Nostalgia and the Now
Charli XCX on Albums, Algorithms and Growing Up in Record Stores
We wanted to ask about how you’ve been releasing singles kind of piecemeal this year. What leads you to wanting to work that way?
For me, dropping music sporadically is just—I don’t know—it just works for how I work. I record so much. I’m always in the studio. And for me to just have a 12-track album, it kind of doesn’t make sense at this point. Even though I might still do that, I don’t really know.
I also enjoy the fact that I can just drop things whenever I want. I think that’s what my fans want, and I feel like everything is so disposable now anyway that it just sort of makes sense, you know?
It definitely seems in tune with the way the internet works.
Totally. And we all love that. So... (laughs)
I mean, it’s not how you grew up consuming music, though, right?
It isn’t. I think I went through a phase of being a real album person, for sure. But I also went through a phase of really just picking and choosing random songs that I liked from Myspace, you know?
So, I do really like an album as a body of work, but I can also get over it if I don’t get one or listen to one. And nowadays, I rarely listen to full albums unless it’s something that I really want to hear and I’m really interested in. It’s something I don’t really do super often.
When I was younger, I would ask my mum if I could go to HMV. Do you guys have HMV here? It’s like this CD store—it feels weird saying that. Yeah, I would just go and spend, like, so long in there. My mum used to get so annoyed at me because the parking would always run over. She’d be like, “What are you doing?”
And I would just go around the whole store and pick out the CDs that I liked the artwork of. Like, I didn’t even know what they were, and sometimes I never even listened to them. I just got them because of the artwork. That was what drew me to them. It was always very sporadic and random, the way I would listen to music.
When you talk about being drawn to the art of specific CDs when you were a kid, was there anything that really caught your eye? Were there specific elements or any artwork that you remember specifically?
I don’t know. There were some I remember. I actually did really like the Monkees when I was younger. I remember being really into some of their album covers. It’s just really simple, like them sitting on the floor kind of thing. Or just that logo. I don’t even remember. It’s kind of sad. I guess I never really listened to them, so I can’t tell you what they were like. (laughs)
I don’t know, I just remember always going out with a stack of CDs. I guess I liked the artwork. And now I’m really into fonts. I never really thought about fonts before until I met A.G. Cook, who really turned me on to fonts. I don’t know the names of typefaces, but I pay close attention to the fonts used and gravitate towards certain ones.
The internet’s changed the way we interact with album lyrics, so it’s changed the things that we focus on.
Yes, I agree, but it seems like it’s something that’s still important. This is nothing groundbreaking, but the connection between the visual and the audio of a record is so important. And I think now more than ever, especially because the way people consume so much of their music is through their phone, you know?
The first point of contact for hearing or seeing a lot of stuff is often on Instagram or an Instagram Story or main feed, or whatever. So yeah, I think the visual element is super important.
I actually was really psyched to see what font could be used for “1999.” Like, I swear to God. And also, I had the idea for the video. The video kind of triggered the song.
I mean, I was seven in 1999, and I was really enjoying the Spice Girls, like, hardcore, and Britney, and having a fun time doing that. But I don’t have a huge sentimental attachment to that particular era. I don’t really remember it that much, but I had fun.
For me, I really wanted to make that video and dress up as all of those characters and Steve Jobs and stuff.
So the images were important?
Yeah, totally. I just wanted to make a funny video. I wanted to do something that could top “Boys,” so I was thinking about that.
It’s interesting that you gravitate toward these over-the-top images because, when you’re seven years old, those are the things that stick in your brain—the experience of grandeur or something like that.
Totally. I mean, I remember when I heard of Britney Spears for the first time. It was the music video that really impacted me the most, and her outfit in the video.
And I think the ’90s for me was such a rich time for pop culture because I was just taking so much in. I was so excited by the most pop things because I didn’t really know about any cool stuff—I was seven—and I was just eating it up.
I was like, yeah, Furbies and Pokémon and Spice Girls and, like, Titanic, you know? I was stoked on all of that. And those super-pop things are so grand that, yeah, I guess they just stuck in my mind.
Did you go to art school?
Yeah, I went to art school and I was so bad, and everybody there judged me so hard, and it sucked, and it was weird.
I just got in. It was really funny because I’d just started releasing music, so I’d done a few photo shoots. And luckily, amazingly, the first couple of photo shoots I did were with David Bailey and Rankin.
So I just put those in my portfolio when I went to interview for art school, and I was like, “Here are some collaborations that I did with David Bailey and Rankin.” And they were like, “You’re in.” It was great.
So then I got there, and I didn’t really do anything. I used to make installations, actually, and videos. It was a very weird time for me.
I did one thing that was kind of cool. I made a shrine to Justin Bieber, and then I spray-painted over it, “Britney Lives On.” And then I mimed “...Baby One More Time” in front of it. And that was cool. I don’t know why I did it, but thank God there is not a video of it.
There’s also not a video of the time when I bought, like, 25 burgers from Burger King and then danced in my bikini to “Pon de Floor” by Major Lazer, rubbing burgers all over my body. Happy that’s not online as well. (laughs)
Editor’s note: We originally spoke with Charli XCX for Noisey several years before BRAT. Looking back, the conversation about pop, fonts, visuals and the internet feels pretty prescient.
