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Tag: Charli XCX remixes

  • A Panty-Dropping, Project X Affair: Charli XCX and Billie Eilish’s “Guess” Video

    A Panty-Dropping, Project X Affair: Charli XCX and Billie Eilish’s “Guess” Video

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    When Charli first, er, teased the album artwork for the “Guess” remix featuring Billie Eilish, she dared her fans to, that’s right, guess who it was joining her on the cover for this revamped edition. Despite the retroactive dead giveaway that it was Billie Eilish (you know, the butch, 90s boy aesthetic), perhaps no one, in their wildest fantasies, could have imagined that such an iconic collaboration would come on the heels of Charli working with Lorde on the “Girl, so confusing” remix. And, like Lorde, Eilish has plenty to offer when it comes to contributing a new verse to this track. One that is on-brand for the sex-drenched nature of the song.

    Funnily enough, it seems to have taken a millennial to help Gen Z remember that life doesn’t have to be sexless. It can be raunchy, promiscuous and, yes, even panty-dropping. In short, it can recapture all the key visuals of Project X. And if Charli and Billie comprised the collaboration people had only dreamed about, it would be in keeping with the premise of that movie, with its tagline: “The party you’ve only dreamed about.” This is the effect Charli is going for in the Aidan Zamiri-directed video for “Guess,” which also seems to recreate the garbage-filled aesthetic of the Atacama Desert in Chile, where fast fashion goes to die, creating massive piles within the landfill. It’s a similar pile that Charli and Billie mount toward the middle of the video, only to roll back down it with glee as they meet one another at the bottom in a shot that positions them lying side by side as though they just banged (metaphorically, they kind of have).

    To that end, perhaps Charli has learned her lesson (somewhat) about promoting environment-destroying behavior (hear: any of her songs that serve as love letters to driving) by including a disclaimer at the end of the video that reads, “All unworn garments will be donated to survivors of domestic violence through I Support the Girls.” Of course, all the “garments” in question are lingerie-related, which is a bit of an odd donation to make to victims of domestic abuse, but anyway…

    Zamiri, who also photographed Eilish for her Rolling Stone cover earlier this year, opens the video on a close-up of Charli’s sunglasses-covered face (the ultimate symbol of her Brat era) as she asks, “Billie, you there?” The answer to that question is: not just yet. Billie’s big entrance will be made once the party is already well underway. A party that takes place in a more 90s-ified version of the apartment style Charli showed us in the “Baby” video. After the close-up on her face, she introduces herself by cuntily walking across the trash-filled carpet. The timeline of whether the party already happened or is about to happen or she’s simply having another one without cleaning up from the night before isn’t important. What is, however, is the fact that Project X has so obviously remained a tried-and-true inspiration for XCX’s work. It was back in 2020 that she declared, “I think I’ve officially decided that Project X is my favorite movie of all time.” No matter how retrospectively uncomfortable the R. Kelly mention gets. And while others might see the 2012 high school comedy as “nothing special,” it makes sense that XCX would continue to idealize it. After all, she’s a big believer in party alchemy. The “power of the party,” as it were.

    Case in point, back in 2019, when she did an interview for Nowness, Charli said, “I’m very inspired by parties. Lots of emotional things happen at parties, like, maybe you fall in love with someone, or you, like, spend a really amazing night with your friends, or you break up with someone. It’s, like, there’s a lot of emotions that go on at parties…” Hence, her attachment to them as more than something that’s merely “frivolous.” It’s a microcosm, a hotbed of unmitigated feelings (mainly thanks to las drogas). And the primary ones at this “Guess” party are, in two words, “let’s fuck.” The writhing, gyrating and general “every guy, grab a girl” vibe is practically a constant of the narrative.

    In promoting this concept, Charli also proves that, theoretically, the “clean girl aesthetic” is over and that, accordingly, it’s “safe” to promote the messy lifestyle that goes hand in hand with drinking and drugging yet again (not that Charli ever really ceased doing that). Hence, the constant flash to partygoers smoking (actual cigarettes, none of this vape bullshit) and drinking throughout “Guess.”

    Indeed, it can be argued that the last time partying in this manner was so acceptable was, in fact, back in 2012, when Project X was released. It was also the year of Kesha’s sophomore album, Warrior, which continued the “grimy girl” motif of her debut, Animal. Her vehement “party or die” (or “party and die,” depending on the person) mantra endured with a song like “Die Young,” during which Kesha declared, “Let’s make the most of the night like we’re gonna die young/Young hearts, out our minds/Runnin’ till we outta time/Wild childs, lookin’ good/Livin’ hard just like we should/Don’t care who’s watching when we tearing it up (you know)/That magic that we got nobody can touch.” This is the sentiment that permeates the “Guess” video, even if the lyrics themselves are far less wholesome, and much more in keeping with the gratuitously salacious tone of Charli’s other film favorite, Spring Breakers (though Camila Cabello tried her best to co-opt that “mood board” for C,XOXO).

    This includes Eilish’s sexually-charged verse, “Don’t have to guess the color of your underwear/Already know what you’ve got goin’ on down there/It’s that lacy black pair with the little bows/The ones I picked out for you in Tokyo/I saw them when you sat down, they were peekin’ out/I’m gonna tell you right now, they’re all I’m thinkin’ about.” She delivers these lines after literally crashing the party in a bulldozer (it kind of reminds one of the way the party in Weird Science was crashed by the mutant bikers, riding right through the walls/glass doors to get in).

    Charli eventually leaves the party with Billie (perhaps taking the latter up on her offer, “Charli likes boys, but she knows I’d hit it/Charli, call me if you’re with it”), riding on the side of the bulldozer/tractor as she bounces in a similar way to how she did in the video for “360” while pouring a glass of wine. Zamiri then rapidly intercuts scenes between the original party and the two-woman rager that Charli and Billie have continued together outside in the “wilds” of a concrete jungle somewhere in L.A. (for both singers favor that city, like anyone with consummate taste).

    To conclude the even more sexed-up remix, the duo goads, “You wanna guess the address of the party we’re at (you really are not invited)/You wanna guess if we’re serious about this song.” That last line smacks of Justin Timberlake assuring at the end of “Rock Your Body,” “Gonna have you naked by the end of this song.” And sure, while he might be permanently “cancelled,” there’s no denying XCX was influenced by NSYNC, de facto Timberlake, at some point in the late 90s/early 00s.

    As for boasting about the “hoi polloi” not being invited to the party, not only is it typical Brat behavior, it’s also in keeping with the necessary exclusivity of celebrities like XCX and Eilish, who have both dealt with their fair share of creepy civilian behavior. So one supposes that’s why the party of Project X was patently more epic in scope and aftermath—it didn’t discriminate about the guest list.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • The Week of Laying to Rest a Feud Remixes: “The Boy Is Mine” and “Girl, so confusing”

    The Week of Laying to Rest a Feud Remixes: “The Boy Is Mine” and “Girl, so confusing”

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    In what is perhaps a “sign o’ the times” for the world of pop, the week in music has offered an overarching theme that centers on “laying to rest feuds.” Or, as Junior LaBeija would put it, “Category is: ‘laying to rest feuds.’” Ariana Grande and Charli XCX are weirdly in sync about this topic, for both pop stars have seen fit to put out remixes that are decidedly “bury the hatchet”-chic. In Grande’s case, the “burial” comes in the form of a remix of her latest single, “the boy is mine,” and in Charli’s, it’s another arbitrary remix (like “360” featuring Robyn and Yung Lean) from Brat: “Girl, so confusing.” The latter features Lorde, one of the public figures that Charli was speculated to be singing about on the track (the other was MARINA). 

    Indeed, Brat is an album all about trying to tame the green-eyed monster (hence Charli coming up with the shade that will henceforth be called “Brat green”)…or at least subdue it slightly into submission. And even Taylor Swift appears to be a source of inspiration for Charli’s insecurity flare-ups, as evidenced by another song on the record, “Sympathy is a knife.” On this particular track, XCX confesses, “I don’t wanna share the space/I don’t wanna force a smile/This one girl taps my insecurities/Don’t know if it’s real or if I’m spiraling.” Or if the media is a key force in fueling these types of anxieties. After all, Brandy and Monica represented one of the earliest modern examples (following Madonna and Cyndi Lauper—though there wasn’t ultimately much of a comparison there) of how various outlets relish reporting on so-called rivalries between two “similar” female artists. In the wake of Brandy and Monica, there would be Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lopez and Mariah Carey (though that’s still a pretty real feud…for Mariah), Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse, Taylor Swift and Katy Perry (fueled by Taylor herself), Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter—and many others in between. Including, of course, Charli XCX and Lorde. 

    While the two have never shared an outright feud in the same way as Brandy and Monica, who were more openly pitted against one another during a time when there was hardly as much space for Black female musicians to thrive (not that there’s all that much now either), there was always a little bit of resentment there. More openly on Charli’s part perhaps…particularly as she was the one who had to deal with being mistaken for Lorde during the Pure Heroine era despite having been in the music game long before the New Zealander traipsed into town (so to speak) with the automatic hit that was 2013’s “Royals.” So it is that Charli pulls no punches when she admits on the song, “Yeah, I don’t know if you like me/Sometimes I think you might hate me/Sometimes I think I might hate you/Maybe you just wanna be me/You always say, ‘Let’s go out’/So we go eat at a restaurant/Sometimes it feels a bit awkward/‘Cause we don’t have much in common.” Save for the crippling sense of self-doubt that even the most successful of women can’t seem to shake. 

    In the revamped version of the song, Lorde responds to these specific lyrics with, “You’d always say, ‘Let’s go out’/But then I’d cancel last minute/I was so lost in my head/And scared to be in your pictures/‘Cause for the last couple years I’ve been at war in my body/I tried to starve myself thinner/And then I gained all the weight back/I was trapped in the hatred/And your life seemed so awesome/I never thought for a second/My voice was in your head.”

    This deeply personal addition to the song layers it with the exact message Charli was talking about when she told The Guardian, “Relationships between women are super-complex… You can like someone and dislike them at the same time; you can have the best time of your life on a night out with someone but not be that close to them at all.” Lorde has fallen into the former category for XCX, mainly as a result of the Brat green-eyed monster affecting her feelings toward the fellow acclaimed singer. Ironically enough, though, in the same interview, Charli insists that female rivalry in the entertainment industry has died down compared to previous decades, remarking, “We’ve got past the point of the media always pitting women against one another. In the mid to late 00s, it literally sold magazines and papers: ‘Britney versus Christina,’ ‘Paris versus Lindsay.’ Then feminism became a popular marketing tool. In the music industry, it was distilled into this idea that if you support women, and you like other women, then you’re a good feminist. The reverse of that is, if you don’t like all other women who exist and breathe on this Earth then you’re a bad feminist. If you’re not a girl’s girl then you’re a bad woman.” And, speaking of that phrase, “girl’s girl,” it was weaponized against Ariana Grande in the aftermath of her “homewrecker” scandal. Specifically, when Ethan Slater’s ex-wife, Lilly Jay, called out Grande for not being a “girl’s girl.” Because “girl’s girls” don’t allow themselves to fall into the trap of being “the other woman.” They instead choose to “walk away”—or simply get the dude in question to actually leave his wife.

    Maybe that’s why Grande is quite deliberate in having Monica tout the line, “Well, he better sort out his business, ‘cause I’ll never be nobody’s mistress.” A lyric that also shows how far Brandy and Monica have come since their teen years when they were singing this song. This declaration is also one that “absolves” Grande of being a homewrecker in the rawer sense of the word. Instead, she falls more into the category of the scenario described by Olivia Rodrigo on “traitor” when ripping into the bloke that left her, “It took you two weeks/To go off and date her/Guess you didn’t cheat/But you’re still a traitor.”

    This sense of feeling stabbed in the back by the woman who “took” her man (in lieu of blaming the man himself for his shady actions) only adding to the overall sense of competitiveness between women. Rightfully convinced of the scarcity of men to “possess” (that is, in terms of the somewhat straight ones who are non-bald and non-short…Grande didn’t quite care about the latter description when it came to pursuing Slater). So on the one hand, there is this remix that addresses a common trope for why women feud—because of a guy—and on the other there’s Charli and Lorde’s remix that addresses another all-too-familiar trope: women being jealous of each other’s looks and success—even their “aura.” But both tropes, more often than not, relate to competing for a man because “being better” is how they’re able to catch and hold his attention. Because, yes, unfortunately, much of what women do is still latently rooted in attracting the male gaze. Worse still, male approval. 

    At the same time, women are just as concerned with gaining the favor of other women. As Charli was when she had to deal with the public shaming from MARINA in 2016 after the “that FROOT looks familiar” debacle. Which is what makes it so momentous that MARINA was actually moved enough by the “Girl, so confusing” remix to publicly comment (yet again), “THIS IS BEAUTIFUL. Just cried listening to it. It’s so courageous and human to make work about this topic and it’s so healing to listen to it. Congratulations on an iconic album @charlixcx.” And yes, she was probably just glad to learn that Charli didn’t end up admitting the song was about her instead of Lorde. Though both Lorde and MARINA can be accused of having “the same hair” as Charli at one point or another… 

    Signs of Lorde’s involvement with the record were already noticeable when she declared on social media, “The only album I’ve ever pre-saved is out today… Charli just cooked this one different. So much grit, grace & skin in the game. I speak for all of us when I say it’s an honor to be moved, changed and gagged by her work. There is NO ONE like this bitch.” That statement feels like a retroactive “Easter egg” about the lyrical contributions she would provide for this particular song. 

    As for Brandy and Monica, their feud might be laid to rest in their personal lives, but for the sake of the song, they can still bring the catty, possessive vibe necessary for a theme of this nature, presently singing, “How could you still be so disillusioned after all of this time, time?/I told you once before, I’ll tell you once more, the boy is still mine, mine.” In his mind, of course, he’s both of theirs, thinks there’s “plenty” of him to go around. And such casual, cavalier thinking on many a man’s part is what helps keep stoking the fires of female competitiveness. Also manifest in Charli allegedly referring to Taylor Swift on “Sympathy is a knife” when she laments, “‘Cause I couldn’t even be her if I tried/I’m opposite, I’m on the other side/I feel all these feelings I can’t control/Oh no, don’t know why…/Why I wanna buy a gun?/Why I wanna shoot myself?/Volatilе at war with my dialogue.” 

    Perhaps the only way to mitigate some of that negative dialogue is by hashing it out with the other woman in question. The one who’s causing all this envy—yet who might actually be envious as well. For no woman, no matter how seemingly self-confident, is immune to the trap of low self-esteem/self-regard that tends to be a more pervasive affliction among this particular gender.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • Girl, so confusing (To Some) That Charli XCX and Lorde Have Joined Forces

    Girl, so confusing (To Some) That Charli XCX and Lorde Have Joined Forces

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    While some may be convinced that a Lorde-featuring remix of “Girl, so confusing” is just a red herring to distract from the fact that it’s still ultimately referring to MARINA (#thatfrootlooksfamiliar), Charli XCX seems to want to put fan theories about a feud between her and the other big-haired singer to rest. It actually appears to be a week of “laying to rest feud” songs, with Ariana Grande also achieving the impossible and getting Brandy and Monica to come together on her own remix of “the boy is mine.” But with Charli and Lorde, the signs of the “feud” were subtler, even though they arose from the same place: women feeling jealous of one another’s success thanks to the assumption that there isn’t “enough room” for “everyone” (read: just women) in the entertainment industry. Even though Britney Spears, angel that she is (or at least that’s how Spring Breakers bills her), did once declare, “There’s room for all of us” at one of the many press conferences of her early career. 

    If only that were true. Alas, in the present landscape, the competition between women in music has only seemed to become more fierce as they vie for the ever-diminishing attention spans of listeners who can barely focus on a song that’s longer than two minutes, let alone multiple artists that keep cropping up like a game of whack-a-mole. That Lorde herself “cropped up” in 2013 was a bit of a bane for Charli XCX. For this similar-looking girl (a.k.a. they both had dark, curly, big hair) came along right before XCX was finally about to break through ever so slightly into the mainstream with 2014’s “Boom Clap.” And since people apparently can’t differentiate women who have the same hair color (see also: Lady Gaga dyeing her hair blonde early in her career to avoid being confused with Amy Winehouse), it was going to be a problem. So much that she was actually mistaken for Lorde during a now illustrious TV interview. Rather than correcting the interviewer (a fellow female, to boot), however, Charli decided to just run with it.

    Two years prior to 2014, her name was becoming more prominent thanks to her feature on Icona Pop’s “I Love It,” but it wasn’t her own solo effort. “Boom Clap” would mark her full-on breakthrough on the charts, but only after she was featured on yet another hit that same year: Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy.” Alas, in Charli’s mind, a lot of that success was mitigated by how easy it seemed for Lorde to get “all the flowers” right away. Whereas Charli had already been around since 2008, creating her version of Lana Del Ray a.k.a. Lizzy Grant in the form of an unreleased album called 14 (technically before Adele thought to start naming her own records after her age, as Charli was recording some of these tracks as early as 2006). 

    It was in the booklet of said album, distributed to a very select few, that Charli wrote, “The songs I write are about my mates and experiences.” Not much has really changed on that front, with the entire Brat album being a reflection of those two preferred topics. Except that Lorde falls somewhere in between. Not necessarily a full-on “mate” (though maybe more of an “experience”), Lorde has been, at the very least, something of a “driving force” in XCX’s professional life, with the latter at one point commenting, “When ‘Royals’ came out, I was super jealous of the success that that song got, and that Ella got. You piece all this stuff together in your brain, like: ‘She was into my music. She had big hair; I had big hair. She wore black lipstick; I once wore black lipstick.’ You create these parallels and think, ‘Well, that could have been me.’” 

    Instead, Charli was destined to take a much more circuitous path toward becoming a respected, applauded pop star of her own kind. Nonetheless, “Girl, so confusing” sets out to address many of those early insecurities that have lingered on even after XCX’s irrefutable success. But it’s been hard-won in comparison to Lorde’s, a singer who was instantaneously embraced and praised for her brilliance. Deemed a musical prodigy (like Charli, Lorde also has the benefit of synesthesia to help her compose songs) from the outset, it’s easy to understand why XCX would home in on Lorde as a source of envy. That XCX’s debut album, True Romance, was released five months before Lorde’s in 2013 also set a competitive precedent in that, technically, the two were “launched” the same year. To add insult to Charli’s injury, Lorde was also garnering more praise and sales at an even younger age than Charli (the two are four years apart). 

    The difference in their paths, personalities and general “vibes” couldn’t have been more apparent than in the only photos of the two of them together that exist (apart from that rando snap of them with Carly Rae Jepsen)—taken at the 2014 VMAs. In one of them, Charli holds up two peace signs while sticking her tongue out in typical bombastic Leo fashion while Lorde, ever-staid, cool, calm and collected (such a Scorpio), stands next to her with a close-mouthed half-smile. Her aura of disinterested ennui being something that Charli only managed to cultivate much later, having perfected it in the Crash era. 

    In the meantime, Lorde’s own lack of confidence seems to have shined through more openly in recent years—and perhaps most openly of all in the lengthy verse she contributes to the “Girl, so confusing” remix (marking her second release of the year after a cover of “Take Me to the River” for Everyone’s Getting Involved: A Tribute to Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense). For there is a portion where she gets extremely candid about her body image issues via the lines, “You’d always say, ‘Let’s go out’/But then I’d cancel last minute/I was so lost in my head/And scared to be in your pictures/‘Cause for the last couple years/I’ve been at war with my body/I tried to starve myself thinner/And then I gained all the weight back.”

    Considering that women in the public eye are deemed “fair game” for the media on all matters body critical, it’s no wonder Lorde would be paranoid about having her photo taken in a state of anything less than “perfection” (by warped societal standards). Knowing full well it could be dissected and analyzed for all of eternity on the internet. XCX knows all about this heightened fear too, commenting on her own struggles with body dysmorphia on “Rewind” as she admits, “Nowadays, I only eat at the good restaurants/But, honestly, I’m always thinking ’bout my weight.” 

    The power in joining together—especially in the wake of so much speculation as to whether or not they had “beef” (though, again, it’s nothing compared to the speculation about XCX and MARINA’s beef)—comes at a time when patriarchal forces still seek to keep women pitted against one another. Some recent examples include Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter (which spawned the latter’s “because i like a boy”), or Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift (surprisingly, though, not Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish), or Taylor Swift and Charli herself, or Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish—or, shit, Taylor Swift and every other female artist. Thus, for two women in the music business to team up like this does not go unnoticed. Nor does its powerful message. 

    Lorde’s candor about female competitiveness only adds to the remix’s power as she sings, “I was trapped in the hatred/And your life seemed so awesome/I never thought for a second/My voice was in your head/‘Girl, you walk like a bitch’/When I was ten, someone said that/And it’s just self-defense/Until you’re building a weapon.” In other words, protecting yourself, as a woman, can end up turning dangerous for other women who are just as insecure. Take, for example, Lily Allen stating of her early twenties propensity to openly criticize other women (including the fellow singer she was pitted against at the time, Amy Winehouse) that she was extremely dissatisfied with her own self during this period (Paris Hilton would make a similar assessment of her rampant racist and homophobic comments in the 00s). 

    Putting forth a “tough as nails” facade, women convince both genders that they’re impervious to what anyone thinks when, in fact, they’re crumpling over in fear of others’ opinions on the inside. Thus, Lorde adds to her verse, “She believed my projection/And now I totally get it/Forgot that inside the icon/There’s still a young girl from Essex.” In short, even Lorde can forget, thanks to her own deft ability to project a false persona and confidence, that Charli has probably been doing the same. That she’s still, in spite of the steely exterior, that unformed rave scene girl at heart.

    The two singers eventually join one another to sing a version of the chorus that goes, “People say we’re alike/They say we’ve got the same hair/It’s you and me on the coin/The industry loves to spend/And when we put this to bed/The internet will go crazy/I’m glad I know how you feel.” It’s after this line that Lorde goes back to singing solo so she can say, once and for all: “‘Cause I ride for you, Charli.” Only during the outro can Charli finally return the sentiment with the declaration, “You know I ride for you too.” It only took about ten years to get to that point, but hey, some feuds between women never end at all (here’s looking at you, Bette and Joan).

    And yet, XCX still leaves the feud potentially open for further fodder when the song concludes with: “It’s so confusing-ing” (which plays in the same pitch as Grimes). Perhaps confusing enough to make Charli and Lorde fall into old competitive habits once more. Though hopefully it’s nothing but “love you, mean its” and musical collabs from here on out. Because the two do pair (un)surprisingly well together.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • “360” Featuring Robyn and Yung Lean Continues to Showcase Charli XCX’s Commitment to the Art of the Remix

    “360” Featuring Robyn and Yung Lean Continues to Showcase Charli XCX’s Commitment to the Art of the Remix

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    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. 

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    Genna Rivieccio

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