C,XOXO reveals Camila Cabello, for better or worse

Who is Camila Cabello, anyway? Is she the single true breakout star of Fifth Harmony, a girl group formed by Simon Cowell on a reality TV show? Is she the pop star who attended “healing sessions” after old posts on her Tumblr came to light? Is she simply a social media punching bag and the face of cringe-fests like Prime Video’s Cinderella? In a year where seemingly every major pop star is rolling out a new era, if not wholesale reinventing herself, where does Cabello fit in?

If you were to ask her, she’d probably tell you that she is a 27-year-old artist who is just as messy and manic and confused as the rest of us. At least, that’s the answer that her fourth album, C,XOXO, attempts to convey—sometimes convincingly. The promotional cycle for this album hasn’t been particularly kind to Cabello, as her drastic image rebrand was itself branded inauthentic by much of the internet (including by this author for this publication). But for all the talk of a pivot to hyperpop, the turn was mostly an aesthetic one. C,XOXO is planted firmly in the sonic soil that was cresting in mainstream popularity as her career took off: pop-trap, pop-reggaeton, pop-ballads.

When Cabello went solo—tiptoeing into features in 2016 and then solo in earnest in 2017—pop radio was finally adjusting to the reality of the streaming era. Her massive debut single “Havana” was the rare pop song in the algorithmic age that’s actually everywhere, while the rest of her self-titled debut favored the balladry of a singing competition show. There was an obvious comfort to this; Cabello and her Fifth Harmony bandmates were discovered on the American version of The X Factor. But Cabello’s vocals are not the Mariah Carey-lite that is so often produced from those shows. Her instrument is an interesting but not overly intrusive one. The piercing, slightly nasal quality of her tone is often the only grain in her processed tracks; the precision of her melisma can have the effect of sounding naturally auto-tuned.

In this way, C,XOXO is nothing new, the culmination of these different ideas. And this wouldn’t be a problem had the project not been teased as a reinvention. C,XOXO is eclectic, if a little dated, and occasionally approaches something resembling a sense of humor. “B.O.A.T,” a late-album ballad (which stands for “Best Of All Time”) samples Miami icon Pitbull’s “Hotel Room Service,” an interpolation as bizarre as the Gucci Mane one in lead single “I Luv It.” “B.O.A.T.”’s twinkling piano, here as in standout track “Chanel No. 5,” feels fresh, inviting a hip-hop sensibility, courtesy of frequent Rosalia collaborator El Guincho’s production, without straining. The same can’t be said about other rap dalliances with Drake and City Girls, artists who suffered varied professional misfortunes since the top of the year. Conversely, on more straightforward pop songs like “Pretty When I Cry,” the combination of sounds feels less fusion than genre-less, with an ambient dance beat, pitch-shifted vocals popular during Fifth Harmony’s peak, and a triplet delivery.

Cabello’s voice, never the most powerful instrument in pop, is flexible and emotive and enjoyable, so long as you don’t listen too closely to what she’s saying. A selling point of C,XOXO, Cabello’s own hand in writing her lyrics, is also a central defect. Her two previous albums—2019’s Romance and 2021’s Familia—also saw her take a more active hand in writing, receiving credits on the entirety of the two projects, for better or worse. The latter album features not one, not two, but three different lyrics about knowing how someone tastes as a measure of intimacy—a strange, revealing fixation that it’s hard to believe someone else could have written for her.

There are idiosyncrasies in C,XOXO, too, if staler and vaguer. Aside from the obvious Charli XCX comparisons, Cabello cribs inspiration from Lana Del Rey (see: her “Ride”-esque trailer for the album), pop’s reigning great songwriter. But her lyrics lack the bluntness that makes Lana and Charli so engaging and idiosyncratic. Instead, we’re left with what sounds like place fillers. “Leave Manhattan/cross the bridge over to Brooklyn/when it comes to us/I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing,” she sings on Twentysomething. (It’s a shame none of the bridges over to Brooklyn have names—it would have been a time saver.) “June Gloom,” the album’s closer, focuses on lyrics like “Does she get this wet for you baby?… Is it really love if it’s not this crazy?”

And there, really, is the rub. Cabello often comes off as desperate to call herself “a cute girl with a sick mind,” perhaps because a “crazy girl” is an interesting, reclaimed pop culture concept. Perhaps she thinks we find feeling crazy relatable. But the thing that is most easily identifiable in Camila Cabello is her desperation, her background as a teen performer who would do almost anything for the approval of the adults in the room. Her desire to make the song that everyone likes. Even now, doing what the cool kids enjoy and having an album she can market as The Most Personal Yet seem to be the main motivators here. And she did achieve it, albeit in a roundabout way. C,XOXO is a portrait of someone trying desperately to be liked but not quite knowing how to win the approval. Few things are more universal than that.