She wrote one of the biggest hits of 2013 for Icona Pop. Now, after five years of fine-tuning, she's ready to break out on her own
Whoever thinks the life of a pop star-in-waiting is all glitter and glamour needs to get off Instagram and smell the beery funk of a 7am Ryanair flight to Budapest. I spy the singer I'm due to interview later sandwiched between two sweaty, ear-splitting stag dos. She looks pale and withdrawn; the only evidence that she's Charli XCX, spiky goth-pop starlet, are the six-inch platform Buffalo trainers hanging from her feet. The singer's schedule is so Spandex-tight that today is the only time I'll get to meet her before she plays a Hungarian electronic festival and then shoots off at 8am the next day for an 18-date US and Canadian tour. There's no rest for the wicked, but there's even less for the ascending artist.
Hours later in a hotel room, Charli has got her game face on. She self-assuredly poses for the Guardian Guide cover shoot, puckering her berry-stained lips and pulling out strands of her wild mane (it takes an hour to tease it to perfection). "This isn't going to be for a Halloween issue, is it?" she quips, the cat's eyes on her black bodycon dress peeking up at her, an outfit that Cher Horowitz might've worn had she been in The Craft and not Clueless. Now 21, Charli is aware that she may come off as too ironic. Her sound and style is a cut'n'paste pastiche of a decade – the 90s – that she was too young to experience the first time around but can relive through Tumblr photo collages: a little bit Republica meets Scary Spice, a little bit midriff-baring Disney Kid gone off the rails. The ghost of girl power looms large.
Charli doesn't remember The Big Breakfast, but we do the interview tucked up in bed, just as Paula Yates would have done. There's no time for a proper lunch so she uses the opportunity to tuck into a chicken salad, too. I ask her whether this is what she thought it'd be like when she was a young girl dreaming of being a pop star. "The music industry fucks with you," she says without hesitation, dropping lettuce all over the sheets. "One day you're on cloud nine and the next day… I've cried so much over the past year because it's been so crazy. I guess in that sense I'm a bad pop star because everything's meant to be fantastic all the time, but it's not – and that's shit [when people pretend it is]. But I also love that feeling of not knowing what's going to happen. That's why I do this."
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If anyone knows how rocky the road to fame is, it's Charli. It's taken her near-on seven years to get to the point where she is being touted as a serious pop contender, both as a singer and as a songwriter. At 14, when she was still Charlotte Emma Aitchison and growing up in Hertfordshire, she got a loan from her parents to make an album, inspired by rapper Uffie and her Ed Banger electro crew. By 16, she was playing at warehouse parties in east London, where ravers would run around "half-naked on ketamine". About that same time, in 2008, the Guardian called her "the computer-pop Kate Nash" and filed her next to MySpace-era acts like Lele[SPEAKS] and Frankmusik. She released two singles, the scrappy, nu-ravey !Franchesckaar! and Emelline/Art Bitch. That first album, though, never officially came out.
The buzz won Charli a deal with Asylum, a subsidiary of major label Atlantic, but she didn't release another thing until 2011. "I was lost, you know?" she says. "I was still in school, I'd just come out of this weird rave scene, and I wasn't really sure what to make of that. And when I got signed I hated pop music; I wanted to make bad rap music. I didn't know who I was. I didn't know what I liked. Even though I was signed, I was still figuring it out."
To help her figure it out that bit faster, her label sent her to LA, where she hawked her songs around various pop producers. Nothing vibed until she met Ariel Rechtshaid in 2010, the musical alchemist behind Sky Ferreira, Solange and Haim's throwback pop collages, who was then a relative unknown. "We really connected," she says. "We only had two hours together and in that time we wrote [2011 single] Stay Away. I was freaking out: I had found a piece of myself in this crazy world where people are trying to drag you apart and make you into something. That's when things started to come together."
What eventually came together was her debut album True Romance. Released this April – after a year-long delay – it plays off her influences such as the Cure, Gwen Stefani and 90s bubblegum pop, washing them down with the kind of dark'n'synthy production now readily associated with electronic artists like Grimes. Charli describes it as "the colour purple – it's dreamy and lo-fi but very luxurious." She also calls it "more American", which figures. While in Europe she's been stuck supporting vanilla acts like Coldplay and Ellie Goulding, in the States she's aligned herself with alt.rappers such as Azealia Banks, Brooke Candy and Danny Brown. When notoriously snooty indie website Pitchfork reviewed True Romance, it gave it an 8.3, which is significant of the coolster demographic she reaches across the Atlantic.
She's done three headline tours in America now, but not one on her home turf. "When I play in London I get totally freaked out," she admits, cautiously. "Maybe it's because I know that shit hasn't popped off there. 'Popped off'? Who am I? My mother? So lolz." She does hope, however, that her history won't hold her back any more. "I put out those songs when I was really young. I listen to some of that stuff and half of me wants to blow my fucking brains out. I feel like people should judge me from the point of this record. I released it because I was finally ready."
In the months since her debut, Charli's career has shifted up three gears. The song she wrote with Swedish producer Patrik Berger and gave to shouty Swedish duo Icona Pop, I Love It, has foghorned its way around the world (top 10 in 18 countries, including the UK). Charli appeared as a guest on the track and she tires of being asked whether she regrets not keeping it for herself (she doesn't). Rather, the experience has given her more insight into how things work behind the mixing desk. She's since signed a publishing deal with Stargate's Sony/ATV imprint, Stellar Songs, and Rita Ora and her childhood hero Britney Spears have come after her talents. She's also gained an insight into songwriting sexism, a situation she finds frustrating. "When I Love It happened, people were like, 'Did you…?' and I was like, 'Yeah, I fucking wrote it, why are you so shocked? Oh, it's because I've got a vagina?'"
Charli's frankness is blissfully refreshing, even if her arguments are well-rehearsed. She talks about feminism and taking control of her career, littering curses like they're chewing gum wrappers. She doesn't feel a responsibility to be a role model just because she's a female artist ("I don't like that whole idea of idols, or artists calling their fans 'munchkins'. Although, if I was ever going to go down that road, they could be 'Charli's Angels'"). She's fierce and funny but she doesn't claim to have the answers all the time, either. "True Romance was very feminine – for me, that word embodies being fucking angry and hard, but being sexy as well," she says, when talk turns to the recent spate of nude album covers. "There's a confusing line between the two because I don't have a problem with people being sexy," she says. Even so, she kept her clothes firmly on for True Romance. "I don't think that the whole nudity thing is a massive deal, anyway," she shrugs, "as long as you're in control of it. But if you're a girl in pop music, you shouldn't have to cover yourself up to be taken seriously. You should be able to stand in your pants and be drunk as fuck and do whatever you want without being called a whore. It's really tough for girls because people want to bring them down."
At this point, it seems unlikely that Charli is headed anywhere but up. Weeks later, on the phone from America, she tells me how her tween fans tried to storm her tour bus and how they chuck Justin Bieber's perfume on stage every night ("I don't know why but it smells quite nice, actually"). Back in Budapest, watching Charli and her all-girl band on stage, it's easy to see the appeal: live, she is a force, years of arena support slots whirled into a show full of wild mane-flicking, stomping, impressive back bends and tongue-waggling.
The most exciting pop stars are the fireballs of contradictions; those who delight and provoke, and who play hard but work harder. "And they're someone who is passionate and puts their arse on the on the line," says Charli. "They don't play the game, or follow its rules." Maybe she doesn't know it yet, but she's just described herself.
New single SuperLove is out in the UK on 8 Dec
by Kate Hutchinson via Music: Electronic music | theguardian.com
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