Charli XCX Likes The Inherent Danger Of Crash

By Konstantina Buhalis


Sashaying into the MTV studio immediately after an afternoon at 30 Rock preparing for her recent Saturday Night Live efficiency, Charli XCX takes the room by storm. In a black sleeveless dress, with her hair curled and down, and the most incredible set of nails adorned with fake pearls that match her rhinestone-dotted eye makeup, she is the definition of star power.


For almost a decade, the artist place on Earth Charlotte Emma Aitchison has stood on the precipice of superstardom. She co-wrote two tracks that rapidly became segment of the pop lexicon and dominated in the early 2010s — Icona Pop’s “I Love It” and Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” — and with the world at her feet soon after her first two albums, 2013’s True Romance and 2014’s Sucker, Charli took a step back. She struck out on her own, partnering with English producer A.G. Cook to prepare songs in a new, no-holds-barred fashion referred to as hyperpop. Taking risks, even any time calculated in the music industry, can have dire implications, however Charli jumped in headfirst. Right now, with Crash, her third album released since 2019, she’s back and willing to assume the pop throne.


“I wish I could mention the decision I made was, like, fully suggested out and confident, and I knew exactly what I was doing, nevertheless I didn't,” Charli tells MTV News. “I was just doing what felt right to me at that moment. There was no real thought that I would become a segment of a crowd of artists who with each other made such a sort of influential sound as a collective of artists.”


“I felt very drawn to what was inspiring me, and what was inspiring me at that point in time was making more underground, order kind of left-of-center-sounding music,” she continues. “I learned so much about myself and my artistry along with pop music throughout that time.”


Charli’s determination to make construct a dynamic and individual sound worked out in her favor as she gained notoriety for experimental 2017 mixtape Pop 2. Her single with the late Sophie, “Vroom Vroom,” became an instant club banger and made Charli one of the dance-floor divas. Such early work was the blueprint for not only hyperpop as a developing genre, although for the artist’s own evolution.


This new album, the final release of Charli’s contract with Atlantic Records, takes the main stage as an over-the-top pop album. From the album art, which finds her slightly bloody in a swim suit on the hood of a vehicle, to the glossier production, Crash is a certified powerhouse.


Habitually the outlier, Charli is no stranger to the cinema, naming her first record True Romance immediately after Tony Scott’s 1993 film of the same name. Although, Crash’s album title is far less about the ‘96 David Cronenberg thriller and more inspired by the very act of collision. “I've habitually been very fascinated and very drawn toward cars in pop music and lyrics in videos,” Charli says. “I guess it's just this fast, like, crash-and-burn kind of life that I feel like is very reflective of the way that I have sort of navigated my career.”


“I crashed my vehicle into the bridge,” she sang with Icona Pop. “I don’t care. I love it.”


Maybe it’s the years of artsy growth or the time spent in the public eye. The album title and cover art display Charli’s change from a chaotic agent into the behemoth of creative confidence. “I like the danger and the title. I like the potential for it to feel self-destructive,” she says. ”But also, on the cover, I am the immovable object that's being crashed into, so I think it also shows strength. I just think it's a good word.”


“Immovable object” is spoken like a mantra. Charli uses the phrase a couple of times, almost as if meditating on it as we continue talking.


Crash’s history intertwines with her 2020 album How I’m Feeling Now, which Charli wrote and released in six weeks while in the early months of the COVID-19 lockdowns. Some of Crash’s 12 songs were written even before that record’s release. With such a long recording period, Charli says, “I really wanted to prepare it in this way that I deemed as sort of classically major-label, with plenty of different collaborators who work in a lot of different spheres of pop music.” Some of these collaborators include Rina Sawayama, Christine and the Queens, and Caroline Polachek, along with Cook on the production side.


With an extensive list of collaborators, this project proves to be her most ambitious project although, including the accompanying music videos that distribute a glimpse at a new side of Charli. Featuring modern dance-inspired choreography, Charli frolics on her grave in the video for “Good Ones” and is buried alive, making a gripping metaphor for career suicide, death, and rebirth into a new era. There really is a underlying idea in that track about stepping into power and self-ownership.


“That was certainly a sort of theme for me for the complete album,” she says. ”Power and the idea of power balance, especially inside of the music industry, like taking the power back. Nevertheless then also questioning how much you're really taking the power back if you're playing into an archetype of what a woman is supposed to be in pop music, and not really like presenting answers to that question, although more just like leaving it out there for people to interpret.”


“A lot of the music on this is exceedingly powerful, whether there's power in the heightened sexuality and sexualness of the music or whether it's a power and the volatility and vulnerability in the music,” she continues.


Right now more than ever, Charli is taking female pop conventions and casting them in a new shape. The new era includes the liberation gained from dancing and physical movement pulling from Martha Graham, Katherine Dunham, Bob Fosse jazz, and modern technique. While some fans believe the dancing is being forced on her, Charli made it clear that it’s simply a new frontier for her expression.


“It's really freeing, and I have so much fun doing it. I'm enjoying this new way of creating, and I have such an enormous quantity of respect for artists who dance, for dancers, for anyone who expresses themselves through movement, because I think it's really emotional,” she says. “It's certainly very physical. It could really help you work through your feelings about things. So it's sort of been like my savior this past year. It's just allowed me to really  physical training a lot of emotions that I've had, so I love it. I would rather suggest it.”


Charli is decided to bring the very best to her live performances through it all. As soon as she performed on SNL, Charli took the stage in her black, two-piece, fringe-adorned costume from the “Baby” music video and showed how enthusiastic she is about bringing movement to her performances. Some might even call it iconic. Although would Charli agree? “My definition of iconic is Charli XCX. That's, like, the ideal way I can explain it, to be honest,” she says. “And yeah, that's it, really. Just me.”