The Music of “Wuthering Heights”:

A Celebration of Charli XCX and Olivia Chaney

By Joseph Wear

The whole world is talking about Emerald Fennell’s new film “Wuthering Heights”, a twisted, sexual reimagining of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel of the same name. Genuinely, I do not believe that anybody who has seen this film is not engaging in conversations with it – whether that be over social media, with their family or friends, or more professional critical reception. I saw the film myself on Monday 16th February, in the St. Andrews cinema (a particularly intimate venue, might I add). I came away with so many thoughts about the film that I just have to get down somewhere. In particular, I find myself returning again and again to the way Fennell used music to aid in building her specific vision of the book through film. The way Fennell created this film is a rabid, feral, and horny teenage girl’s imagination when she was reading the novel put to screen. It is an adaptation not particularly caught up in the historical truth or even the truths on the page, purely one woman’s wild, ambitious vision. As such, the music is a similarly nonreciprocal approach to the text… Well, until about halfway through the film. 

But we will start with the main way music is used in the film: Charli XCX. Hyperpop Underground Diva turned Global Superstar Charli XCX has had a whirlwind past few years. Her 2024 album BRAT skyrocketed in popularity, becoming a defining pop culture moment. Directly engaging with her fame in a satirical, tongue-in-cheek sort of way, BRAT felt as if everything the singer had been building towards across her career. It was that watershed moment where the world finally started tuning in to Charli XCX’s brainwaves. Naturally, everybody was asking: what will she do next? If anybody claimed that they thought she would create an album for Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights, they would be lying. But that is exactly what she did. Dropping the lead single ‘House’ in early November, it became very clear that this was a major departure from BRAT and the image Charli had curated over the years. ‘House’ was dark and industrial, mainly consisting of a spoken word piece delivered by John Cale of The Velvet Underground. Charli XCX was ready to twist herself to fit someone else’s world. Stepping away from the almost meta commentary of her life she had been engaging in prior, “Wuthering Heights” was Charli’s showing at helping build someone else’s world. 

Her music, in many ways, grounds the melodrama by reminding the viewer that the film is not rooted in the real world. Whenever a song from the album plays, it provides the viewer a reminder to suspend their disbelief. This is not the Wuthering Heights you have read. This is not even the Wuthering Heights Kate Bush was singing about it. It is a Wuthering Heights where Cathy’s outfits are heightened and representative, not of historical honesty, but of her inner-self and perception by other characters. It is a Wuthering Heights where the strawberries are huge, a room can be made of skin, and Heathcliff wears a ridiculous gold earring.

That is what makes the other major use of music in the film stand out all the more. About halfway through the film, just as Heathcliff flees with the belief that Cathy does not love him in return, ‘Dark Eyed Soldier’ by Olivia Chaney starts playing, following through Cathy’s desire for Heathcliff to return and her eventual marriage to Edgar Linton. It is completely different in tone, genre and mood than Charli XCX’s electronic dance-pop and changes the atmosphere of these scenes entirely. ‘Dark Eyed Sailor’ originates from the 19th century as a broken token ballad, a song of longing between two lovers separated by distance. In this sense, this is the kind of song you would expect to find in an adaptation of Wuthering Heights. A British folk ballad about a woman missing the man who has left her is about as book-accurate as you could get. The fact Chaney’s version of the song is an outlier makes these scenes the most important of the film. 

Chaney’s soft, haunting voice as Cathy forces herself across the moors to Thrushcross Grange is the scene I have not been able to get out of my head since I saw the film over two weeks ago. The music here draws attention to the distance the couple share, but also Cathy’s own reluctance to marry Edgar. She has to physically walk herself there, while the music tells us she is thinking of Heathcliff the entire time. An example of how music in film reinforces characters’ thoughts and feelings, while the action does something else. ‘Dark Eyed Sailor’, then, not only adds to the setting of the film and the atmosphere of the scene, but adds to our interpretation of Cathy and Heathcliff’s relationship. 

Wuthering Heights has received polarising opinions - from the direction, to the casting, to the acting - but one thing that has been overwhelmingly praised is the music. Charli XCX’s eponymous album received an 82/100 on Metacritic. ‘Dark Eyed Sailor’ has reached one million streams on Spotify, her second most-streamed song within only a few weeks. Across social media, I have seen people lauding Charli XCX’s experimentation and versatility just as much as people falling in love with Chaney’s folk-ballads. It feels pretty special to see both of these women being applauded for their work. Regardless of fame, genre, or style, both Charli XCX and Olivia Chaney have come away with the best press of all the figures in the “Wuthering Heights”-verse.