“I am on a radio promo tour,” shouts Charli XCX into her mobile phone as she hurtles along some long highway in Buttfuck Nowhere, USA. “Sound the alarm! Shut it down! It’s pretty wild.” You get the feeling it’s not, actually, all that wild, but Charli’s current M.O., via her forthcoming, hyper-real SOPHIE-produced album, is to inject some FUN into all facets of pop music.
While her 2013 debut True Romance cast her as a sort of Tumblr goth, and 2014’s creatively-muddled-but-still-way-above-average Sucker turned up the angst, the Charli of 2017 is (mainly) about partying. Fuelled by 2016’s PC Music-inspired Vroom Vroom EP — essentially loads of balloons being rubbed together with huge pop hooks on top — roughly 70% of the new album mentions champagne, or partying, or partying with champagne. If the music were a fabric it would be neon-pink PVC.
Most pop stars stick to an aesthetic or a sound; Charli is much flightier. She’ll readily admit she’s quick to jump into something new, become fully obsessed, then hastily move on. Spending most of her time in LA, last year saw her get into the juicing scene — a phase obliterated at the video shoot for recent single “After The Afterparty.” “I was sober until then, basically, but there was this huge rider of amazing champagne and vodka and stuff. It was a night shoot from 7pm until 7am and my call time wasn’t until 3am so I was just sat in a trailer getting really fucked up. Then I had to shoot the video and was really drunk. It was really Anna Nicole, the whole vibe.”
Prior to the wheatgrass smoothies was an even less believable flirtation with keeping a journal, a move so at odds with people’s perceptions of Charli XCX that she may as well have started up the Georgian nose flute. “I was in Germany at the airport and I bought this really expensive Moleskine journal thing, and a really expensive pen,” she explains. “I was on the plane writing in this diary for the whole flight — all my feelings about being a pop star — and my tour manager was like ‘you’re not going to keep this up, it’s bullshit’. I was so offended and was like ‘this is my new thing!’. Then, literally, we got off the plane and I was like ‘I left my diary on the plane, FUCK!’.”
Perhaps that’s the point with Charli: she’s not interested in being one thing only. She tries things, sees what happens, and moves on if it’s not right. Even the current trashy-raver vibe isn’t the full picture. Given she managed to interpret that first pang of love so exquisitely on 2014’s “Boom Clap,” she’s keen to make it clear the album’s not all up in da club, bottle of bub. “You know what, working with SOPHIE has allowed me to open up,” she says. “I think I’m a bit closed when it comes to that kind of stuff. That’s why people are like ‘she just parties and blah blah blah,’ because I don’t let people see that other side of me that much. I feel like the label will try to market it and I’m like, ‘these are my actual feelings, go away’. There’s one new song called ‘Can You Hear Me’ which is super emotional, and another called ‘Waterfall,’ which to me is very strip-clubby and sexy, but also emotional as well.”
Does she get emotional at parties? “I definitely got emotional at my last party,” she laughs. “There were a lot of strangers in my house, about 500 people. I was like ‘fuck!’.”
Let’s go back to February 2016. The Vroom Vroom EP seemed to confuse some people, especially critics. In a nice way… what were you thinking with that EP?
(Laughs) “What were you thinking?” That’s the music I like to listen to. I realised after Sucker I would never buy that album. Maybe I would have bought it when I was really into God Is a DJ-era P!nk, but when I was making it, I wouldn’t have bought that record. Whereas I would have bought Vroom Vroom, especially because I like to party so much. I wanted to make music I wanted to party to. When “Vroom Vroom” comes on in a club I go crazy — I lose my shit and I don’t care. It’s embarrassing.
What is it about PC Music and SOPHIE that you like so much? What are they doing with pop music?
At the beginning I was really obsessed with the sound and the way they market their artists. It felt forward-thinking, exciting and sort of dangerous. The way major labels market artists is very boring compared to the way [PC Music’s] Hannah Diamond is marketed, for example. Now I speak to [PC Music co-founder] A. G. Cook every day and he part-time lives with me in LA, so I’m obsessed with it because he’s so funny. We talk about pop music all the time. I think people take it really seriously and find it offensive that they’re being really fun — like they’re being “art school” and trying to humiliate everyone — but it’s genuinely joyous. I feel the same with my music and the way I am as an artist. The stuff I put on Twitter is happy — I don’t want to make people feel bad.
You seem to move on quickly after each album. Do you look back at all?
I feel like now, with distance, Sucker is the anomaly. There are a lot of similarities between True Romance and the new record, and while Vroom Vroom is definitely more aggressive there are definite links between that and the new album. They’re all connected, but Sucker is the weird bit.
Poor Sucker! Do you think about how fans might react to that?
Okay, right, so Rostam [Batmanglij] told me off for this. He literally said what you just said. I should probably stop saying it. I do like parts of that album, but I also think I have a very honest relationship with my fans. I’m not going to think they’re lame for liking it — it’s just not something I connect with anymore.
Do people connect to your music on an emotional level?
Yeah, definitely. I don’t connect to music that emotionally — well, sometimes I do — but sometimes I think about it in a clinical and cynical way. I don’t think people are like that unless they’re a songwriter. Fans message me and say it’s helped them through a break-up, or when someone’s passed away, and that’s really powerful… I wish I could answer that more like Taylor Swift would, but I can’t (laughs).
You initially got bored of talking about Icona Pop’s “I Love It” [which you wrote] and the songwriter world that hit threw you into — are you more comfortable with that now?
I love it now! I’m obsessed. I’m trying to do loads of songwriting. I want to cancel promo to go and write songs for people — that’s part of who I am as an artist. People are always like, “you’re this girl who’s a pop star but also a writer,” but half the time I don’t get the chance to write for other people anymore. So I feel like I’m living a lie. I might be working with Charlie Puth. I got his number and the first thing I texted him was “hey Charlie Puth, imagine if we got married then we’d both be called Charlie Puth, hahaha.” He didn’t text back for a while.
You’ve written a song on the new Blondie album too — tell me about that.
They hit me up and obviously I’m into Blondie, and particularly into Debbie Harry as a woman in music. They heard some demos of mine from when I was 14 or 15 and they actually liked two songs I’d written then. So I was like, “cool.”
You’re great at writing songs for other artists that still fit their sound. What would a song someone else wrote for you sound like?
Oh my god. If someone wrote a song for me I feel like it would be awful. It would be like “#Selfie,” that Chainsmokers song. They’d be like “you’d kill it!”. It would be — puts on whiny cockney accent — “alright I’m from London, are you ready? You know what I’m saying?” Or maybe “I’m gonna smash your heart like I smash a glass, on a Friday night in the club.” That kind of vibe. I wouldn’t take it.
What do we learn about Charli XCX from the new album?
I don’t know — ask SOPHIE or A. G. (laughs). I guess you learn that I’m a pretty diverse songwriter and I don’t just shout random words all the time. You’ve made me think it is quite emotional actually. I have feelings.
Do you prefer working with men or women?
I don’t care — it doesn’t matter. I just care about working with people I like and respect. There’s nothing I hate more than labels saying, “this is the latest hot producer, you should be in the room with them.” That’s not inspiring. I have to really be into what they do. I rarely work with new people. Whether someone has a dick or a vagina doesn’t bother me — as long as they don’t act like a dick, it’s fine.
“Good Girls” plays with gender expectations around partying and having fun. Do you ever feel pressure to apologise for who you are and what you do?
In my head I’m like “my mum would really want me to apologise for this thing I’ve done,” but in the real world I can’t. I have to stand by what I do. I rarely apologise. I did a lot when I was younger and people would question why. Sometimes there are things you have to apologise for — like when I put the video for “You (Ha Ha Ha)” out and it had guns in it.
