Charli XCX

No thread on her yet. Her two singles released this year ('stay away', 'nuclear seasons') got the 'best new track' feature on Pitchfork and TheSinglesJukebox rated the later with a 7.83 which is quite a high score by their standards. Also it seems she's been getting the love by british press for a few years now, but I can't confirm that firsthand.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBxC5bRbruQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1GNx2bwZa4

Is she named after a Star Trek episode?

From interview magazine http://www.interviewmagazine.com/music/brit-pop-girls#_ :

CHARLI XCX
FULL NAME: Charlotte Aitchison. “The XCX really stands for ‘kiss Charli kiss’ which is unbelievably crap.”

AGE: 17.

PROVENANCE: Hertfordshire.

SOUND: Pouty raps, fuzzy basslines.

INTERVIEW: How long have you been making music?
CHARLI XCX: I started writing my own things when I was about 8. I used to try to bully my friends into imitating the Spice Girls on the playground. Then I realized, Oh god, my career’s going nowhere, so I looked in the Yellow Pages and phoned up the first cheap studio that I found and started recording.
INTERVIEW: What’s your song “I Wanna Be Darth Vader” about?
CHARLI XCX: Well, last night on Britain’s Got Talent, there was this absolute twat dancing to
Michael Jackson in a Darth Vader suit, which put me off a bit, but I used to think Darth Vader was really sexy—the mask, the voice, the heavy breathing, and the way that his cape whooshes when he walks.
INTERVIEW: What’s your grand plan?
CHARLI XCX: Well, there are a huge amount of girls out at the minute and they’re all great, but I feel like I could take them all on. I like Lady Gaga’s music and I think her fashion is great, but I saw her on a chat show and I wanted to punch her in the face. I kind of like La Roux, but her voice sometimes really annoys me. That said, I recently noticed that I’ve been doing really high notes in my songs, and I’m like, Oh no, here it comes. I’m going to turn into La Roux. And I’ve just gotten a massively short haircut with a huge fringe. Next I’ll be going ginger.

God bless all these musicians before their PR agents get to them and they actually give fun interviews.
Great songs, by the way.

Whoops, meant to say "God bless all these youngish musicians while they're still giving fun interviews, before their PR agents get to them."

kinda confused by seeing people have their minds blown by her. she's ok i guess, need to hear way more though - i like what i've heard but i'm not fully convinced for some reason, seems a touch heavy-handed

Stay Away is definitely one of my favorites this year. Nuclear Seasons, not really.

Totally into "Nuclear Seasons" and I think I'm gonna go see her tomorrow at her first US show (!)

i love stay away. and valentine. haven't heard anything else other than nuclear seasons which a lot of people seem to like but i don't really get

the chorus in this is great http://soundcloud.com/charlixcx/youre-the-one/s-pU6Fs

Still waiting for something as good as Stay Away. Not even the Icona Pop song is close imo.

okay so this "super ultra" mixtape is just ridiculously great

It is!

cosign! this is probably the closest an album has come to approximating the feel of maxinquaye for me, sounds amazing late at night. rapping over "moments in love" is p much a direct route to my heart. it's a little messy, but the songs are really there. also i didn't realize she was only 20--she'll probably go for leaner production choices in the future.

Everything is consistently excellent. Also "Heatwave" is my jam.

It's almost as if... Someone made tumblr-pop that justified the adjectives and lurid colourscapes.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/14932-various-artists-you-ha-ha-ha-lindstrm-remix/

Lindstrøm gives this shit a proper workout.

i really have no idea what to make of this album, like even whether i'm enjoying it or not

i feel like i'm on the brink of being completely YESSSSS THIS IS RESONATING DEEPLY WITH ME but i can't...quite...get...there and it's the kind of thing where if you're NOT on board emotionally it's kind of functionally useless

"you're the one" is a bit of a monster though

albeit i think i might like "you're the one" better if it didn't plunge shamelessly into its cheesy chorus?

the brooke candy verse on this is disappointingly terrible

have't heard the album but from the singles can attest that if you're on board emotionally they are the best ever

there's a vagueness that keeps me from being emotionally on board "you're the one" but that curving bass

really love the lingering the verses do on "you (ha ha ha)" too

Does she have her own "I Love It" on this? I am still curious to hear what she would have done with it instead of Icona Pop.

I'm into this newest single "what I like". she has a knack for cadence

streaming over @ pitchfork advance

This has very big Alisha's Attic vibes writ large all over it. It's a modern pop album that seems designed for people who grew up in the 90s, which is probably either really cute and endearing, or naff and silly, depending on your taste for talky-sung verses in the style of Siobhan Fahey when in Shakespeare's Sister.

Charli XCX herself seems very much a pop starlet for the twenty-something crowd, in the way she nonchalantly swears and sings about sexual encounters but it's all framed in this goth-pop cuteness with easy melodies and simple vivid imagery. I can see this album's relationship to 90's r&b being comparable to the way Anniemal took 80's disco and made it sound very pop but very chic, even though this is a lot more obviously dark and menacing.

aka the awful song with Brooke Candy made me nervous but I even don't mind that in the context of the album and You (Ha Ha Ha) is actually better than I remembered and the rest of it is great. The first three singles are still the best stuff here especially Nuclear Seasons but this is a pretty wonderful pop album.

as extravagant as charli's overload of stylistic reference points is, i don't think it's what's preventing this clicking for me - basically just don't think her songwriting is quite there yet. it's a bit overstuffed but the problem is less that and more her lack of a really distinct songwriting voice

or just, interesting words, or something

i think i'm the only person in the world that doesn't hate the brooke candy song. the second-to-last one "how can i" would be the dud if i had to pick one

You're not alone. Cloud Aura is one of her best. That said, True Romance is a let-down for me largely due to the production. My favorite track is What I Like, but even it has it's problems. Like why start of with a great intro that gets you all hyped up, only to never reference it anywhere else in the song? Still love it, but that's just one example of the many opportunities missed by this album. I expected it to be much more in the vein of Dance 4 U and Velvet Dreaming but the album's first half is like a 90's rehash of what Little Boots was doing with 80's pop.

I've been cool on her other singles but "What I Like" is marvelous.

this is awesome; the two-year-old songs thread in pretty seamlessly

weird but so far i prefer the album tracks to most of the singles (except "what i like" which wow). "like roses" and "take my hand" especially

black roses*

Really, really, really good record.

after seeing her live last week this album is finally seriously beginning to click for me

in a way i'm glad the singles never quite did it in isolation because i get to feel the rush of "YOU'RE JUST ELECTRIC BLUE" now instead

CUZ I CAN TASTE YOUR LIPS ON MY LIPS
YOUR KISSES TAKE ME OUT OF CONTROL
AND I CAN FEEL MY BLOOOOOOOOD
IT'S CRAWLING THROUGH MY VEEEEEEIIIIIIIINS

somewhere, shirley manson feels proud

brooke candy's rap on "cloud aura" is so so bad but the rest of it is so good

WHY YOU WANNA GO TO SLEEP
DON'T GO TO SLEEP
DON'T GO TO SLEEP
LET'S GO OUUUUUT

hmmm i gave this album a couple spins last week but i only actually liked about half of it (mostly the front half, but some later too), the rest just became this amorphous blur of whatever

it's taken me about a month and about...8 or 9 plays, i guess, to click

YOU'RE JUST ELECTRIC BLUUUUUUE is wonderful. all of this is wonderful.

except for brooke candy

Is "cloud aura" the same as on last year's mixtape?

yeah no changes as far as i can tell

"set me free" is ENORMOUS and shoulda been the lead-off single instead of "you"

I still don't get why "I Love It" didn't get the praise this is getting, I know it's noisy and brash but that's kinda the point?

This keeps getting better on repeated listens, it's not so much that it's a grower as

sucker got delayed from early october to mid december in the us, and all the way to february in europe (to add a few more tracks & add rita ora to "doing it" to try to get another hit out of it). it did ok but seems like classic label mismanagement, she had real traction and reasonably big hits with "boom clap", "break the rules" and "fancy", but then in the four months between "break the rules" and the album's us release they only released a few promo singles that they barely gave a push at all. even the successful "doing it" remix in the lead up to the uk release didn't seem to help that much, & they didn't bother to give it a us push at all.

but it's also just not a very good album, "doing it" is the only track i have any lasting fondness for.

The UK album chart also works fairly differently to when Sucker came out. The streaming focus is part of an even faster turnaround and bigger focus on the new, and that helps more acts to reach #1 once they are above a certain level, at least for a week. Adele and Olivia Rodrigo were the only albums to spend more than one week in a row at #1 last year.

yeah obviously the more direct comparison is with charli, both for charts methodology & point-in-her-career reasons.

aus #1 confirmed now

the added tracks... are not up to the rest!

remember she was talking 2 more albums coming soon after HIFN?

anyway glad she can make some deals with leverage now

UK #1. we did it angels!

really like this album

baby and beg for you both great

UK #1. we did it angels!

― maf you one two (maffew12)

I feel a bit emotional seeing this. It's so well deserved. She's been so consistently brilliant for almost ten years now.

the way the spanish guitar is deployed in "lightning" has real "getting away with it" vibes, probably why i've taken to it so much

Charli XCX on Her Best, Hardest, and Most Mainstream Music

“It’s like, the second I started saying ‘main pop girl’ online, everyone was coming for me,” Charli says. “I was like, ‘Do you know who you stan? Obviously I’m going to deliver you something iconic. Don’t doubt me.’”

no i think it's just because the early singles weren't great lol. if she'd started the rollout stronger i think the fanbase would have been very onboard from the start but as it was "good ones" was slight & perfunctory and wasn't really good as a charli track or as a big sell-out pop move

& her constantly getting mad at fans on twitter who were underwhelmed by the album campaign just made them more annoyed lol

good read though

pic.twitter.com/iVduj5p8ko

— @FckyeahCharli / Charli XCX Updates Media (@fckyeahcharliHD) March 27, 2022

this is the sort of trolling of her fans that's good though (playing unreleased tracks she's long-refused to officially release over the pa after her show)

extremely obviously her best since pop 2

You didn't like How I'm Feeling Now?

it was fine

who are you and what have you done with Brad?

Damn, that might be the coldest review of HIFN I've ever read.

these are the songiest charli songs in a minute so i could be reacting to that

Oh yeah, they definitely have that going for them.

the notion that HIFN was not 'songy' is violence

this is a decent, competently-made pop album, HIFN was a singular seizing of the moment and work of timeless brilliance

you are a work of timeless exhaustion

i am literally terrified that you'll declare the new Mitski her best too now

i haven't enjoyed a mitski album since puberty 2

BRAD

"lightning" gonna make me return to my "flamenco drop" dn

ok i can feel that on Mitski

need to give this a proper shot but the Rosalia album is fully occupying my recent pop album bandwidth rn

first and last tracks were my favorite at first blush. love the little elements of "love come down" and "outstanding" that creep into "crash," and "twice" has this fluttery melody that won't leave my head.

what's not "songy" on hifn, just "pink diamond"?

don't really understand liking pop 2 but not hifn

If I were to guess, Pink Diamond, I Finally Understand, C2.0, Party 4 U...

it was a broad claim i have no interest in explaining

I recommend pounding Anthems at brain-melting volume until it snaps into focus.

but it's also just not a very good album, "doing it" is the only track i have any lasting fondness for.

dude i’m RIGHT HERE.

Anyone else going to the gig tonight? Or this tour?

Really excited, not been to any gig since pre pandemic!

Not going tonight, but going to the one in Norwich on Saturday, very excited.

I saw an amazing video of someone throwing the trans flag with Princess Di's face on it at the stage

It was fun. Only some small criticisms: A bit too much new album or singles I don’t care for (crowd went insane for 1999) and not enough of the era I love. Dunno if she needed 30 outfit changes either, kinda would slow the momentum.

she iconic tho.

still playing Crash a lot. Do i like it more than Pop 2?!?!?!!! Maybe. How I'm Feeling Now is the best.. but not gonna replay it this much.

Currently can't get enough of Beg For You, particularly the end

Rina: [vocal acrobatics]
Charli: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

perfection

Concert last week was so much fun, and the audience absolutely lapped up the whole show.

omg that Alexandria Palace setlist rules!

ok pretty much the same at Norwich and wherever. aaa so jealous

ok "Forever" or "Anthems" would've gone a long way

About a week after going to the gig I heard “Move Me” again and it reminded me how incredible the performance on the night was – spellbindingly so – and I’ve been a little bit obsessed with the song since.

show at a local festival over the weekend was great!

she's playing here the same day i already have a ticket to see pavement

and i love charli way more than pavement but charli will probably be back in a few years while pavement won't ugh

does your username come from the fact WA might as well be in space sometimes lol

search within yourself, the quandary will resolve

i've never been to WA so i wouldn't know

I've been to paradise but I've never been to WA

This bump reminds me that being a Gen Xer who laments for the days of the 80s extended mix of singles, I am very grateful for people like ben. who have been making edits of the tracks from Crash.

Here’s Constant Repeat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFR-BLxNneI

But they have done extended edits of the whole album if you investigate their channel, and I wish this was more of a standard thing.

And, here’s the plug bit, I played this mix in my best of 2022 show here: https://soundcloud.com/1btn/inter-mission-09122022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awe3m4yVeT4