Marcel Winatschek

The Song Doesn’t Care What Film It’s Attached To

Charli XCX’s Boom Clap works the way a good pop single is supposed to—the hook is in the first five seconds, the drop is earned, and it ends before you’ve decided how you feel about it. She wrote it for The Fault in Our Stars, a film I have not seen and feel no particular urgency about, but the song exists independently of whatever weeping-teenagers-in-hospitals narrative it’s attached to.

She co-wrote Icona Pop’s I Love It, which is enough of a credential to earn a listen for anything else she puts out. There’s a whole tier of pop that doesn’t require a talent-show origin story or a Simon Cowell co-sign, and Charli XCX has been one of its more reliable representatives for a while now. Boom Clap is clean and confident and doesn’t overstay. Right now that’s more than enough.