Biography
If you don't know Charli XCX yet, give it five minutes. The teenage prodigy's about to explode into 2011, not so much making an entrance as kicking pop music's door in and running rampage through its front room. Armed with a rampant imagination and a plethora of emotive pop songs, and backed by a growing army of top producers and worldwide fans, she's got the current crop of stars in her sights and more than enough ammo to take them down.
Charli is not quite like your run-of-the-mill musician. Inspired by the fanciful exuberance of Patrick Wolf and the confrontational theatricality of Nicki Minaj, she‘s equal parts musician and showman, an attention-loving whirling dervish that’s been known to throw teddy bears into crowds, lick photographers’ lenses, and turn up to record label signings with a glitter ball in hand before writhing across the boardroom table.
Exploring her darker side through her next single, ‘Stay Away’, co-written and produced by Ariel Rechtshaid (Glasser, Diplo), is as knock-you-to-the-floor as first introductions come. A massive scuzz-bass driven anthem that combines all the majestic bluster of the 80s with distinct post-millennial production, it’s an epic and heart-wrenching addition to pop’s cannon about “unrequited love and being tainted by someone so you can’t be around them any more”. Witch house poster boys Salem and West London producer of the moment T Williams have both already jumped at the chance to remix.
And this is only the tip of the forthcoming album’s iceberg.
Constructed over the last year in London and LA with a variety of producers (Aerial, Alex Metric, MNEK, Dimitri Tikavoi) it’s set to rattle a few cages and have some of the more complacent pop stars sitting up straight. “While I’m loving a lot of the French sounds, MIA (who started what Lady Gaga is finishing) and bands like Hurts and These New Puritans
If the vast majority of her peers might lack ideas, Miss XCX has more than enough to go round. “I have a really vivid imagination” she admits, “I can’t watch a horror film without wanting to kill myself. I get these vivid dreams that flow out into my lyrics and visual ideas. I had this dream the other night that I was drowning in a hot tub made of pink silk.”
Playing in bands since she "bullied" her buddies into backing her at the age of seven, Charli's long had music coursing through her veins. She recorded her first album at 14 with a loan from the bank of mum and dad and, while she’s only just paid them back, it did the trick, attracting attention from the right London scenesters and bagging her gigs at warehouse raves across Hackney. A support slot with Peaches followed soon after and before she knew it she was playing the Royal Festival Hall and returning to Bestival last year as a resident (following in Florence’s footsteps). She’s just supported Robyn at the Roundhouse with more dates to come.
Charli’s not just sought after for her music though; she’s been muse to both Rankin and David Bailey already. “Bailey was fucking cool but so scary” she remembers. “He said ‘you’ve got a lovely voice, but your trousers are fucking shit’. To be fair they were pretty bad trousers, full of proper retro killer colours like a baby had thrown up on my leg.”
Her aims are simple: “I want to be on the top of the BBC Sound list, I want to blow people’s minds with a killer live show”. With the likes of ‘Stay Away’ she’s sure going about it the right way.