CHARLI XCX

Charli XCX — born Charlotte Aitchison, in Cambridge, UK — is an artist built on contradictions. She is simultaneously a critically-acclaimed indie darling but mainstream enough to claim multiple Top 40 chart entries in the UK, and separate No.1s on both the UK Official Charts and the Billboard 100. She’s been signed to majors, but often operates like a DIY bedroom artist, chucking out singles and mixtapes as she pleases. At home in the underground, but enough of a household name to front documentaries and podcasts for the BBC, she makes pop music, but maybe prefers not to. There’s a disruptive, rebellious streak to her artistry that has defined the over ten years since she wrote the hit-making hook for Swedish duo Icona Pop, and perennial anthem I Don’t Care. (She’s also behind the hook and bridge for Iggy Azalea’s Fancy.)

Since releasing her 2016 EP Vroom Vroom, Charli has secured a reputation as one of the most voraciously collaborative and experimentally-minded pop auteurs working. Her full-length releases are studded with guests like Carly Rae Jepsen, Mykki Blanco, CupcakKe, Troye Sivan, Rina Sawayama and Yaeji — voices from the centre as well as the margins. Charli easily conducts energy between these two spheres. Across her albums and mixtapes, Charli has cultivated a gripping sound that’s instantly identifiable as hers alone. Ever since she started working with avant-pop producers like PC Music founder A.G. Cook and the late visionary SOPHIE, her recorded voice has gone through especially chaotic mutations — mangled, melted and crystallised by pitch-shifting and Auto-Tune.

In 2022 she released her fifth studio album, Crash. Self-described as her “sellout” album, Charli promised “ultimate pop music” inspired by the 80s as a chaser to the futuristic hyperpop of her Mercury Prize-nominated lockdown album how I’m feeling now. In the time since, she’s stepped into movie mode, contributing to the soundtracks of films Bodies Bodies Bodies and Barbie — with Speed Drive, her contribution to the latter, entering the UK Singles Chart at No.9.