Ella Bloom ’27

by Ella Bloom ’27 on February 26, 2026

The world has been in suspense over these past few months in a state of eager anticipation for the release of Emily Brontë’s classic on the screen: Wuthering Heights. Set on the wild moors of Yorkshire, Cathy and Heathcliff explore an equally wild, untamed love riddled with complications, passions, and tragedy—right in time for Valentine’s Day! Some may recognize this title because of the marketing stunt that was pulled as the movie’s release grew closer. Well-known actors Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi star side by side in this period piece, but this marketing took their romance to a place that transcended the screen, making fans gawk in surprise at this “showmance” stunt and the various, intimate photoshoots with Elordi and Robbie. What few may realize is that the voice behind this movie, like these two leading roles, is more familiar than you think. 

What is it that makes a good movie truly great? To me, at least, it is the soundtrack. If someone were to ask me what my favorite films were, the songs and melodies, more immediately than the characters or setting, would bring me right into the scenes, into the very fabrics of the film that lace it all together. Because that’s what a soundtrack does! It infuses the film with deeper emotion, and each moment becomes heightened when paired with the swell of a symphony or the steady beat of a drum. And after listening to the Wuthering Heights soundtrack on Spotify, without having even seen the movie, I had no doubt that these songs would function in the same way. 

Charli XCX, the mind behind the soundtrack, is a British singer-songwriter who quickly rose to fame following the release of her album titled Brat. Brat dominated an entire stretch of the year 2024. Charli XCX’s songs became cult classics as they were used in dances on Instagram and TikTok throughout several months, which quickly morphed into the phrase that is used to refer to the time when the album dominated the charts: Brat Summer. The rise in popularity of this album went hand in hand with a true embrace of some of the main concepts present in the songs: individuality and messiness. 

This is why I believe Charli XCX was an excellent choice to create the sound of this movie. In her interview for Spotify with Finn Kane, the album’s producer, she says that the movie is “gothic but also romantic and kind of tortured.” The film, like Charli XCX’s own sound, contains a world within it, a complex but beautiful world. Charli XCX understood that this film was not meant to be a traditional romance, that there is something off-kilter, something haunting, about the nature of Cathy and Heathcliff’s love. Charli XCX reflects that she wanted the “nails on a chalkboard kind of feeling,” which I feel is perfectly represented in the first song of the soundtrack: “House” featuring John Cale. 

Charli XCX mentioned in her interview that after watching the documentary on the Velvet Underground, she really gravitated towards what Cale, a founding member of the band, said about recording strings. He wanted them to sound “both elegant and brutal.” Here, again, are the extremes that Charli XCX first hinted at when she described the movie as “gothic but also romantic.” Charli XCX succeeds in bringing these opposite poles together by uniting them in song, and therefore expressing that, like Cathy and Heathcliff’s love, music can be two things at once. It can be “both elegant and brutal,” and the presence of one does not, in any way, take away from the other. The sound of “House” is discordant, odd, and at times alarming, but there is still this certain quality present in the song that draws you in, through the repetition of the lyrics, “I think I’m gonna die in this…house.” Something that alarms you at first can somehow draw you closer, and this is exactly the way that the soundtrack of the movie represents Cathy and Heathcliff’s love story to a T. In her soundtrack to Wuthering Heights, Charli XCX succeeds in transporting us to the moors that provide the backdrop for Cathy and Heathcliff’s love. Her music helps us to see why we lean into and obsess over these messy romances—because they feel like real life, as reality is often confusing and full of contradictions. The Gothic genre was very, very real to these 19th-century authors, and it is refreshing to see the darker sides of Brontë’s novel, and therefore, the darker sides of human nature, reflected in the music that accompanies the film’s adaptation.