Charli xcx Reveals How Velvet Underground Inspired Her ‘Elegant & Brutal’ Song for ‘Wuthering Heights’

Charli xcx wasn’t messing around when she took on the assignment of writing an original song for Emerald Fennell’s upcoming Wuthering Heights adaptation.

On Thursday (Nov. 6), the pop star posted a teaser for the track, titled “House,” and shared a long description of the creative process behind how she made it — including how she teamed up with surprise guest the Velvet Underground’s John Cale for the project. Explaining that she was immediately taken with the “world [Fennell] was creating” after the director reached out about making a song for Wuthering Heights last Christmas, Charli wrote, “After being so in the depths of my previous album [Brat], I was excited to escape into something entirely new, entirely opposite.”

“When I think of Wuthering Heights, I think of many things,” she continued. “I think of passion and pain. I think of the Moors, I think of the mud and the cold. I think of determination and grit.”

The singer went on to say that while working on the music for the movie — which will star Margot Robbie as Catherine and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff — she kept returning to a phrase she’d heard Cale use to describe his band’s music in a Velvet Underground documentary. “Any song had to be both ‘elegant and brutal,’” Charli wrote. “When the summer ended I was still ruminating on John’s words.”

This led Charli to reach out to Cale with the idea of collaborating on the scoring project, after which he sent her a poem that made her “cry.”

“I feel so lucky to have been able to work with John on this song,” she added in her note. “I’ve been so excited to share it with you all, sitting quietly in anticipation.”

“House” will arrive Monday, months ahead of when Wuthering Heights is set to hit theaters in February next year. In the song teaser, Charli appears on the screen lying on the side of her face while a man’s hand presses into her hair.

“Can I speak to you privately for a moment?” a deep voice says from off camera over sparse violin strikes.

Fennell’s take on Wuthering Heights is just the latest screen adaptation of Emily Brontë’s iconic gothic novel of the same name. In September, the first teaser trailer for the film dropped, featuring “Everything Is Romantic” from Charli’s Brat album. “House” will mark Charli’s first release since unveiling the full Brat remix album in October 2024.

See Charli’s teaser for “House” below.

Hannah Dailey
4:37 PM