The record also arrives at an interesting moment, when it feels like the tides of pop are turning away from confessional singer-songwriter fodder wrapped in layers of metaphor, and towards something more forthright and club-ready, in part thanks to the online dominance of Charli XCX’s Brat over the past few weeks. When Cabello dropped “I Luv It,” it was instantly compared to Charli’s strain of experimental pop, but as Cabello points out—and listening to the record in full confirms—C, XOXO may be an exercise in contrasts, but “I Luv It” is something of a red herring. Cabello’s album takes its cues less from hyperpop, and more from a broad melting pot of 2000s hip-hop, with its clattering beats and the furious pace of her vocal delivery. No hard feelings about the comparisons, though: Cabello and Charli are friends, having supported Taylor Swift on her Reputation tour together, and Charli co-wrote one of Cabello’s biggest chart smashes, “Senorita,” which she performed with her former partner Shawn Mendes. “I listened to ‘365’ about 10 times in a row on the day it came out,” Cabello says enthusiastically of Brat’s closer. “I think it’s so interesting the way she’s brought this vulnerability to these club bangers—it’s such a sick juxtaposition, lyrically and sonically.”
And despite the fact that C, XOXO has been marketed as a party record—and it does have plenty of moments that will go off in the club—it’s also leavened with more mature moments, audible in the tales of romantic struggle charted on the folksy “Twentysomethings,” or the odes to female friendship found on the reggaeton-infused “Dream-Girls.” “I definitely think that getting older is underrated,” says Cabello. “I feel calmer, I feel less anxious. I think it’s because I’m learning. I work really, really hard at feeling better and feeling good. And for me, what manifests in the end result and the outcome of that is a project like C, XOXO. But on the input side of that is tons of therapy and podcasts and working out and making sure that I’m surrounded by people who make me feel loved and make me feel worthy of love and celebration.”
Some of those people had a direct hand in the record. Unlike Cabello’s previous albums, which featured a litany of co-writers and producers, C, XOXO is almost entirely the product of her work with just two collaborators: alt-pop maestro El Guincho, whom Cabello admired for his work with FKA twigs and Rosalía (he produced the bulk of the latter’s masterful Motomami), and producer Jasper Harris. “My favorite producers are the people who pick the weird sounds or go for the things nobody gets at first, and aren’t just going for what sounds safe,” says Cabello. “I love the risk-takers.” Between them, they fostered an environment in the studio where Cabello could take big swings, bringing out a new sense of confidence in the stranger places her songwriting instincts might take her. “They both really poured their hearts into this project too,” she adds. “I think we all feel like it’s our baby, in different ways.”