For her next musical act, the British songstress is making a hard turn toward the avant-garde, spearheading the soundtrack for Emerald Fennell’s upcoming Wuthering Heights adaptation.
“House,” a first taste of the music featured in the film, is out now, and demonstrates how Charli’s involvement in the project was a refreshing challenge for her after Brat. “I read the script and immediately felt inspired so [frequent collaborator] Finn Keane and I began working on not just one but many songs that we felt connected to the world [Fennell] was creating. After being so in the depths of my previous album, I was excited to escape into something entirely new, entirely opposite,” she said.
The song features contributions from an unexpected source: The Velvet Underground’s John Cale. Charli’ found inspiration in Todd Haynes’s 2021 documentary The Velvet Underground and Cale’s approach to making music with the legendary rock band.
“One thing that stuck with me was how John Cale described a key sonic requirement of The Velvet Underground. That any song had to be both ‘elegant and brutal.’ I got really stuck on that phrase," she said. “When working on music for this film, ‘elegant and brutal was a phrase I kept coming back to." She later reached out to Cale himself to get his opinion on what she had made. The two ended up collaborating on what became “House.” “We spoke about the idea of a poem. He recorded something and sent it to me. Something that only John could do,” she said. “I feel so lucky to have been able to work with John on this song."
Cale’s words make up the lion’s share of the haunting track as they each repeat “I think I’m gonna die in this house.”
“I just want to explain / Explain the circumstances / I find myself in / What and who I really am / I’m a prisoner / To live for eternity / I was thinking, ‘What is this place?’ / I thought it would be perfect," Cale says. “Am I living in another world? / Another world I created / For what? / If it’s beauty / Do you see beauty? / If there’s beauty / Say it’s enough.” (Chris Malone Méndez)
Charli XCX is diving deep into the gothic with “House,” her haunting new collaboration with The Velvet Underground’s John Cale. The track, written for Emerald Fennell’s upcoming adaptation of Wuthering Heights, marks a bold new chapter for the Brat era pop provocateur.
“House” trades Charli’s signature hyperpop pulse for something colder and more cinematic. Co-written with longtime collaborator Finn Keane, the song simmers with tension before swelling into a storm of strings, distortion, and auto-tuned croons. Cale’s deep, deliberate narration cuts through the fold, a spoken meditation on transformation that gives the track an eerie gravitas.
In its final act, “House” explodes into a wall of sound, echoing the emotional turmoil of Wuthering Heights. The track’s refrain, “I think I’m gonna die in this house,” loops like a ghostly warning.
The Mitch Ryan-directed video only heightens the unease. Charli is seen pouring candle wax on her skin, crows drift in slow motion, and Cale delivers his lines as shadows dance across the walls. The imagery leans fully into the gothic and romantic, just the way Emily Brontë might’ve imagined it.
In a note on social media, Charli wrote that working on Wuthering Heights offered her a total creative reset. “After being so in the depths of my previous album, I was excited to escape into something entirely new, entirely opposite,” she shared. “When I think of Wuthering Heights, I think of passion and pain. I think of England. I think of the Moors, the mud, the cold. Determination and grit.” (Josh Azevedo)
On “House,” Charli embraces the dark, brooding undercurrent of Wuthering Heights. It lands in a more cinematic and goth style, with Cale offering a spoken word meditation on transformation and doubt across tense strings; when the song’s final third arrives, a wall of sound arrives, providing a strong, brutal intensity beneath Charli XCX’s auto-tuned croons.
Charli and Cale also star in the video, which features a myriad of dark, haunting images: Charli pours candle wax on her skin, Cale narrates tensely and expresses concern, crows fly in slow motion, and shadows of unseen figures move on and off screen. (Paolo Ragusa)
The single is the first from the singer’s album written for Emerald Fennell’s upcoming adaptation of Wuthering Heights, and it features The Velvet Underground legend Cale. The cinematic, eerie-sounding offering sees the singer move into gothic and industrial rock territory with Cale’s spoken word contributions adding to the sense of foreboding.
“I’m a prisoner / To live for eternity” and “Am I living in another world? / Another world I created / For what?” he says as part of his monologue, while he and Charli join forces in the final third of the track to repeat, “I think I’m gonna die in this house” over dramatic guitars. Cale then returns alone at the end to say, “In every room / I hear silence.”
The video, directed by Mitch Ryan, stars both Charli and Cale as well as dark, shadowy figures, and sees the former pour candle wax on her skin (Adam England)
Last night, during the Booker Prize, the
BBC asked readers to send in their comments and here's one they highlighted:
And speaking of not getting what you see, how about Mr. Rochester in Charlotte Brontë’s famous romance Jane Eyre? Mr. Rochester, the master of the house where she serves as governess, comes across as aloof and uncaring.
As the story progresses, he shows Jane that he has a heart. Happily-ever-after is right around the corner. Until we learn his dark secret. “Sorry, babe. Did I neglect to tell you I’m married and keep my mad wife locked up in that mysterious room?” Good grief, a girl can’t trust anyone.
There’s a kind of quiet magic in realizing that literature evolves with you. The copy of Jane Eyre on your shelf is not the same book it was ten years ago, even if every word remains identical. You are not the same reader. Your experiences have become part of the ink. Your heartbreaks, triumphs, and disappointments whisper between the lines.
That’s why people cry over books they once read without blinking. It’s not that the book became sadder—it’s that they’ve lived enough to recognize themselves in the sadness. (Shayan)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Jacob Elordi must be a fellow gothic fiction fan because the actor is starring in not one, but two new blockbusters in the atmospheric genre. The second one is Wuthering Heights, which hits theaters on Valentine’s Day 2026 and is highly anticipated among readers on BookTok, Bookstagram and beyond. Based on Emily Brontë’s classic novel, Wuthering Heights is a gripping story set on the bleak Yorkshire Moors. It begins when Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, seeks shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. Here, he uncovers the history of the events that took place years before—events surrounding the intense relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. A dark, complicated yet compelling story about choosing between desire and societal expectations.
What readers are saying: “What I love about this novel is the setting; the wilderness. This is not a story about niceties and upper-class propriety. This is the tale of people who aren’t so socially acceptable, who live away from the strict rules of civilization—it’s almost as if they’re not quite from the world we know. The isolation of the setting out on the Yorkshire moors between the fictional dwellings of The Heights and Thrushcross Grange emphasises how far removed these characters are from social norms, how unconventional they are and how lonely they are.” (Melissa D'Agnese)
6. Jane Eyre (2011)
A 2011 adaptation of the most famous work by Charlotte Brontë, "Jane Eyre" tells the story of a young woman (Jane, played by Mia Wasikowska) who has been cowed and terrorized her entire childhood. As an adult working as a governess at a spooky country manor, she begins discovering herself through her relationship with the taciturn Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender). "Jane Eyre" has been adapted plenty of times over the years, but this version is easily one of the most enjoyable.
The chemistry between Wasikowska and Fassbender is electric, and if Fassbender is a little too conventionally handsome to play the stern, frequently antisocial Rochester, his performance more than makes up for it. "Jane Eyre" is moody, atmospheric, and thoroughly adept at capturing the gothic energy of the original story — mad wife locked away in the attic and all. (Audrey Fox)
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