Charli xcx’s “Chains of Love” Are Chains You Learn To Worship
Charli XCX’s “Chains of Love,”; one of the centerpiece singles from her Wuthering Heights soundtrack album, captures the core of Brontë’s story not by recreating its gothic tropes, but by translating its emotional violence into a pop-drama that feels both timeless and unmistakably Charli. It’s a song about devotion as imprisonment, desire as a wound, and the maddening certainty that love, once formed, can’t be undone.
Where her other track “House” sinks into distortion and dread, “Chains of Love” opens with sweeping, cinematic strings that feel like the wind rolling across the moors. But Charli never lets the song turn into a traditional period piece—instead, she threads those classical elements through her signature electronic pulse. The result is a hybrid: a power ballad pulled apart by digital static, lush melody cooling into metallic edges.
Vocally, this is one of Charli’s most emotionally direct performances. Even under layers of filters, her voice comes through wounded and reaching, especially as she circles the magnetic refrain: “I know the chains of love won’t break.” There’s something devastatingly simple about that line—no metaphors, no disguises. Just resignation. Just truth. It’s Catherine answering the universe with a tired, stubborn heartbeat.
But the production is what elevates the track. Finn Keane’s fingerprints are everywhere: the surging build, the heart-racing drop-outs, the percussive flickers that feel like adrenaline spikes. Every element tugs at the listener, like a hand pulling you back into something you know you shouldn’t return to. The song aches, but it also glows—hollowed out yet grand.
What makes “Chains of Love” so effective is that it doesn’t pretend that love is heroic or noble. It embraces what Brontë wrote so brutally well: love can trap you, bind you, ruin you, remake you. And sometimes you walk into the trap willingly. Charli understands that, and she crafts a chorus that sounds like surrender—not to romance, but to inevitability.
