Charli XCX Is A Sellout
But hang on, what does that even mean?
“I’m interested in the concept of selling out,” Charli XCX tweeted in June of last year in the lead-up to the campaign for her fifth album Crash.
What followed was a barrage of imagery that played on the idea of an evil popstar. It was the prelude to Charli entering her main pop girl era after years of operating on the periphery of the mainstream, crafting what has been continuously deemed to be the future of pop music.
Her first single ‘Good Ones’ delivered on the promise. Coming in at just over two minutes, it was her shortest single yet, following a TikTok-led trend that has slashed the duration of commercial pop tracks. It’s one of the few singles she’s released that she didn’t write on; a move she says was intentional because she “wanted to be a stereotypical, classic, major-label pop star”.
The high-budget video directed by Hannah Lux Davis (Ariana Grande, Doja Cat) set the sell-out era in motion, featuring Charli wearing Samsung’s Galaxy Buds 2, a product she’s become the face of with a number of ad campaigns.
As the era has expanded, she’s embraced a mainstream pop persona. She’s performed as the musical guest on SNL, interpolated an early ’00s Eurodance song into her single ‘Beg For You’, and featured on an EDM song by Jax Jones and Joel Corry. At the same time, she’s collaborated with underrated pop artists Caroline Polachek, Christine & The Queens, and Rina Sawayama, while also hosting a podcast that has shined a light on artists like Shygirl and Gracie Abrams. If Charli is going to storm the mainstream, the whole gang is coming along.
On Twitter, Charli addressed the era. “Imagine if this entire album campaign was just a commentary on navigating the major label system and the sadistic nature of pop music as a whole?” she wrote. “Another thought: what if I just love pop music and wanna be super famous?”
So, is she really ‘selling out’? Or is she simply entering the mainstream in disguise to dismantle it?
How Do You Sell Out When Everyone’s Selling Something
In pop music, being accused of selling out was once high-level criticism. It was originally levelled at those who attached their art to capitalism by licensing music to ads or endorsing products, but as time has gone on it refers to a general positioning of yourself in the mainstream. For example: The Black Eyed Peas’ pivot from hip-hop to EDM or Taylor Swift moving from country music to pop have both been referred to as ‘selling out’.
It’s hard to truly define a sell-out these days. Selling out is so ubiquitous in pop music that it’s almost an expired concept. In the streaming era, sponsorship and product fuels music, not the other way around. Rihanna, Ariana Grande, Beyoncé, Halsey, Lady Gaga, Selena Gomez, and plenty more also have make-up or clothing brands. While Britney Spears once was critiqued for holding a Pepsi, we now celebrate artists getting their bag elsewhere.
Selling out is so ubiquitous in pop music that it’s almost an expired concept.
Selling out in music these days addresses a broader conversation about authenticity. It’s more important than ever to be a lead writer on a pop hit. Artists like Swift, Billie Eilish, and Olivia Rodrigo have topped the charts with songs that feature just two writers, including themselves. There are still plenty of pop artists receiving what’s referred to as a ‘pitch’ song but their names are often added to the writing credits in a bid for authenticity. Just last year, songwriter Justin Tranter (who has worked for the likes of Selena Gomez and Lady Gaga) among others called for artists to stop demanding credit for songs they didn’t write.
Charli commented on this very idea of authenticity to Rolling Stone saying, “I think artists feel they need to really prove that they wrote their own songs, that they direct their own music videos, that they are the brain behind everything…as I got older, I began to care less and less about that because I know I can write a great pop song and I know I can communicate my vision.”
On top of being credited as one of pop’s visionaries, Charli has penned chart hits for BTS, Camila Cabello, and Selena Gomez. She has writing credits on every single song on Crash and wrote some with a small batch of writers. By promoting the songs she didn’t write, she seems to be attaching herself to the image of an early ‘00s popstar, where delivery and choreography were the focus.
This idea of selling out and authenticity is one that’s been explored by PC Music and the late SOPHIE. Label head A.G. Cook is a close collaborator of Charli’s, and SOPHIE worked with her on her creative breakthrough ‘Vroom Vroom’, which pivoted her away from the mainstream. SOPHIE’s comments on commercialism in music led to both confusion and criticism, but she expressed a similar idea as Charli on the blurriness of authenticity.
SOPHIE happily sold products and licensed her music to McDonald’s. She saw it as a way of furthering mainstream music, seeing no value in the niche. “An experimental idea doesn’t have to be separated from a mainstream context,” she said. “The really exciting thing is where those two things are together. That’s where you can get real change.”
Charli expressed a similar sentiment in defending ‘Beg For You’ upon its release. She wrote on Twitter: “If beg for u continues to grow and get massive it will give Rina and I a platform to bring more avant-garde music to the mainstream and then the charts and everyone’s minds will be filled w bops like XS and Vroom Vroom.. which is kinda the ultimate goal.”
She admitted to Rolling Stone that her online persona is half-serious, half-troll. There’s a duality to this era that both embraces the facade of pop music, but also attempts to disrupt it.
Bitch BYE
Charli’s sell-out era hasn’t sat all that well with all her fans. When she was announced as the performer at an NFT party, her fanbase erupted with concerns about NFTs’ environmental impact and potential for plagiarism. She later revealed in an interview that she pulled out of the event following the criticism.
Her move from left-centred futurist to main pop girl has also been controversial. Her confident pop persona has driven this era but her interactions with fans have been vulnerable and spontaneous.
It’s a reminder that even when Charli is playing the unattainable popstar, she has a relationship with her fans that is unlike any other. She interacts with them regularly, giving them ample insight into her life. That’s what’s ultimately turned her into a cult popstar but it’s also given some fans a level of ownership that’s led to them being both overly complimentary and bitterly negative if she deviates from the music they fell in love with.
Recently, she bit back at a fan online that criticised Crash single ‘Baby’. After some back-and-forth about the quality of the song Charli wrote, “Bitch BYE. I will NEVER understand what possesses people to be such C*NTS online.”
She later deleted the tweet and spoke about it to Rolling Stone saying, “I’ve never cared if you like my music or hate my music — don’t listen to it if you don’t like it — but I think at a time when I was already feeling quite low, that kind of rhetoric honestly just really hurt my feelings.”
Charli is playing a difficult balancing act right now where she’s attempting to infiltrate the mainstream with some of her most traditional pop-leaning music yet while trying to keep a fanbase that appreciates the experimentalism on-side.
She’s About To Crash
Interestingly, Crash actually does a spectacular job at playing both roles. For those who thought the singles were too mainstream, they’ll be surprised to hear the rest of the record. It’s certainly pop-leaning, but it’s not as clean as what’s occupying the charts right now. “I’m about to crash,” she declares on the title track over jittery vocal samples before the ’80s beat thunders in.
In the same sense of great pop records like Spears’ Blackout or Miley Cyrus’ Bangerz, there’s a recklessness to it all, like she’s stormed the charts to cause chaos. It’s bold and brash, offering up shiny pop hooks alongside speaker-shaking ’80s beats and glitchy A.G. Cook work. ‘Lightning’ offers up one of the best choruses of the record alongside a breakdown that distorts and warps while ‘Yuck’ is an earworm that updates Sucker’s riot grrl punk aesthetic.
It feels like Charli is intentionally prodding — dipping her toe in the mainstream pop pool and looking back with a mischievous grin.
It’s cohesive but it’s also chaotic, darting onto a new thought at every turn. Iconic ‘sell-out’ pop records from the early ‘00s were always visually coherent but sonically adventurous. Crash is exactly that. Just when you settle into a Janet Jackson-inspired ’80s sound in the middle of the LP, she switches it up with the Robyn S-sampling ‘Used To Know Me’. Those who took issue with ‘Beg For You’ and its interpolation won’t be impressed here but it feels like Charli is intentionally prodding — dipping her toe in the mainstream pop pool and looking back with a mischievous grin.
Recently, a fan offered up an interesting theory about her reasoning for calling the album Crash. They compared it to the 1996 film of the same name about car crash victims finding sexual excitement in car accidents. It essentially explores an attraction to things that have hurt them before, which is where Charli comes in. In her final album for major label Atlantic (a label she’s had a complicated relationship with), Charli still has an attraction to the mainstream pop world despite knowing the dangers of it. She’s both fascinated and repulsed by it, as the fan says.
This album takes her close to the machine for two reasons. One — as she sings in ‘Crash’ — she’s “self-destructive”. And two, because she believes she can change it. Shake it up. Only time will tell what she’s able to explode.
Sam Murphy is a music writer and Co-Editor of The Interns. He also co-hosts the podcast Flopstars. Follow him on Twitter.