It seems universally unfair that Charli XCX, a woman who has single-handedly dictated the vibe of summer while releasing the best reviewed album of 2024, has been pipped to the number one chart spot by Taylor Swift, after she released another needless edition of the same week. Does Charli care? Probably not. To be a girl, as her sixth studio album states, is to be a cult classic, not a neatly-packaged, mass-media hit.
It is to go viral in an underground Boiler Room kind of way, to rip up The Row, to shout out Julia Fox, to befriend Chloë Sevigny, to only need “ ” to serve a look and have a good time. It is not wearing the same glittery Roberto Cavalli skater skirt and mismatching Christian Louboutin boots night after night. The beauty of the -girl summer is that Charli is too busy attending six parties in one night and plotting out September’s Sweat tour with Troye Sivan to engage in pop rivalry, but she is keenly aware of the cultural impact her lurid-green album and all its It-girl in-jokes has had.
This was always the strategy. Even the musicians she has been pitted against, to quote Lorde, are honoured “to be moved, changed and gagged by her work..
. There is NO ONE like this bitch.” Charli’s team initially stopped in their tracks when the Essex-raised raver text creative director Imogene Strauss and declared “the most ” her latest LP concept.
“No Charli to dress on the cover!” cried stylist Chris Horan, who came on board to mould Mainstream Popstar C.
