“I came from the clubs”: how Charli XCX is returning to her roots
Before Charli XCX became a PC Music princess, before she sold out with CRASH, even before she collaborated with Icona Pop on the shimmeringly sleazy ‘I Love It’, she found her start in raves and clubs. The budding star always had a penchant for pop culture, growing up in the era of the Spice Girls and Paris Hilton, but her start in producing was firmly situated in the electronic realm. “I was born to make dance music,” she stated on X earlier this year, “I came from the clubs.”
Though Charli may have spawned from London’s illegal rave scene, it’s an influence that has rarely cropped up in her career so far. She’s certainly taken pop music to its experimental and electronic limits, working with the PC Music creator AG Cook and legendary late producer Sophie to do so. Cult favourites like ‘Vroom Vroom’ and ‘Hot Girl’ have hinted at more club-worthy sounds, but she hadn’t made a full return to the dark and dingy underground club music of her roots until now.
Revoking the radio-friendly pop that characterised her last record, Charli returned to releasing earlier this year with future club classic ‘Von Dutch’. The song quelled any doubts about Charli’s origins, pairing swerving electronics with lyrics of excess and envy. Everything about the track screams Y2K, from the brand it takes its title from to the music video, which follows a sunglass-wearing Charli through the airport a la 2000s paparazzi culture.
The song spells out Charli’s intention for her artistry going forward: “Cult classic, but I still pop”. Her sound is still just as addictive as when she was penning catchy pink pop for the Barbie soundtrack, but she’s also set on becoming a club and cult classic. Outside of her sound, she’s calling back to the 2000s and club culture in her marketing, roping girls in for remixes and putting on sold-out DJ sets.
Between an already iconic scream from TikTok influencer turned hyperpop icon Addison Rae and a FOMO-inducing Boiler Room set, Charli isn’t doing things by halves when it comes to Brat. She’s going all in on it-girl culture, club classics and sonic hedonism. She’s proudly donning “I <3 ME” T-shirts, selling USBs as merch and shamelessly sharing tour poster graphics reminiscent of 1990s rave featuring Ziploc bags.
It verges on gimmicky, but Charli’s vision saves it from that fate. With her origins firmly in the culture she’s reviving and her ability to carry off a pop concept like none of her peers, she’s delivering one of the most exciting campaigns in recent memory. She’s also timed it perfectly.
The zeitgeist has been gearing up for a return to parties and hedonism for some time now. Years of self-isolation and so-called serious music have taken their toll on audiences, leaving them dying to let loose. Nostalgia has pushed past the synths and neon stylings of the 1980s, beyond the grunge of the 1990s and into the ridiculousness of the 2000s, and Charli is carrying the torch.
Bratty and brash, Charli is returning to clubbing culture, breathing new life into it and bringing it to the masses, reinventing and reviving it for a contemporary audience. “I wanna dance to me,” she sings on ‘Club Classics’. If she walks into any underground venue ahead of or following the release of Brat, she’s sure to fulfil those wishes.
Listen to ‘Von Dutch’ by Charli XCX below.
