Charli XCX Dedicates Career Success to LGBTQ+ Community

Charli XCX just opened up about her career success ahead of her upcoming album titled Brat. 

In a conversation with Vogue Singapore, the singer says she is making a kind of music that is unlike she’s ever created for her upcoming album.

“I came from the clubs,” Charli says wistfully, during our Zoom chat. “When I first started making music, I was playing at illegal warehouse raves in Hackney in London. That’s home to me.”

The singer described the time growing up in club culture as ‘pure electricity.’

“I was never somebody who went to traditional clubs where you’d have to put your name on the list and there would be a line-up of DJs playing. I always found myself at warehouse parties—those really underground, last-minute, secret-location kind of events,” she reminisces.

The star also admitted she was playing at illegal warehouse raves in Hackney when she first started making music.

The “Speed Drive” musician opened up about her current album in the works saying, “Lyrically, this is quite a different record for me. I’ve written the songs almost in the way I would write texts to my friends or based on things I would say to them on FaceTime. We talk a lot about pop culture and music and it’s been really fun to gossip about the songs we go. They’ll ask ‘Oh, who is this one about? Is this about a friend? Is it about an ex?’ It has fuelled this fun, gossipy narrative which permeates the album.”

But the singer also opened up about her friend and late trans producer, Sophie, saying that she has found ways to use her voice in ways that not only matter to her, but the majority of her fanbase.

“I truly feel like I wouldn’t have a career without the LGBTQ+ community,” she says. “They have made so much possible for me and supported me when everyone else had given up. It feels right for me to try my best to amplify that community wherever possible. It feels very natural to me.”

Charli’s lead single, “Von Dutch,” has had remixes from the likes of Addison Rae and A.G. Cook.

On the creation of the music video at an airport, the singer stated, “I was thinking about the feeling we have when we’re being watched. Whether it’s by our peers, co-workers or even our sort of frenemies. You know how sometimes you just feel like someone’s watching your every move? This song is me saying, well, if you want to watch, I’m going to give you a show.”

The artist even admits that throughout her life, she felt she was living a dual life growing up with her multicultural heritage.

“My mum is Indian and she was born in Uganda. Her family eventually moved to the UK where she married my dad, who is white,”she shares.

She goes on to add, “I grew up in two half-lives, I suppose. When I would go and visit my mum’s family, I felt very Indian. It was all the classic scenes of my nani and bappa cooking with Bollywood films playing in the background and everybody speaking in Gujarati.”

“But then I’d go home to this other world which was largely white. It was almost like I would experience the Indian part of my identity only on the weekends. I never quite felt like I fit into either world, which I think commonly happens with mixed-race kids.”

Charli closed out with, “There were a lot of jokes from my schoolmates about corner shops and things like that. But also, my grandparents actually did have a corner shop. So it was very confusing, you know?”