Songfacts®:

• "House" is a collaboration between Charli XCX and John Cale released on November 10, 2025. The track is the first single from the Wuthering Heights soundtrack, created by Charli for director Emerald Fennell's film adaptation of Emily Brontë's classic novel. The song plunges Charli into gothic and industrial rock terrain, with Cale delivering a haunting spoken-word introduction in his weathered baritone.
• Charli has long adored The Velvet Underground, the proto-punk art project Cale started with Lou Reed in 1965, but the hookup with Cale came together through a specific artistic inspiration. After watching Todd Haynes' 2021 documentary about the Velvet Underground, Charli was captivated by a quote from Cale describing the band's sonic philosophy: that their songs had to be both "elegant and brutal." This phrase became the creative anchor for her Wuthering Heights work. Emily Brontë would surely approve.
• After writing the initial version of the song with producer Finn Keane in Austin, Texas, in late April 2025, Charli reached out to Cale to share the songs his words had inspired and to explore a potential collaboration.
  
  "I sent him some songs and we started talking specifically about 'House,'" she said in a video. "We spoke about the idea of a poem. He recorded something and sent it to me. Something that only John could do. And it was... well, it made me cry."
• Cale's spoken-word intro sets the tone: a gothic confession which establishes an atmosphere of psychological entrapment that mirrors the gothic tragedy of Wuthering Heights.
  
  When Charli enters, her voice - processed with glitchy distortions and industrial bursts - creates a stark contrast to Cale's measured delivery. The song's central refrain, "I think I'm gonna die in this house," repeats hypnotically, building from resignation into a wall of distortion and electronic noise.
  
  The "house" becomes everything: a physical building, a mental snare, the emotional cul-de-sac of obsession. Much like Catherine and Heathcliff, Charli's narrator is stuck in a structure she both loves and loathes.
• Frequent Charli collaborator Finn "Easyfun" Keane is a co-writer and co-producer on "House." He has five songwriting and production credits on her album Brat, including the lead single, "Von Dutch."
  
  Nathan Klein, who often works with Keane, is also credited as a songwriter.
• The music video, directed by Mitch Ryan (Charli's collaborator on "Party 4 U"), leans all the way into the gothic, with Cale wandering through a labyrinthine house and Charli contorted in hallways while surrounded by melting wax. Eventually, he reaches her and places his hands on her head in what could be read as a benediction, a curse, or just the world's strangest greeting.