On the heels of "Blame It On Your Love" and "1999" — featuring Lizzo and Troye Sivan, respectively — Charli XCX has dropped yet another hotly anticipated collaboration from her upcoming third album, Charli, due Sept. 20. "Gone," Charli's latest song and video with French singer-songwriter Christine and the Queens, is sure to hit all of her angels' spots — complete with showers from the heavens and the pair's steamy dancing in a ring of fire.
The track is both a heartfelt admittance of deep insecurity and a pure, utter bop, one that's uplifted throughout by the uniquely passionate texture of Charli and Chris' emotive voices in tandem. "I have to go, I'm so sorry / But it feels so cold in here / I am just now realizing, they don't care," Charli shares on top of an insistent, heavy beat to open the song. On later verses, Chris joins in, and on the chorus, they wonder together: "Why do we keep when the water runs? Why do we love if we're so mistaken?" And on the bridge, Chris sings in French, no less — "ne me cherche pas, je ne suis plus là, baby" — "don't look for me, I'm no longer there, baby."
If the song's lyrics give testament to the experience of interpersonal insecurities, then the video shows a process of catharsis from those feelings. Over its course, Charli and Chris break free of their respective bonds to a roped-up white car in the center of a spotlit, spacious and otherwise empty garage. Anxiety is made manifest in the sparks and rain that pour alternately from the garage's ceiling, and personified in the duo's let-loose dancing.
In the caption to an Instagram post, Charli describes the sentiment that inspired the song. "People seem to think I'm this consistently confident person — but I'm shy and terrified quite a lot actually," she writes. "This song really discusses those feelings of fear and anxiety and the frustrations that come in the aftermath of those emotions."
If Charli XCX can feel those things while looking that good, then it must be true that insecurity is a universal state of being. Here's to acknowledging our shared insecurities and singing our hearts out to "Gone" 'til September and beyond.
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