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I read somewhere recently (and by ‘read’ I mean ‘watched’ and by ‘somewhere’ I mean ‘TikTok’) that pop music has lost all artistry. A hyperbolic statement, sure, but one not entirely untrue. Some may argue that by its very definition, popular music necessarily has to be vanilla and mass-market—devoid of any real personality or spunk. Others call it the most uninspiring of genres, paling in comparison to the anarchy of punk, the existentialism of indie or the catharsis of techno.
Thankfully for the sake of pop, Charli XCX exists. In her latest album, glibly titled Brat, Charli makes a wild proposition: it is possible to make the kind of music that provokes thought and starts conversations, while also being so plainly good, it can’t not be pop.
If the heart-pumping, synth-heavy first single, ‘Von Dutch’, is any indication, this album will see Charli making a swerve (as the sportscar-obsessed singer is wont to do) towards her underground club girl roots. “I came from the clubs,” Charli says wistfully, during our Zoom chat. “When I first started making music, I was playing at illegal warehouse raves in Hackney in London. That’s home to me.”
She describes the pure electricity in discovering underground club culture in her youth, when she found fascination in everything from the brash music to the thriftiness of club kid fashion.
“I was never somebody who went to traditional clubs where you’d have to put your name on the list and there would be a line-up of DJs playing. I always found myself at warehouse parties—those really underground, last-minute, secret-location kind of events,” she reminisces.
Something like her rager of a Boiler Room set in Brooklyn earlier this year, which broke the record for the most RSVPs to date, then?
“Post-pandemic, I actually think these kinds of scenes are thriving even more,” Charli says bashfully, clearly uninterested in the idea of breaking a statistical record. “I’ve always gravitated towards those spaces because I prefer the music that’s played there than in a super club. And they are usually started from the ground up, often by members of the queer community.”
Being deeply enmeshed in the communities her music most appeals to is what gives Charli the superpower so many pop stars of today don’t have. Her sheer authenticity—whether that manifests as rebellious advocacy at awards shows or casual indifference to winning those same awards—is what makes her so undeniably cool.
“I was playing at illegal warehouse raves in Hackney when I first started making music. That’s home to me”
From shouting ‘gay rights!’ in viral Twitter videos to calling for a ban on conversion therapy to dedicating a single in her new album to her friend and late trans producer Sophie, Charli has found ways to use her voice in ways that matter not only to her, but to the people that predominantly make up her fanbase.
“I truly feel like I wouldn’t have a career without the LGBTQ+ community,” she says. “They have made so much possible for me and supported me when everyone else had given up. It feels right for me to try my best to amplify that community wherever possible. It feels very natural to me.”
In the music video for ‘Von Dutch’, Charli is seen racing through the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, throwing hands at a shaking camera—“The camera was the antagonist of that video. I was lashing out at it,”—before ending up in the sky, on the wing of a jumbo jet. As the wind whips through her hair, she revels in the dangerous freedom of being on top of the world, gyrating and writhing to the music even as she’s seconds away from free fall, that pesky camera never leaving her side.
Suddenly, she leaps off the wing and lands on a baggage cart, bruised and battered. Personality and spunk? Check. Anarchy, existentialism and catharsis? Check, check and check.
Beyond the gritty veneer of the video, I tell Charli that the song reads to me like a soul-baring account of the dark side of being in the public eye, the perverse convolutions of fan culture, and the violating ways in which we poke and prod famous women. A fresh take on the pop star mental breakdown, if you will.
“That’s an interesting interpretation,” she twinkles. “It’s cool that you saw it as the commodification of women within the music industry and also the fan narrative—this idea of ownership of artists by their fanbases—because, yeah, this could be me addressing all of that.”
She adds: “I was thinking about the feeling we have when we’re being watched. Whether it’s by our peers, co-workers or even our sort of frenemies. You know how sometimes you just feel like someone’s watching your every move? This song is me saying, well, if you want to watch, I’m going to give you a show.”
Even for someone so keenly scrutinised, one thing many don’t know about Charli is her multiracial heritage. “My mum is Indian and she was born in Uganda. Her family eventually moved to the UK where she married my dad, who is white,”she shares.
“I grew up in two half-lives, I suppose. When I would go and visit my mum’s family, I felt very Indian. It was all the classic scenes of my nani and bappa cooking with Bollywood films playing in the background and everybody speaking in Gujarati.
“But then I’d go home to this other world which was largely white. It was almost like I would experience the Indian part of my identity only on the weekends. I never quite felt like I fit into either world, which I think commonly happens with mixed-race kids.”
It didn’t help that, at the time, the mainstream media representation for Indian characters was limited to the stereotypically written Apu from The Simpsons. “There were a lot of jokes from my schoolmates about corner shops and things like that. But also, my grandparents actually did have a corner shop. So it was very confusing, you know?” Charli laughs.
“Growing up, I remember my nani and bappa cooking with Bollywood films playing in the background and everyone speaking Gujarati”
She also confides that she was bullied in school for her unibrow—I shriek, since she has one of the best sets of eyebrows in Hollywood right now—which is a rite of passage for any Indian kid growing up abroad. Eventually, of course, once we are all grown up, everyone envies the same features they once made fun of.
“You’re totally right. I was also teased for my frizzy hair. Now, everyone is always complimenting me on my hair and eyebrows. So to all the people who made fun of me, the joke’s on you I guess,” Charli says.
From album art to track list, Brat is geared to be a high-octane, aggressive record that serves as voyeuristic commentary on pop culture while also functioning as its own subject. “This album is going to be confrontational,” Charli says with a grin.
Even the album cover—a low resolution green square with the word brat disproportionately imposed on it—apparently made some people mad. “They were like, ‘Why isn’t she going to be on the cover? She needs to be on the cover.’ Why should anyone have that level of ownership over female artists?”
The colour choice was also a layered one. Green, in Charli’s view, has been heavily oversaturated in the media and fashion as of late. “I wanted to go with an offensive, off-trend shade of green to trigger the idea of something being wrong. I’d like for us to question our expectations of pop culture—why are some things considered good and acceptable, and some things deemed bad? I’m interested in the narratives behind that and I want to provoke people. I’m not doing things to be nice.”
Still, this won’t stop the pop star from showing her softer side. Charli reveals that while the album might be aggressive as a whole, much of its lyricism is confessional and almost vulnerable in comparison.
“Lyrically, this is quite a different record for me. I’ve written the songs almost in the way I would write texts to my friends or based on things I would say to them on FaceTime. We talk a lot about pop culture and music and it’s been really fun to gossip about the songs we go. They’ll ask ‘Oh, who is this one about? Is this about a friend? Is it about an ex?’ It has fuelled this fun, gossipy narrative which permeates the album.” Talk about group chat material.
The pop star has a banner year coming up, not only with the release of her sure-hit album but multiple film and television projects—following in the tracks of her breakout song ‘Speed Drive’ from the Barbie soundtrack last year. Alongside co-executive producing the score for the A24 film Mother Mary with Jack Antonoff and making original music for Benito Skinner’s Prime Video series Overcompensating, Charli will take an exciting turn starring in Daniel Goldhaber’s remake of 1978 cult-horror film Faces of Death. A second act as a scream queen? Seems more than a natural fit for the dark princess of pop.
At the end of our chat, I confess to Charli that I hadn’t properly been clubbing since the pandemic started. Maybe I just needed to be inspired—what did her current night-out routine look like?
“You know what? My favourite thing to do before I go out is to get in an SUV and play music really loudly, and just drive. We’ll take the long way there with the music blasting. That somehow becomes my favourite part of the night.” I’ll take it—if there’s anyone I could trust to make clubbing great again, it’d be Charli XCX.
Photography Nick Knight
Styling Konca Aykan
Hair Soichi Inagaki/Art Partner
Make-up Lauren Reynolds/Bryant Artists using Suqqu
Manicure Adam Slee/Streeters
Set designer Andrew Tomlinson/Streeters
Tailor Linards Augusts
Casting Jill Demling/Creative Casting Agency
Photographer’s assistants Grace Hodgson, Madison Blair, Jed Barnes and Trudi Woodhouse Treble
Digital operator Sun Lee
Stylist’s assistants Samela Gjozi, Izzie Jones
Hairstylist’s assistant Masayoshi Fujita
Make-up artist’s assistant Matilde Ribau
Set designer’s assistants Bradley Barrett and Alfie McHugh
Set construction Ben Robotham, Cal McGarrity
Producers Jasmine Ashvinkumar and David Bay
On-set executive producer Kat Davey/Liberte Productions
Production co-ordinator Jared Pasamer/Liberte Productions
Production assistants Jordan Kilford, Johnny Faulkner and Nicole Ready/Liberte Productions
Studio Park Royal Studios
Lighting Direct Lighting
Retouching Epilogue Imaging
Pre-order your copy of the April ‘Pop’ issue of Vogue Singapore online or pick it up on newsstands from 5 April 2024.
