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 Camila 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 and mixed critical reception. 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.
A Reappraisal of a Modern Pop Opus
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.
@kayliejacobs she knows ball….best set ever #underscores #camilacabello #nyc #cxoxo @underscores 🩵 @The FADER #fadermagazine ♬ original sound – kaylie ☆
At the same time, sonic cousins of the C,XOXO sound keep popping up in the current summer’s pop ecosystem. 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.
There’s a greater appetite and reverence for a certain messiness in pop music in 2026. C,XOXO is about 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. If Cabello were to release this album 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.
