Charli XCX interview: 'I really want to change the way women think about themselves. A lot of young girls are quite lost'

Catchy songs and punk attitude make Britain’s Charli XCX the new queen of pop — she talks sex, power and chilli cheese fries with El Hunt
Sucker pucker: Charli XCX © 2013 Mike Massaro for DIY Magazine
El Hunt3 October 2014

Pop stars are mostly pretty unmissable. Entourage in tow or not, in some cases they carry an aura on their person. The people turning around and double-taking might not quite recognise who they're looking at yet, but in a few months they’ll see the face on Tube adverts and hear the songs on every radio station.

Casually strolling down one of London’s grey streets of taxi ranks and takeaways, in an impractical feathered gown and sunglasses, Charli XCX is creating a stir of this exact variety. A city worker freezes; a pair of tourists frantically snap photos as she crosses the road. Disappearing through a door in a way that seems somehow businesslike and razzmatazz, Charli XCX has landed.

In her case, it has never been a question of if, but when. Most 14-year-old girls in Stevenage, circa 2006, were busy frittering their pocket money away in Tammy Girl on diamanté slogan T-shirts and camouflage trousers, while Charli XCX [formerly known as Charlotte Emma Aitchison] was busy convincing her parents to give her a loan so that she could make an album.

She ended up making her debut, titled 14, on her own record label, which she called Orgy. Atlantic snapped her up. There were two mixtapes in 2012 and enough buzzy sampling to short-circuit a bumblebee. By 2013 there was her first major label studio album, the highly glossed alt-pop True Romance, and the hit of last summer, I Love It, the song she wrote and featured on for Swedish DJ duo Icona Pop. But it’s this year that things have really started going crazy for Charli XCX.

“A couple of days ago I was in Washington airport getting a Wendy's,” she says, “and this Belgian girl came up to me, she was like, ‘Oh my God, you’re Charli XCX, can I please have a photo?’ I was literally so f***ing tired... with my chilli cheese fries,” she says, pulling out her best impression of jetlag and recreating the moment vividly. “Shit like that happens to me more now. Since Fancy [her collaboration with Iggy Azalea earlier this year] people come up to me on planes asking me to sign shit. I’ll always oblige because I want to make my fans happy but it is strange. Even just last week I was in three countries in one day. We took a private jet, which was f***ing crazy. We were all very excited and probably really annoying for the flight attendant. We got there an hour early so we could take photos of ourselves outside it.”

This year, she concludes, “has been totally hectic”. With a one-off show at Heaven booked for the end of the month and endless promotional duties leading up to the release of her new album, Sucker, it’s a frantic schedule that shows no signs of letting up. But the 22-year-old Charli is ready.

Girls on top: Charli XCX and Iggy Azalea at this year’s Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas (Picture: Christopher Polk/Getty)
Christopher Polk/Getty Images

“I feel like throughout True Romance I was unsure of myself in terms of songwriting,” she says. “Even though it was my voice, I feel there were a lot of other voices on that record, too. When I was growing up I was really worried about being cool. I felt that pressure. I was never the cool kid in school, and loads of people told me that I was weird, that I dressed uncool and did uncool things, that I was too nice, too happy. All of that made me want to compensate for my personality by making quite a muted and shy album, really. Now I really don’t care what people think — I've made this album because it’s what comes naturally to me. I feel less afraid to say that now.”

Her public will have to wait a little longer to hear Sucker for themselves. Following this interview Charli announced that she would be pushing back the release date to January next year, citing the unexpected success of her latest single, Boom Clap, as the main reason. “I need to put the date back so I can launch the album properly...” she announced on Twitter.

But then Sucker is an album that she seems determined to get completely right, and she repeatedly emphasises the importance of releasing something that is “100 per cent” her. It does feel and sound like something that only she could have written. The sheen and polish are gone, making way for something rawer around the edges that exudes more attitude than Judd Nelson with his feet on the desk in Breakfast Club detention.

Charli’s influences range from the infectious French yé-yé pop of the Sixties to Feel Alright by The Vibrators, which Charli discovered on a punk compilation she bought in W H Smith for two quid.

“With my first record I was very inspired by [dance label] Ed Banger. With this, it was Sixties pop, and this whole idea of Lolita; the way that the music all sounds so child-like but really sexy and feminine at the same time. That inspired me a lot — even the way the vocals are cut in those songs, the gang-like chants.

“Towards the end of last year I was in Sweden with [collaborator] Patrick Berger writing songs. Both of us felt angry and aggressive about being asked to replicate I Love It and we both wanted to f*** everyone off for a while; not tell people where we were, what we were doing. I was just covering songs from his band, Snuffed By the Yakuza, to get out our aggression, and I think through that I was able to fall in love with pop music again.”

The roll call for Sucker is a diverse one, featuring the likes of Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo and Rostam Batmanglij of Vampire Weekend. She nearly did a song with Pelle Almqvist from The Hives too, which was “cool but didn’t work out in the end”.

Having the freedom and confidence to work with whoever she likes, and write however she fancies on any given day, is hugely important.

“I’ve always been in control of everything that I’ve done but now so much more than ever. I feel 100 per cent confident in my own vision. I have discussions and ask for opinions but at the end of the day it’s me making the calls and calling the shots. This wasn’t something curated by my record label. If I wanted to do a session with someone, I’d reach out to them and go do it. I think the best artists are the ones who constantly change — Madonna, Bowie. This idea of building a brand seems to have come about super-strong in the past 10 years but I don’t understand that so much. I don’t think it makes for interesting art, I think it makes for selling a product. I’m less interested in that and more interested in challenging myself and my audience.”

Sucker is a self-aware pop record that is sure to stomp its own path through a chart already crammed with stars and big names. It’s a huge sound that seems capable of clearing a new space for itself. She has said already that this is an album written “for girls, and for everyone on the planet with a p****” and is happy today at the suggestion that it’s sexy, in a way that feels honest and real. “Absolutely!” she exclaims slapping a hand onto the table in agreement.

“I think it’s a feminine album, and a sexy album, but when I think about what the stereotype of sexy is, to the average person, I don’t think it is that. I feel sexy singing these songs and I hope that inspires other girls and other women, because you can totally be confident and feel amazing in your own skin without having to try to conform to what Heat magazine, or FHM or any guy says is sexy. I think what women think is sexy is what is sexy. Girls eating pizza are massively sexy,” she announces abruptly, “that turns me on.”

She pauses to offer round the onion rings, clearly pleased with the appropriate comic timing.

“I really just want to change the way women think about themselves. A lot of young girls are quite lost. I think it would be cool for women to feel like they connect to someone who is also a bit scruffy. I’m not clean-cut and perfect, I say dumb shit and I fall over — and I want girls to know that’s cool.”

Not afraid to speak her mind, Charli XCX isn’t going to pass media training for the Disney Club, and she doesn’t especially care for celebrity culture. “It’s all about rules, and what you can say, and what you can’t say,” she sighs, “gossip, reality and celebrities. It’s not about iconic moments in music history.”

Charli has a plan to up the ante, however. “I’d like to arrive on my school bus with an army of punk 10-year-olds spray-painting the step-and-repeat logo-filled photo backdrop for red-carpet events,” she laughs. “That’d be tight.”

Although she jokes that she’d love to blow everything on making her live show like a “Japanese gameshow”, Charli recently bought a house instead, which you’d think would make her feel rather sensible and adult.

“It makes me feel grown up,” she grins, “but when I think about how I’m doing it up it makes me feel like a child. There’s carpet all over the walls and hanging chairs and glitter curtains with tiny mattresses and dens on the floor, so it’s like a playhouse. That makes me feel about 12. My neighbours are all super-old and they’re like, ‘Oh god, who’s this girl who knocked down all the walls in her house on day one?’”

A mad pad to call home, private jets, VMA parties to attend and Hot 100 Billboard-topping singles to her name, Charli XCX must surely feel like a pop star by now?

“It’s funny because I guess I’ve just really shut myself off from the idea of that. I feel like an ice cube floating around in a sea of chill. It’s not something that interests me. I really do just want to be in the studio or on tour all the time, and everything else is just beginning to freak me out.”

She looks around and a nearby staring punter quickly looks away, pretending not to be at all curious about the fact that Charli XCX is sat in a feathery dressing gown eating onion rings on the next table. “I guess that’s what being a pop star is, you know?”

Charli XCX plays Heaven, WC2 (heaven-live.co.uk) on October 30.

For the full version of this interview see the October issue of DIY, out today and available free from record stores, bars and venues, and online at diymag.com

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