Charli XCX just spoke out saying she was initially jealous of Lorde following the success of “Royals.”
Sitting down with Rolling Stone UK, the “Brat” album artist opened up about her feelings when the Lorde album hit the airwaves.
Charli mentioned, “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.’ But it couldn’t have because we’re completely different people. I wasn’t making music that sounded anything like ‘Royals’. I think you just read what you want into it because you’re feeling insecure about your own work.”
In the interview, the star also opened up about the idea of starting a family and where she saw herself in past stages of her life.
Charli stated, “Am I less of a woman if I don’t have a kid? Will I feel like I’ve missed out on my purpose in life? I know we’re not supposed to say that, but it’s this biological and social programming. There’s a lot of pressure on women to not talk about that stuff super openly, especially not in pop music or in music generally; we’re supposed to be sexy and free and fun and wild.”
She went on to add, “My circumstance involves me making a decision and being like, ‘I’m gonna come off my birth control. I’m not gonna tour. I’m going to see what George wants to do, and then we’re gonna try for a baby,’” she says, and adds, after searching for what she wants to say, “I feel like a kid; I don’t feel like I can make that decision.”
Reflecting on her album, the singer even stated that this is her best album to date.
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“Club electronic music is what makes me feel most alive. My nightmare is going to see a pop show or, like, a band,” Charli says in her Valley girl British accent forged in the cultural fires of being Essex-raised but having spent a decade living in LA. “Which is funny, obviously, because: George. You can put that in; he knows how I feel about it.” The music that makes others feel emotional only leaves her cold. Electronic dance music, though: “It’s sadness and beauty and stillness — it does something to me almost chemically, I think.”
Charli has also worked on a few tracks with Daniel, who she teamed up with musically in 2021 for a collaborative single ‘Spinning’ with No Rome.
“We want to impress each other, and we think we’re both really good, but I’m actually such a bitch in the studio with George,” she laughs. “Because we’re obviously so close, you lose everything in terms of the normal studio boundaries.” Sometimes that can mean telling her fiancé, a slower-paced perfectionist who typically creates in a band dynamic, to hurry the fuck up. Her hyper-spontaneity has melded successfully with his sure-footed technical abilities. “We flow really well, and he leaves a lot of space for people to breathe and be them and do their process.”
