Charli XCX on the pros and cons of being a pop star
The notion of a pop star has always been quite a weird idea when you really think about it. And for better or worse, Charli XCX has found herself as the poster girl of that for a decent length of time now.
In reality, pop stardom is defined on the very precise pillars of chart – and now, more importantly, social media – palatability, a carefully crafted image, and more often than not, a distinct embodiment of ideals, in whatever form the individual decides to take that mantle on. It’s unforgiving, and for that very reason is not for the weak-willed.
Don’t get me wrong, let’s just get one thing out in the open: being a pop star is obviously not even close to being the hardest job in the world. You record songs, do a few interviews to promote them, and then perform them live. It’s hardly the most onerous work, despite the pretences many of them like to put up.
Nevertheless, when Charli XCX recently took a deep dive into the benefits and drawbacks of her pop fame, it made compelling reading as to the insight into a life that many people clamour for, but very few can actually pull off. Of course, with a brand like hers now so sharply steered in the direction of party girls, sniffing lines, and the heady and somewhat deluded bubble of Brat, she knows more than a thing or two about how to cultivate a persona.
In fairness to her, she was quick to acknowledge the caveats I have just outlined when she stated outright that her line of work is a “ridiculous one”. It goes without saying that there are high points: the parties, the clothes, the dinners, the shows; the materialistic aspects that make the consumerist world sing.
But she is also right to point out that there is a genuine, if slightly clichéd, “community” of artists with whom she gets to share her music and creative ideas, whether that’s as Charli XCX the bona fide star or as the more ordinary woman underneath it. In what is often typecast as a cutthroat industry, it is at least a little affirming that there are real connections beneath its selfish veneers.
Aside from all of those moments and champagne and roses, there is the truth – and it’s one that many people probably wouldn’t consider. Away from the outer world at the bright lights of the stage, Charli discusses “inhabiting strange and soulless liminal spaces”, shedding awareness on the fact that the outward-facing part of the job is only the tiniest percentage.
That feeling of being packaged and ferried off to different places, never truly having the chance to properly see the world and live with a sense of ambivalence or anonymity, is something which the masquerade of fame permanently strips away. If you succeed, it’s tagged to you forever, and if you fail, you’re fed to the lions again without any defence mechanisms, having spent the past however many years of your life tucked away in a microcosm.
It’s a symptom of disconnect not just between the artist and the world, but between the artist and their audience too. For as long as the pop star feels like the jack-in-the-box, popping up only sporadically to perform, the audience will only continue to yearn for more hits of that ecstasy.
The cycle then continues – of parties, of drugs, of fashion houses, and fancy meals – but the price for that is a lifetime where you are constantly hidden away, both literally and metaphorically, as a method of containment. We’ve always known that pop stardom is a ruse of a life, but Charli XCX seems to suggest the feeling that there is no semblance of reality to it at all.
