C, XOXO

It’s sonically daring, and challenges itself to be both unique from the scene and true to its creator.

At its best, C,XOXO is a vibes album, musical perfume -- a spritz of Cabello's "meteor shower" pop moment.

‘C,XOXO’ isn’t Cabello’s brat moment. A lack of refinement and direction is the burning issue at play here, but she has succeeded in making an inherently fun record.

C, XOXO doesn’t quite establish Cabello as a “weirdo,” but its neon-hued chaos does indicate that she’s been allowed to run with her ideas more fully (she wrote all its lyrics and toplines, a career first that lets her stretch and warp her voice). It’s a feisty, hungry album that feels fearless even as it grapples with the unknown—the late-20s paradox turned into candy-coated pop.

Cabello has the juice to be her own artist and is more than capable as a writer, but the risks she takes are inherently safe when they’ve all been taken before.

C,XOXO isn't a bad album, particularly when stacked against the imagined disaster it could've been. The problem is that it sounds like it's been purchased from other talents rather than being curated and homegrown by Cabello and her team. You gotta hand it to her for trying though, even more so for the fact that it nearly, just nearly, works.

‘C,XOXO’ is a laconic, off-kilter pop record filled with heavily Auto-Tuned vocals inspired by T-Pain. It’s a new sound for Cabello that heightens the music’s intriguing, trippy sheen. Throughout, her lyrics pivot between pithy and revealing.

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.

Cabello often feels like a guest on her own album, drifting through songs too slender to stamp her own identity on, not entirely on board with a dramatic musical shift: an artist who appears to have been interior-decorated out of house and home.

While Cabello might view C,XOXO as an adventurous new step in her career, it plays more like a TikTok video: attention-grabbing, disposable, and instantly forgettable.