A charming review of Clairo's 2024 album, Charm
I found Clairo back in 2017 with “Pretty Girl”. This song had its renaissance on early-days TikTok in 2019. I loved the indie-vibe of the time- the pastels, fun prints, and the overall happy feeling in the air. This song acts like a time capsule, sending me right back to my highschool days, pre-pandemic. Now, I’m having my own Clairo renaissance, seven years later. It almost feels as though I’ve grown up with Clairo.
Charm is her third studio album, following Immunity in 2019, and Sling in 2021. Charm has the classic Clairo feel: soft, angelic, whimsical. It feels like the end of a warm summer’s day, watching the sunset on the horizon, feeling perfectly at peace. I immediately feel calm when I hear the first few notes of track one, “Nomad”. Released July 12th, 2024, this album feels like summer. But as the air turns colder and the leaves start to fall, I have a feeling this album isn’t going anywhere. (Neither is her cover of “Bags” at Electric Lady Studios…)
Charm has eleven tracks, spanning only 38 minutes. The album has been described as “Soft-rock” and “Sophisti-pop”, and I wholeheartedly agree. This is an album that is incredibly versatile. You can listen to this song in the background of work, or you can sit down and listen intently. Or anything in between. That’s the beauty with a lot of Clairo songs; they're easy listens. There’s a song for everyone on Charm and I think returning fans can agree. They are all similar in production, but each one tells a different story.
With this being her third album, people were expecting a new twist, similar to the shift from her first to her second album. Metacritic, who assigns normalized ratings to albums based on a score of 100, gave Charm an 82. I personally love Charm, it already being on all my playlists, just based off of feeling alone.
Track seven, “Juna”, became a trend on TikTok where users would post a picture of themself with the lyric, “You know me,” and then a duplicate picture with their favorite things written around them with the repeated lyric, “You know me” with emphasis on the word “know”. I think this helped the album in terms of interest, because “Juna” is a great representation of how the album feels.
Clairo is back and she’s here to stay. Her soft voice and comforting words can make anyone come together and I can’t wait to see what she does next.
Comments