A collaboration between Charli XCX and Robyn and Charli XCX and Yung Lean, respectively, has seemed like a long time coming. That said, perhaps Charli XCX saw fit to kill two birds with one stone by offering a remix of “360” that features both artists on it. Charli’s nods to Robyn have been steadfast in recent years, showing her love (song allusion intended) most recently by sampling “Cobrastyle” (from Robyn’s 2005 self-titled album) for “Speed Drive” on the Barbie Soundtrack.
As for her connection to Yung Lean, it should be fairly obvious that the two share certain similar “Tumblrcore” sensibilities. Put these three together in the blender that is the “360” remix and the result is actually more disjointed than one would expect. Yet, somehow, it works. And maybe part of the discordant cohesion stems from both Robyn and Yung Lean being Swedes. After all, it’s no secret that solid gold pop/dance music just naturally courses through the veins of the Swedish. So no wonder Yung Lean flexes, “We put this shit together so carelessly.” While other musicians might not want to make that assertion based on how it might open their song up to more than just light criticism for being “sloppy,” here the braggadocio works in favor of the song’s overall “charmingly arrogant” aura.
Besides, if anyone can back up the right to be arrogant about their music, it’s Robyn. Which is exactly why she self-referentially touts, “Killin’ this shit since 1994/Got everybody in the club dancing on their own.” Charli, too, has been in the music game long enough to have earned some of her bratty hauteur, which commences in the very first line of the remix with, “They-they-they all wanna sound like me.” And yes, based on the recent shade thrown at Camila Cabello for effectively imitating Charli’s “hyperpop” sound for her C,XOXO “era,” it would seem the internet is well-aware of XCX’s influence and saturation into the mainstream that once kept her boxed out (that is, until she decided to do a parody of being mainstream with Crash). At the very least, though, Camila seems to know better than to release C,XOXO before Brat, with the former coming out three weeks after the latter.
Not that it would faze Charli either way, whose confidence level reaches another peak in “360” when she sings, “Me and Lean and Robyn, we don’t even have to practice/We got many hits, get you feeling nostalgic.” To be sure, Charli hits like “Boom Clap,” “I Love It, “Fancy” and “1999” (the most nostalgic of all) always get the crowds in a frenzy. Needless to say, if Robyn and/or Yung Lean ever did join her onstage for the version of “360,” it would cause all-out mayhem in the audience. Even more than if Addison Rae decided to cameo for the remix version of “Von Dutch.” Both remixes, by the way, are made to sound like altogether entirely different songs (with “360” remaining faithful only to the original backing music).
While remixes of the past might have only added in an extra verse from the new person appearing on it (e.g., the Left Eye version of “No Scrubs” [which should have been the “normal” version to begin with] or Ariana Grande’s ill-advised decision to include Mariah Carey on the remix for “yes, and?”), Charli has set a gold-standard precedent for making entirely new tracks through her remixes (hear also: “Welcome to My Island”). While others might be content to provide a few barely noticeable tweaks, Charli treats the remix with the same reverence that Madonna’s remixers usually do (including the likes of William Orbit, Victor Calderone, Tracy Young, Stuart Price, Junior Vasquez, Paul Oakenfold, etc.). And that is the mark of someone who truly cares about dance music.
Not that there was ever any doubt in the minds of Charli fans that she wasn’t hopelessly devoted to the genre. A genre she single-handedly helped reinvent at the dawn of the 2010s and continues to perfect as the 2020s forge ahead, filled with plenty of events that would make it otherwise difficult to even conceive of dancing without a bit of encouragement to do so from her music.
Genna Rivieccio
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