Gaming

Charli XCX And Nintendo Have A Song Together, Because 2020 Is Next Level

There’s something about seeing Charli on the top of Peach’s CGI-castle next to a Toad with a boombox that is deeply unsettling.

by Jared Richards  14 January 2020
Charli XCX has a song with Nintendo

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Charli XCX says “gamer’s rights” in her latest surprise song and music video, a collaboration with Nintendo called ‘We Are Born To Play’ — and the internet has, of course, turned to memes to process it.

The song is a collaboration between Galantis and Charli in promotion of Nintendo’s new theme park, Surer Nintendo World, launching at Universal Studios Japan ahead of the 2020 Olympics later this year.

Mixing Charli’s cotton-candy vocals with family friendly EDM and bleep-bloops and chord progressions from Mario games, ‘We Are Born To Play’ is not a bad song. If we were to include it in our ranking of all her songs, it wouldn’t even sit last — and considering Sydney’s lockout laws are lifting today, we fully expect to hear this at 2am at Stonewall tonight.

But it has broken us: there’s something about seeing Charli on the top of Peach’s CGI-castle next to a Toad with a boombox that is deeply unsettling.

Then there’s the fact Nintendo calls Charli a “worldwide popular singer” in the music video’s YouTube description that speaks to the collaboration’s lifelessness — it’s technically correct, but it was also clearly written by the same robots behind The Daily Mail‘s 50th article of the day on Rita Ora’s slim pins.

Thanks to the insert of Mario saying “here we go!”, the song is also the plumber’s first collaboration with a pop pioneer. In the video, Charli appears alongside Toad instead, who famously loves Lady Gaga.

Reaction to the video has been largely led by an ecstatic confusion. We are mostly all waiting for Charli XCX to become a downloadable character in Super Smash Bros.

Watch the video below.