Lulia Matie, Camila Cabello, Kait Muro.
I first heard Camila Cabello’s 2024 album C,XOXO four months before its release. I was writing her PAPER cover story that would introduce the album to the world and only had three days to take it in before the link would expire. I listened ravenously and was as confused by its strange and eclectic sonic choices, as I was charmed by its earnestness. I later announced in my story that the world, too, would be confounded upon its release, but eventually they would get it. It turned out I was wrong — at least that year.
The album was presented as a hard pivot for Cabello, and the world didn't know what to make of it. A gulf away from her previous radio hits “Havana” and “Señorita,” C,XOXO is dense and digitized, its music rooted in her Miami hometown where hip-hop and pop easily interchange with Miami bass, reggaeton, and urbano music. It’s rife with samples — from Ojerime’s "Give It Up 2 Me" to Pitbull’s “Hotel Room Service" — deployed as literal nods to the sounds that shaped and inspired her. Its lyrics are not neat and overly edited by a team of songwriters, but imagistic and sensorial. For those who only knew Cabello from the radio, it was a lot to take in.
Ultimately C,XOXO had an unremarkable commercial performance (debuting at #13 on the US Billboard 200) and mixed critical reception (Pitchfork deemed it “inconsistent” ). After its release, Cabello went into semi-hibernation. She didn’t tour the record in the U.S. — only playing shows abroad. Maybe it was because it came out during the oxygen-suck that was Brat and featured not one, but two Drake features during the peak of his ill-fated beef with Kendrick Lamar, but it just felt like the universe was prohibiting the record from breaking through.
Two years after its release, however, the tide has seemingly finally turned on the controversial opus. The album has had a sticky way of remaining in the pop conversation. Charli’s Brat creative director Terrence O'Connor has been loudly revisiting it; underscores played “B.O.A.T” at her FADER cover release party, the video of which went viral; every week there seems to be a new viral defense of it on TikTok. In June, when Cabello shared photos of her working with The National’s Aaron Dessner, it sparked a niche but active discourse expressing concern about her “abandoning” the C,XOXO sound. (Fans of the album wouldn’t be wrong to respond by noting that the world gave Cabello little indication that she would be rewarded for sticking with it).
At the same time, sonic cousins of the C,XOXO sound keep popping up in the current summer’s pop ecosystem. An aspect of the album I found most charming was how it wore its references on its sleeve. She parrots the lyrics of The Dream’s 2007 “Shawty Is Da Shit” alongside a sample of the track on “DREAM-GIRLS,” and, “B.O.A.T.” samples Pitbull’s most famous song “Hotel Room Service” as the centerpiece of an emo-esque ballad. At the time, these overt references were taken by some critics as a sign of artistic insecurity, an overreliance on others to tell her story. But in 2026, there seems to be a deeper acceptance in pop of overt references, taking them in as collage rather than cheap homage.
I hear that in Adéla’s new Billboard-charting ballad “Ain’t In LA,” whose pitched-down rap sample and chant-like chorus immediately recalls Miley Cyrus’s controversial, but now generally beloved hip-pop record BANGERZ. Meanwhile, Slayyyter’s triumphant album WOR$T GIRL IN AMERICA hops between moments of EDM screamo, post-punk, and cool and classic dance pop. These highly referential works have not been seen as artistic confusion by the pop public, but as a sign of confidence.
Ultimately what has long harangued Cabello on the internet are calls that she is "cringe" — be it for her viral cursive singing of “Christmas” or her general try-hard intensity. There was little appetite in the culture to accept that Cabello can both be a somewhat pop Rachel Berry, while still also accepting an earnest experimental pop album by her, that has hits and misses, but overall, feels raw and fresh. Now, there appears to be a deeper acceptance of, and reverence for, a certain messiness in pop music. This applies to both subject matter and musical execution in some ways. Brat, the undisputed champion of pop in 2024, is about the reality of partying, of being a mess, and dealing with it. But its sound is so consistent and keenly made, and its writing is so sturdily crafted, that the album, in itself, is not messy. C,XOXO, on the other hand, is about similar themes of coming of age and stumbling, but the music itself is charmingly awkward, bold, and far less self aware than Brat, which is what gives it its appeal.
My favorite song on C,XOXO is “Chanel No. 5” which features Cabello Auto-Tune rapping over a piano that’s warped and slightly grating. But there is a handmade eccentricity to its simple beat and a sincerity to the lyrics. The verses are stacked with rhyming references to Murukami and Wabi Sabi, Tarantino and Valentino, but she delivers them with such earnestness, you can imagine yourself saying the same lines while freestyling with your friends in the car, not neat, but freeflowing and honest.
If Cabello were to release this album, and these tracks, today, at a moment when the listening public seems to have more tolerance for her messy choices, it could dominate. If you haven’t yet given the album a chance, our current pop moment serves as a great impetus to try it again.
