It would seem that Charli XCX’s love-in with Madonna during Paris Fashion Week (whether sitting together at Yves Saint Laurent’s SS27 menswear show or cohosting afterparties together) was more pointed than originally thought. That is, when taking into account that, the same week that this friendship was so publicly paraded, XCX also chose to release the third single from Music, Fashion, Film, “Wink Wink.” As the title suggests, it offers up XCX’s usual brand of sardonic humor in reference to assuring the masses that she’s, in essence, no longer a “brat.” A.k.a. “bad girl” (incidentally, the name of one of Madonna’s still most underrated singles). Ready to play nice, take her sunglasses off, put some underwear on, etc. And, of course, who pioneered this “rebrand” into a “good girl” better than Madonna herself after the Sex book/Erotica/Body of Evidence backlash the befell her circa 1992-1993?
That rebrand being to turn to the R&B genre for a “softer” effect on her 1994 album, Bedtime Stories (for, as Charli has also clearly learned from Music, Fashion, Film, “Change your genre, change your life”). Even though, all the while, she was still thumbing her nose at the Establishment, particularly with a song and video like “Human Nature,” which is dripping with even more sarcasm than “Wink Wink” (hence, Madonna’s honorary nature as a Brit due to this humor sensibility of hers). As for the latter, Charli’s insistence in the chorus, “Here’s the truth, and I gotta be honest/I’m not a bad girl anymore, I promise.” Quickly adding a “wink wink, wink wink” to equally assure that’s also a damn lie—that Charli would never renounce her “bad girlness” for real (just as Madonna never really did, even after the “Ethereal Girl” era that kicked off in 1996, when she was first introduced to Kabbalah).
Charli makes certain her listeners/viewers really get that with an accompanying video (once again directed by Aidan Zamiri) that finds her in her best imitation of a more sexed-up Lisbon sister (you know, from The Virgin Suicides)-meets-Jessica Simpson in her The Dukes of Hazzard era. And, talking of the Lisbon sisters, Zamiri is sure to commence the video with an overhead shot of XCX lying “innocently” in a field with a bowl of strawberries next to her and one in hand as she begins with the line, “I used to lick cream off strawberries in the summer.” An evocative image from the start, along with the Lana Del Rey-esque follow-up, “And maybe I fucked your dad.” After which she quickly assures, “Just kidding, I’m only saying that for effect.” She then goes on to say, “But my point is I think people can change.” This statement having a few layered meanings. For, on the one hand, XCX is alluding to the fact that, after the success of Brat, it seemed as if no one wanted her to change, but to instead do the same thing again by releasing “similarly-styled” music for the next record.
In response, she went ahead and dropped a single like “House” featuring John Cale, an abrasive, unsettling track that heralded her Wuthering Heights Soundtrack era. And yes, captioning her first teaser image from the “Wink Wink” video with, “Something horny is coming” only goes to show that Emerald Fennell’s film adaptation is still very much a part of her. After all, “horny” is also a word she used to describe the soundtrack’s album cover, explaining, “It’s a picture of Margot [Robbie] dipping some toast into a boiled egg. It felt painterly to me. And horny.”
As does most of the video for “Wink Wink.” Whether it’s an overhead shot of Charli splayed out eating berries in a field or a close-up shot of her chipped nail polish holding on to the bar of a roundabout as she sensually looks into the camera with her back arched and head tilted back. The same position she’s in for the next scene where “wink wink” becomes “wank wank” as she lies back on the couch (ass on the cushion, head on the carpet) with her hand in her panties after putting down the ebook she was reading on her tablet, apparently moved by some especially “horny” passage (perhaps from Wuthering Heights?). This contrast, too, playing up the fact that women can be “both”: “bookish” and sexual.
Even though, throughout history (and particularly pop music history), the patriarchal desire to categorize a woman as either a “virgin” or a “whore” has been a source of constant agony (just ask Britney Spears). Madonna, however, has been among the few female pop stars to take the criticism in stride while continuing to defiantly embody the “both” phenomenon, jokingly telling Jonathan Ross in 1992 (at the height of the backlash against her “hyper”-sexual persona), “Everyone probably thinks that I’m a raving nymphomaniac, that I have an insatiable sexual appetite, when the truth is I’d rather read a book.”
Evidently, Charli feels the same. That is, preferring to read a book while getting an orgasm. And, throughout the video, she continues to belie her “promise” of not being a bad girl anymore by doing “bad girl things” like filling her mouth with the whipped cream (très innuendo-laden indeed) she said she used to lick off strawberries in the summer (finding more direct ways to lick it instead), pressing her tits against a soapy window (courtesy of her own sponge work), flashing her ass at random and “innocently” washing a stain off her top with a, er, pull-down faucet that ends up making her look like she’s in a wet t-shirt contest.
In between, she occasionally prays (another instance of “Madonna-codedness”), these scenes of her doing so only amplifying the tongue-in-cheek aura of it all. Including lyrics like, “I used to say, ‘Scream if you wanna go faster!’ [for XCX is the kind of Spice Girls fan to drop a casual reference to Geri Halliwell’s solo career]/But then I sold my Porsche/My friend Rotsam told me I dressed like a slut/So now I shop at A.P.C.” As for name-checking Rotsam of Vampire Weekend (with whom XCX has collaborated on a few tracks, striking up a friendship along the way), this, too, presents the dichotomy XCX wants to with “Wink Wink.” For while she facetiously says she’s no longer a bad girl, ergo no longer in her “Brat phase,” she’s still doing the very same things that made Brat, well, Brat. Specifically, calling out the names of friends in songs and speaking “conversationally” in her lyrics.
Nonetheless, she still insists, “I don’t know why you don’t believe me/I don’t know why you don’t think I could be an angel girl.” That particular phrase also being a nod to her fanbase’s nickname: Angels (as in, Charli’s). A fanbase so devoted and attuend to her every move that, musically and tonally, many can probably make the connection that “Wink Wink” sounds a lot like one of Charli’s recently released “B-sides,” “Playboy Bunny.” And is, in fact, about as long as the latter, clocking in at barely over two minutes (further proof that XCX is of the PinkPantheress belief, “A song doesn’t need to be longer than two minutes thirty, in my opinion”). In this regard, Charli is sure to differentiate herself from Madonna, still of the more so-called old school belief that a song ought to be at least over three minutes.
And while some might be wondering if this is the “Film” song and video (following the logic of “Rock Music” for “Music” and “SS26” for “Fashion”), Charli confirmed that “Wink Wink” is kind of its own thing (though the video certainly does have some cinematic qualities to it—namely the abovementioned The Virgin Suicides vibe, plus a hint of some Monica Bellucci shit). This by posting on Twitter (never X), “so i guess now it’s actually kinda music, fashion, wink wink, film” and, on Instagram, “music, fashion, wink wink, film…film, you will have your time.” Whatever her “Film” video might ultimately be, it’s going to have a lot to compete with after the visuals XCX has put out thus far for the album.
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