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

I don’t understand this tweet

flo rida joke

Nice!

The sweat tour with Troye is INSANE. Do not miss it, the Montréal show was a madhouse. To borrow wrestling parlance, it had some of the biggest crowd pops I've ever heard.

It's interesting, in the early weeks after that tour went on sale I remember reading about it as having sluggish sales, being another example of struggling tours, etc. But then I guess brat caught fire and Charli became the kind of headliner who could carry it.

re: troye, i know "rush" was popular but somehow i missed him becoming pretty big in flyover country.

i clicked on the ticket link for the show in denver thinking "maybe if there's something under $80" but there wasn't and then i thought "charli xcx and troye sivan in denver? the most annoying crowd on the planet" and then realized that i'm doing that thing where "most annoying" also means "most fuckable"... anyway i'd rather play "the girl, so confusing" as an "encore" at the end of my dj set at the local gay bar because everyone is chanting for more and then watch these cute 20 somethings jump up and down and scream every word at each other, like at least i have a good view of it.

dragged my feet on getting tickets to this and now the only ones left are $$$

Awful lot of ILX faves on the remix album

Friday pic.twitter.com/SGjgqIGzw0

— Charli (@charli_xcx) October 7, 2024

Does Charli lurk here?

hmm so the rumors about George's edits showing up isn't true?

i'm not sure this is going to be good

Remix albums are always fabulous

the 1975 track sounds like a 1975 Brief Inquiry/Notes-era album/interlude track (complimentary)

pretty much everything on this is a success which is way better than usual for this sort of thing

my only complaint is that the 1975/jon hopkins track doesn't really fit with the rest, it's too much its own thing

Glad this isn’t just features on every song like Guess and that most of these are complete remakes.

the 365 remix w/shygirl is what I'm looking for

the bon iver one is gorgeous. some of these are really emotionally affecting! the “everything is romantic” one really like establishes the original as a whole cinematic universe, caroline did an incredible job with that

i don’t think the remix album is better than the original but it may be better at nailing the thing she is doing right now where she is writing in extremely diaristic fashion about fame in a way that manages to eliminate the wall between celebrity artist and listener. the way this version of “i think it about it all the time” spells out the exact specifics of her personal life and career hitting a crossroads as her fame peaks in her 30s couldn’t be more individual to her, but it’s rendered in such a tender and universal way (for me)

I came here just to post about what a delightful shock it was to hear Bonnie Raitt's "Nick of Time" interpolated into the Bon Iver remix.

“I think about it all the time” is my favorite song in both the original and the remix album. It feels like two very different approaches and can’t decide which one I like better.

remix album is astoundingly good—might be the best remix album ever? helps that the original album is packed to the brim with iconic hooks and lyrics

also is that what caroline polachek’s music sounds like? ive heard a few songs but didn’t remember it being anything like that. her singing on this is wild

She does some pretty impressive vocal gymnastics on her last album.

I love Caroline Polachek and shygirl and those tracks are among my favorites on this. But it's pretty great throughout. Agree about the "Nick of Time" nod.

Calling it now that her next album will be called "Brat but it's my next album"

"BRAT But It's Totally Different Because It's All New Songs But I'm Still a BRAT who the fuck are you"

the sympathy is a knife remix is my early favorite but i wish the 'it's a knife' lyric was cooler.. i was immediately over it on first listen and now i dwell on it. would rather find & replace with 'it sucks when' but maybe i just need to get over it!

over it over it over it over it (to the tune of bumpin that obvs)

“Apple” didn’t strike me as a highlight the first time and it turns out it’s the most popular song in the non-remix album. It’s so insanely catchy I don’t know how I missed it. Album is so packed.

All the features on the remix album also seem very ilm-approved so this is obviously going to be aoty 2024 in here.

That's just due to the tiktok dance though, right?

yes

Doing double duty on SNL next month!

Tracey Thorn on Charli:

And maybe that’s partly what I hear in the record: a vivid encapsulation of what it feels like to be in your early thirties, that stage of life when you are just past being truly youthful but before middle age starts to set in with all its anxieties and drawbacks. In many ways it’s a good and interesting age. You’re not a kid any more and you’re beginning to notice that fact; you’re looking both backwards and forwards, full of a mixture of nostalgia and anticipation.

I was 32 years old in 1994 when “Missing” came out, the song that would be the biggest hit of my life and get more attention than anything else I’ve ever written. And it is similarly fixated on that transitional life moment – a dance-floor anthem about longing for a childhood friend, while also feeling angst about being unable to “move on”. The lyric is universal enough to have appealed to a lot of people, but its particular mood comes from the struggle to accept the loss of youth and an uncertainty about what comes next.

i’m the same age as her and i’m impressed by how hard and frequently she parties (based on her social media). i still like to go out but her schedule would tucker me out

Imho at 32 you should 100% lean to “more” rather than “less” partying. It gets more difficult eventually lol

hard agree!

seconding

i said i was impressed

My partying habits made a huge leap from 27-35. I didn’t go out to party a lot before that age and I stopped around my mid thirties (partying hardcore, not drinking)

But yeah. My best advice for anyone from mid-20s to mid-30s would be to do whatever the fuck you want. It’s the only part of your life that you’ll be able to do it while looking good doing it. After that your body stops working the way it should and seeing you party becomes a bit pathetic.

alright gang i will increase my partying level. new years resolution

hell, I gave you a taste of my partying -- and I'm not her age.

I think the trick is you know how to party better and not just harder. Chilling out, knowing when to go for some food and take a break, when to bounce venues because you’re just getting tired of where you are, if that’s an option

I got home last night at 11:30 after karaoke with only one drink in me, got up at 5:20 a.m. with not so much as a throb. Progress!

i dated someone in her early 30s for a few years and her friend group partied so hard that it was very rough on me, a girl in her late 30s

never hungover again

hell, I gave you a taste of my partying -- and I'm not her age.

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, December 1, 2024 5:22 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

and we went out dancing after you went home!

:)

https://y.yarn.co/db70a256-f329-4396-8723-850c6364c62b_text.gif

I think the trick is you know how to party better and not just harder. Chilling out, knowing when to go for some food and take a break, when to bounce venues because you’re just getting tired of where you are, if that’s an option

Great advice.

Brand new but old. She is so good at the moment, its not even funny:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agu22bqGHto