Charli XCX: Up All Night With 2014’s Breakout Pop Star
It’s 2:45 a.m. in Allston, Massachusetts, and Charli XCX is holding court at the kind of house party where every red cup has been repeatedly reused and the only mixer is a sad, depleted bottle of St-Germain. The 22-year-old pop star has already had a full night. She played a sold-out concert, sipped Champagne while sneaking a cigarette in the venue’s bathroom, and got laid. (“Was the show all right?” she’d asked in the dressing room after the gig. “Because I had sex right before.”) Now the U.K.’s hottest pop export is high-stepping in a rhinestone tiara and four-inch white platform heels, nailing every line of Eminem’s “Without Me,” as undergrads from the Berklee College of Music try not to gawk too obviously. “This song is legendary!” she exclaims.
Charli was invited here by a local producer, and she’s relishing every moment. She goes on to recite every word of Nelly’s “Hot in Herre” and takes pictures of her entourage – a mix of low-key childhood friends and a few glam music-biz types – pogo’ing around to the Killers’ “Mr. Brightside.” “You’ll never look this good again in your entire lives!” she says.
At one point, after going outside to bum a smoke, she creeps up to the back windows brandishing a rake, trying, and failing, to spook people inside. She and her makeup artist – an amusingly tart sidekick named Colby who’s carrying a Moschino bag shaped like a McDonald’s Happy Meal – rhapsodize about Britney Spears, and Charli sticks out her tongue for a Polaroid that’ll end up on her Instagram a day later (caption: “80s college party”).
As the evening winds down, Charli leans over to kiss a pal goodbye on the front stoop. A New York friend named Luce comes up behind her and shimmies Charli’s orange plaid skirt back down to a PG-13 level. “The other day my drummer was complaining about looking at my vagina all night,” she says with a sigh. Then an Uber arrives, and she disappears into the Boston night.
If today’s pop music has a sound, Charli XCX helped create it, between 2012’s “I Love It” – the pounding kiss-off she co-wrote for the group Icona Pop – and Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy,” arguably 2014’s song of the summer. Those hits, along with Charli’s own single “Boom Clap,” have made her one of the most in-demand songwriters of the moment. Lorde grabbed her for the latest Hunger Games soundtrack, and Azalea put her to work on a “Fancy” follow-up called “Beg for It”; Rihanna and Gwen Stefani have also come calling. “She’s capable of so much,” says admirer Jack Antonoff of fun. and Bleachers. “It’s hard to find people that can speak to a large audience and are still interesting.”
Her new album, Sucker (out in December), could make her a bona fide star: It’s a brash blast of punky pop that’s equal parts the Clash and Katy Perry. Charli says its message is “pussy power – in your face, don’t give a fuck, bright red and pink.” (She often says that she sees music in colors.) She acts unimpressed by the attention her chart smashes have brought: “As soon as I got successful, everyone was like, ‘Oh, my God, Dr. Luke loves your songs!’ ” she says with a fake squeal. “I was like, ‘What is that meant to mean? Is that the holy grail of compliments?’ ”
Under the blasé front is a singer-songwriter who has been working on her music-biz breakthrough since early adolescence. (Charli once lamented to her dad that her “career wasn’t going anywhere”; she was 14 at the time.) Born Charlotte Aitchison, she grew up in the well-to-do suburb of Bishop’s Stortford, a small town popular among workers commuting into London’s financial district. Her Scottish father ran a screen-printing business but had music-industry aspirations: He booked a club night in Stortford, once packing the venue by claiming that the Sex Pistols were going to play, then saying that they canceled at the last minute.
Charli says she adored Britney Spears and the Spice Girls, and movies such as School of Rock (“When I saw it, I was like, ‘I want to learn about that!‘ ”). But she got serious about music when she joined MySpace and discovered Europe’s mid-2000s electro-pop scene, particularly French label Ed Banger’s roster of acts like Justice and Uffie. Her father took an interest in his only child’s passion and offered to bankroll an album, her self-made LP, 14.