Playing The Pop Game

Charli XCX has managed to maintain a career of huge mainstream pop success while also becoming the patron saint of club culture, someone who can write for Camila Cabello and collaborate with Big Freedia in the same year. David Levesley talks to her about pop, nightlife and how the leak of her back catalogue changed things

- David Levesley

“I saw this video of AnneMarie doing karate the other day and I was like: ‘You need to do a karate video,’” she says, as if vomiting out the idea unwillingly. “‘It can be one shot. You’re just walking down the street, taking out all your ex-boyfriends.’ And she was like, ‘What? You don’t work for the label.’ And I was like, ‘I know. Just think about it. It’s really good.’” She recounts the whole thing with the simmering, nasal tone of a nerd in a teen movie, but you can tell she thought it was a shit-hot idea (it was: so good that Anne-Marie had already done it). It’s sort of a surprise we walked out of her dressing room without my first single written.

There are few pop writers who are as quick, bold and frankly prodigious as Charli. She rose to fame, in part, after Icona Pop picked up her demo “I Love It” (which still features her vocals) and co-writing and featuring on Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy”. Then came her album Sucker, which contained her mammoth hit “Boom Clap” but otherwise didn’t seem to satisfy her very much (in one interview, she described her decision to include the song “Break The Rules” succinctly: “I fucked myself ”). But it’s this side of Charli that tracks with her still supporting Taylor Swift on tour and still writing huge pop hits. “Señorita” with Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes: she helped write it. She’s collaborated with everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Diplo. Even when she’s not credited, her particular blend of semi-apathetic vocals and walls of nightclub sound has trickled throughout all of pop.