ten words, clearly not a good use of her talent).

The features on the album range from passable to terrible — it’s a rough mix. Playboi Carti is unintelligible on “I LUV IT” and Lil Nas X intrudes on “HE KNOWS” with a completely sexless verse, halting the momentum on an otherwise interesting pop song. He and Cabello come together at the end, but they give off the impression of the two class clowns offering a clunky presentation, with the rest of the class stifling laughter.

JT and Yung Miami have decent energy on “Dade County Dreaming,” and they have the advantage of not being Drake, who has two slots on the album. The first is an actual song, the somewhat serious “HOT UPTOWN,” which is kind of about nothing, but the second is more baffling. “CC, they need me to break it down,” he insists on the beginning of “Uuugly,” where he, not Cabello, is credited as the artist. “There’s not a measuring tape long enough that could measure the distance that I went for you,” he says, and this isn’t even the first time she recruits someone else to give a testimonial for Cabello. The rapper BLP KOSHER shares that Cabello’s debut record was the first he cried to: “like, ’cause the song, like, that was, like, uh, Camila, the Camila album, so, like, it’s an honor to just be here and be able to just like, you know, speak on that shit for real.” Moving.

Maybe the reason she gets others to dish out praise for her is because she doesn’t do it well herself. She awkwardly namedrops Haruki Murakami and Quentin Tarantino on “Chanel No. 5,” an imitation of a rap song, where she also purports herself to be a “cute girl with a sick mind.” She seems to manifest on “HE KNOWS,” with an image she attempts to portray with the album: “She’s a provocateur / Dancefloor connoisseur,” but by “DREAM-GIRLS,” an empowerment anthem for the girls of her childhood, she resorts to simple cause and effect: “No heels ‘cause she came to throw that ass around / Body-ody-ody ‘cause she work out.” And on the album’s closer, she asks, “Does she get this wet for you, baby? / Talk to you in poems and songs, huh, baby?” Unfortunately, the poems, if you can call them that, aren’t much to offer.

To its credit, there are some interesting ideas on C, XOXO. “pretty when i cry” is the best song on the record simply because of its normality — no piano cuts, awkward interludes, gibberish or autotune, it’s a solid Afrobeats number that interpolates some house elements later on. “HE KNOWS” is a serviceable pop before Lil Nas X, and the closer, “June Gloom,” actually plays with sound’s distortion in a way similar to what Charli has been doing. And there’s something perversely satisfying about the cloying chorus of “I LUV IT,” so clearly designed to be talked about and mentioned and memed — you can’t help it.

To simply mention yourself as a provocateur, like Cabello did on “HE KNOWS,” does not mean you become one. You have to have something to say, and it’s clear that the sonic switch-up and whiplash that comes from her previous pop records to C,XOXO’s intense fluctuations has to do with the industry at large rather than a bold artistic statement. Unfortunately, female artists have to constantly invent new personalities rather than rely on the art to get them by, and you can’t fault Cabello for playing the game. It’s bad, but you’re paying attention, right?

order C, XOXO HERE