CHARLI XCX

I read somewhere recently (and by ‘read’ I mean ‘watched’ and by ‘somewhere’ I mean ‘TikTok’) that pop music has lost all artistry.

- CHANDREYEE RAY

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?