Charli xcx: does new album hit as hard as Brat? – The Latest

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1:00catch you maybe they don't it's like she's affirming people take a creative leap i think you can also read it as like come with me if you want while i do this and also if you don't that's fine from the guardians today in focus this is the latest with me lucy hoff charlie xcx the british pop star has spent nearly a decade being a real pop favorite a bit of a kind of cult classic flying under the radar but she obviously hit the big mainstream in 2024 with the release of the Brat album which was this huge culturally defining moment. Laura Snapes you're our deputy music editor and you've given her new album five stars so clearly it's lived up to some very high expectations and followed on from the success of Brat in your view.

1:50Yeah I think one of the really interesting things about it to me is that there are so many expectations after Brat like would she be able to do that again would she be able to have like a monocultural moment like that and I think because it was such a hit a lot of people really wanted her to keep making that sort of like big ratty kind of club music and so I think she has defied expectations by making something it has a smaller sound it's reached in guitars rather than synths although there are synths on there and for me that element of surprise I think is really interesting also So how do you follow up something like that when everybody wants you to do what came before and you've had this long career where you've kind of been innovating from the sidelines and then success is the thing that's maybe going to trap you in this one image that people have of you.

2:30I think it puts a really interesting sort of premium on like, how do you reinvent? Like, because she's not the sort of artist who wants to do the same things twice. But also if you if you go back to what you were doing before, you might like annoy the new fans. But if you also pivot in a really new direction, people are going to say, well, you're just doing it for the sake of it. so I think it's a really tricky thing to balance and I think she also she toys with that and she toys with the idea of like the cultural reset and like the evolution of identity not just as a pop star but also as people and yeah like the first time I put the album on on very early on Wednesday morning half past six in the morning probably not the time to listen to a Charlie XCX album didn't quite get it and I was like maybe it's a bit thin I'm not really sure and then I took it out and was listening to it in my headphones and these days she has such conversational delivery is really like intimate and sort of off the cuff and listening to it that way the whole picture of it started to evolve for me and I realized like oh I actually love this I think it's genius it's a lot subtler than Brat and it's had very mixed reviews today like I've given it five stars I think that's the highest it's got um some people have given it two stars but yeah I think it's subtler but I think it is just as smart and I think that in time and also maybe when it's had a live incarnation as well she's headlining Reading and Leeds in August it's going to start this kind of very different style to Brat in that it's got these guitar riffs, it's got a little bit of synth, but it's not the massive club anthems that we heard in Brat.

3:52She herself has been a bit conflicted about whether it's a rock album or not, but certainly one of the lyrics in the first release, Rock Music, has the lyric, I think the dance floor is dead, so now we're making rock music. Which has drawn a little bit of criticism from people who make dance music and also for her fans. That song is tongue in cheek. Like I think it's about the idea of the cultural reset. Like when I spoke to her early in the cycle, you know, she talked about how when, you know, she's nearly 34 years old, she spent her whole life in music. Anybody who's been a music fan that long, you see music cycle three different things.

4:30Like one minute we're doing rock, next minute we're doing pop. Then everybody's doing like a turn to country or whatever. And I think it's quite, it's very funny and self-aware and tongue in cheek to be like, now this is what we're doing, actually. And like, I think I knew that people were going to be so boring about the like, oh, I think the dance floor is dead thing with the sort of coming along with their sort of think piece, which is like, um, actually it's not. But like that anybody who knows Charlie is a pop star. She's not the sort of pop star who climbs onto a trend, especially a trend that's been pioneered from the sidelines, maybe by like queer people or artists of colour or whatever, uses it for a bit and then chucks it away.

5:03She just doesn't do that. So she's obviously not being like, the dance floor is dead to me. I'm never going to do that again. but I think it's a it's a funny song about like the premium to reinvent um and it's very button pushing as well but I also think that within it it's kind of surprisingly earnest like there's a bit where she sings like um jump there's like jump off the stage today maybe they catch you maybe they don't and like it's like she's affirming people like take a creative leap like be creative with your friends that's what the song is also about see what happens but I think you can also read it as like come with me if you want while I do this and also if you don't that's fine yeah yeah Yeah.

5:36And I mean, I think, I mean, lots of people think of Charlie X as a sort of Gen Z pop star, but she is now 34. So, you know, like maybe the stylistic change represents an artist who's coming into her maturity and that represents something about this pivot. She got married last year. She's been in the music industry for a long time, as you say. But I suppose, you know, I'm interested in the idea that female artists in particular have a pressure to reinvent themselves, to come with new sounds. And I think that's a pressure that it doesn't seem to appear to exist in the same way for male artists.

6:14I don't know if you agree with that and whether that's something you've spoken to Charlie about. I think that that's definitely true for female artists and more so than male artists. Like, you know, look at Ed Sheeran. He's just worn a T-shirt for 20 years and everybody's fine with that. like he doesn't have to razzle dazzle differently every time he does something um but i think that the way that charlie reinvents it's different from that sort of like commercial imperative to do it i think she's toying with the idea of it on this record but she is somebody who she has like a genuine relationship with the underground like since about 2016 she started working with these really avant-garde producers who at the time were went under the umbrella of or were associated with pc music and they're making really freaky underground sounds sort of innovating from the sidelines and so she is really really invested in what's new what's interesting not repeating herself and for her I don't think it's like I've got to push a new product on the public like everything I'm doing is orange this time or whatever although obviously like Brat was green and this is very black and white yeah yeah restless and like uber creative and you know she said a number of times like I don't have hobbies and she says hobbies like it's a sort of filthy concept um she just makes music she's just creative so I think she's for her it's about restless energy rather than somebody at the label being like how do we market you this time around even though she says she doesn't have any hobbies she has been sort of dabbling in filmmaking hasn't she she's uh planning to appear as an actress she made a film called the moment which came out last year so she is sort of expanding her creative horizons yeah absolutely i mean i think it's all part of like a sort of restless creativity and one of the one of the best songs on the record which actually came out as a single this week with an amazing video with the French actor Vincent Cassell.

7:51It's called Camera and it's about how she's basically singing right into her internal monologue. Like, am I stupid for wanting to chuck my life away as a musician? Because when I'm standing in front of a camera, I feel so alive and free and unafraid and also able to be anything but myself. you know a lot a lot of pop sales become multi-hyphenates because i don't know in this day and age like it's cool to start a book club or have a perfume or like a makeup line or whatever and yeah that i mean that's fine that's a very old playbook i have feelings on it one way or another but i think that you know a lot of that stuff is just about product that's got your name on it and sort of like brand awareness where i would say for char whereas i would say for charlie doing stuff with fashion which is definitely a world i know a lot less about and doing stuff with film it's about like how can she expand her artistry and test it and push herself into new sort of like fields um the acting stuff has been really interesting the moment i don't think was super successful as a mockumentary it seemed a bit confused and for somebody who really doesn't pull her punches in her lyrics it felt like it pulled its punches a little bit but she's an enjoyable presence in it she's good at playing an exaggerated version of herself but the only other film role of hers that i've seen so far is a film called erupture which is a film set in poland it's a very low-key indie film and it's about a young woman who goes out there with her boyfriend who she plays the young woman who she doesn't really like and she can tell that he's going to propose and she's trying to give him the slip and it's a very naturalistic performance from her it's very different from like the punchy brat like neon sort of thing most of the time she's got like hair stripped back no makeup on just like running around poland smoking cigarettes in the summer and i thought she was really good in that so i think she's that's she's not a dilettante like she's really committed to this i think like her her letterbox account the website that people track their film viewing on that leaked a couple of years ago so people know she's got like pretty radical taste in film and she's quite ardent about like learning about cinema and stuff and i think she's a real student and i think the one of the things that's interesting about her moving into film it's like music she could make any kind of music she wanted with her eyes closed at this point like the album before brat was her being like can i make you know big radio one bops that kind of in-person or just like big pop music and pull it off yes she did she can do that in her sleep that's not really interesting to her but I guess the sense with something like film it's like this is new to me and it's scary and like it gives you a feeling of like I don't know what I'm doing here that she has maybe doesn't have in music quite so much because she is a pro and she's been doing this for pretty much 20 years since she was a teenager yeah well what a career and a big five-star review from you today in the Guardian a little bit of a mixed bag elsewhere but we'll let listeners and viewers make up their own minds.

10:26Laura, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for having me. That's it for today. My huge thanks again to Laura Snapes, The Guardian's deputy music editor. You can keep up with all her work over at theguardian.com. And I really recommend yesterday's episode of our sister podcast, Politics Weekly. Pippa Creera and Kieran Stacey will be having a look at Andy Burnham's first week as Prime Minister. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Latest. Today in Focus, we'll be back in your feeds as usual on Monday morning. The latest will be back on Monday night. This episode was presented by me, Lucy Hoth.

10:59It was produced by Angus Neal and Belinda Gurung. The senior producer was Ruan Ramgobin. The executive producer was Zoe Hitch.

11:13This is The Guardian.

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