Camila Cabello talks C,XOXO: "I wanted something sonically aggressive"

Camila Cabello's rebrand is so much more than a box of bleach dye and a blue lollipop.

There's been an aesthetic overhaul, granted, but it's within the sonics of Camila's fourth studio record C,XOXO that the true artistic growth lies.

Working with the likes of El Guincho (Rosalía, Björk), Jasper Harris (Kendrick Lamar, Lil Nas X) and Kid Masterpiece (Drake), C,XOXO sees Camila handbrake turn into new territories.

Gone are the days of Bam Bam's breezy acoustic guitar; instead replaced with a synth-heavy soundbed across 14 experimental tracks.

Like, sampling-Pitbull's-Hotel-Room-Service-on-a-ballad experimental.

But what was Camila's catalyst for such a shift?

Speaking to Official Charts at an exclusive C,XOXO playback in London, Camila explained: "I knew that, sonically, it was going to be very synth-heavy. There are no guitars on this album. It's a lot of different synths. Synths, samples and very aggressive drums.

"It's actually pretty minimalistic. There's just three or four layers of sound; that's the one thing everything on this album has in common.

"I said, from the beginning, that my last album [2022's Familia] was so sonically bright; I wanted this one to be the polar opposite. The night-time."

Watch Camila perform HOT UPTOWN at Glastonbury 2024:

MORE: See where every Camila Cabello song and album has charted in the UK

Camila added: "I wanted something sonically aggressive. I'd never done anything like that. I knew I wanted that for the performance, too. I wanted to step into that big energy, and I needed the songs to carry that."

It's a rebrand that's received Lana Del Rey's seal of approval, too, with Camila recently joining Lana to perform I LUV IT during her headline Coachella slot.

Asked how the collaboration came to be, Camila explained: "She literally just heard the 30-second clip I put on Instagram. She was like 'I put it on loop,' and I was like 'that's crazy, you just had I LUV IT on repeat.'

"I'm still recovering from that, it was insane!"

Camila Cabello's C,XOXO is out now via Interscope Records.

Article image: Rahul Bhatt.