Fans have been waiting a while for a debut from Charli XCX – after releasing two rave-clash-pop singles in the late ’00s, she emerged back onto the scene in mid-2011 with the stormy, yearning single Stay Away (co-written with Diplo’s pop partner in crime, Ariel Rechtshaid), which scored a Best New Track tag from Pitchfork and reignited the hype. She’s spent the nearly two years since teasing new tracks on short mixtapes – her starry-eyed goth-pop melodies sung over production from Gold Panda and Blood Diamonds, with dialogue from ’90s movies like The Craft and Cruel Intentions punctuating the space between tracks. Most of those songs and other new ones – including a collab with rapper/stripper Brooke Candy – appear on her first full-length, True Romance, which is out this week.
“I’ve never been pregnant, but I imagine that this is kinda what it feels like – just with a lot more pain,” says Aitchison with a laugh. “I really feel like it’s a coming-of-age record for me, like I’m grown-up. Obviously there’s still a massive child-like element to me, but I just feel like this record is a turning point for me. Kinda like my whole romantic experience has been compiled into one album, so it’s still raw for me.”
The Charli XCX aesthetic occupies a similar ’90s-teen-girl-via-Tumblr space as Grimes’ pink hair and platforms, with maybe a bit less art-school and a little more Gothic girl group. Anyone born in 1992 doesn’t really know a world without the Spice Girls, and the self-confessed Spice tragic makes no secret of her pop leanings. “I always wanted to write a pop record – not a hipster bullshit record, I just wanted to write a record full of pop songs. And maybe they’re not Top 40 pop songs, but they’re still pop songs, y’know?” she says. “I don’t want to write throwaway pop music – I think that’s a waste of time. I want to write credible pop music, and that’s what I think I’ve been doing.”
Of course, Aitchison’s already had a taste of chart success – sort of. She co-wrote, and is featured on, Swedish duo Icona Pop’s hedonistic shout-along smash I Love It. “Everyone knew that song was going to be a hit, and my vocals were on it, so I wanted to be a feature on it so that I could, y’know, get some fans from that, I guess, that I maybe wouldn’t have had I not done it,” she explains. “I didn’t want to take the track as my own, because my album doesn’t sound like that song. I’ve never wanted to make an album that sounds like that song – that crazy electro-clash riot thing. Which I think is amazing, and Icona Pop do that so well. They took that song to a place that I never could have. They own it.”
In fact, one eye on the top of the charts and one on her own, less commercial aspirations is exactly how Aitchison wants to run things. “That song has opened a lot of doors for me as a writer, so I’ll be able to write Top 40-friendly songs for them, and at the same time make music that I want to write as an artist,” she says brightly. “So it’s worked out well for me.”
BY CAITLIN WELSH
