How Charli XCX, Caroline Polachek and Christine and Queens


As he prepares to release the brightest album of his career as a solo pop artist, “Crash”, Charlie XCX was in stagnation. In December, the British singer-songwriter had a high-stakes “Saturday Night Live” performance featuring two of her friends and collaborators. Caroline Polachek and Christine and the Queens. After a maze of planning, rehearsals, and boomerang travel, everything was shelved hours before the air due to the Omicron surge. Charli XCX reviewed this outage and other big questions about what could happen next. “I actually felt really bad in January,” she said, “and I was really upset and cried a lot and questioned a lot of things.”

At last the fog lifted; blatant bullying stepped in. “My album is very good,” he said. tweeted out last week, “That’s right, I can’t help it.” Coming Friday, “Crash” is the fifth and final LP released under a major label contract that 29-year-old Charli XCX signed at the age of 16. After that broke in 2014 with “one”boom claphooked for ”and rose to fame as a hit writer other artists, took a more experimental turn and gravitated towards hyperpop, like the 2017 mixtape “Pop 2” with Sophie and AG Cook. But he never lost the pleasure of collaborating.

“She’s the queen of traits,” said longtime friend Polachek. Named after she and Christine and Chris, French artist Hélöise Letissier, Queens, is indeed featured on “New Shapes,” a synthy single from “Crash,” where each of them writes a line about relationships—that topic makes up for it. It’s been discussed at length in DMs and podcasts. “I think we all fall in love quite differently,” Charli said.

He added that the relationship songs in “Crash” could serve as a narrative about Charli XCX’s ups and downs in the music industry. He wanted the album to be his last, most intense effort to become a pop star—just to see if he could make it. “There was always an endless question for me, could I be the world’s greatest artist,” she said, “or am I not made for this? Do I look too weird, too left-wing, too self-contained, too cheesy, too different, whatever, whatever, whatever?”

Charli XCX rescheduled “It was filmed on SNL” this month, even though he has no friends. Now she wonders what the next stage of her career might be. “Who will I be? What will I look like? What will I wear? What will he sound like?” said.

Transformation and evolution were recurring topics when Charli XCX, Polachek and Chris met in December to discuss recording and performance across continents. Each of them approaches music from different lanes, like Polachek from the old Brooklyn indie band chair lift, put it this way: Charli is on the social media-fueled pop front (she started on Myspace); Trapped in Los Angeles recently while working on a new Christine and the Queens album, Chris comes in with a better theatrical and performance background. “I like to make music by myself, but I find that I really come alive when I share space with them,” Charli said.

In joint interviews and separately, they talked about their careers and friendships and why they work well as collaborators. “You know, we are feelings,” Polachek said. These are edited excerpts from the speeches.

POLAÇEK Charli and I met in Australia 12 years ago. I was playing double-decker synths, singing behind the band – I wasn’t even the lead singer of that band. Charli was wearing rainbow-striped, one-foot-high platform sneakers and she was simply singing through an iPod and keeping her feet on the stage. Paradigms were very different. “I want you to make music for me,” said Caroline. At that time, I had never produced music for anyone, let alone myself.

CHARLI XCX I remember watching the chairlift performance and Caroline’s vocals were incredible, and I think I really admired her. And I still am. I felt scared not because he was a scary person, but because of his coldness. It was really kind. I was maybe 18 and still commuting from my parents’ house on trips.

POLAÇEK I made a mega story Instagram post when Chris went out “Girlfriend” video, I was just fascinated by it and I think you replied to this story and said “I am a fan” and I said “I am a fan”. We actually had a pen pal relationship for about a year and a half before we met, and it was pretty deep. Only on Instagram DM. We were talking about love and pain.

CHRIS I can go deep in conversation with you and I appreciate that in our friendship.

CHARLI XCX No matter how many years now and in the past, I loved writing together. I consider it a real skill to turn multiple people’s ideas into one logical thing. But what I’ve been through [from outsiders] it was a feeling of disbelief that I could write a song. Perhaps this is in the minutiae of the music industry and in different roles – songwriter; producer; sometimes an artist who does both. I guess people still think “oh, did Olivia Rodrigo really write that song? Or did Taylor Swift do it?”

It seems like there should be a question about women’s validity and whether they’re worth the space they have, whereas it doesn’t really seem like a question for men.

POLAÇEK I roll my eyes when people point to female pop vocalists as an example of the change in music. No. Since the beginning of pop music, female faces and female voices have come to the fore. He is the person whose hands are on the dial. That’s what’s changed.

CHARLI XCX There are more ways to become an artist because there are more platforms – there is TikTok, there is SoundCloud. You have that girl in your bedroom, releasing songs and organically building a fanbase through your own memes. This is all true, but sadly and, perhaps, pessimistic to me, I feel like women still have boxes to fit in.

And there are definitely moments that break that mold – Billie Eilish becomes the world’s greatest artist. A great artist creates a wonderful world accessible to people. I feel like people are sometimes unwilling to accept that female artists have evolved. Billie did A performance using Auto Tuning, and the world exploded. And it’s like this an artistic choice.

I’m the freaky girl on the fringes who made “Pop 2” and people loved me for it and I’m forever grateful for the support. This helped me pursue a career that wasn’t very successful commercially from 2014 to 2015. I found a new lease of life that played closer to the underground, closer to the more avant-garde sounds. Maybe this is the Twitter rhetoric I should probably distract myself from, but sometimes it feels like I’m being told, no, you’re not allowed to be anyone but him. And really, the truth is, I’m allowed to be whoever I want, because the reason I’m an interesting artist is because I evolve and change.

CHRIS I’m not social, I stopped in July. My mental health is better. My connection with the present is better. Sometimes I think social—when over-filtered and when it has to be powerful, catchy, immediately digestible—I find myself as an artist discouraging something I don’t always understand. Sometimes I want to take more time to express an idea.

My journey with sex has always been turbulent. He’s furious right now as I’m only discovering what’s beyond that. One way of expressing this would be to alternate between them and him. I want to break the system that causes us to label the sexes so rigidly. I remember talking about being pansexual in France in 2014 – it was a conversation very few people had, and I was perhaps advised to soften it up in offices. I’m really trying to get it right now and I’m sometimes pressured to provide an answer. But I think the answer is wobbly, fluid, running.

I don’t want to rush this conversation and may never answer again. But in my job, I find ways to make this journey enjoyable. I believe that real gestures are artistic, because the real debate on queerness is also a discussion about the society we live in, capitalism and social justice. It’s not just about me wondering every morning if I’m male or female. It covers everything.

POLAÇEK Chris has a sense of speed and total commitment. Most people do everything with 50 percent energy in rehearsal mode because you don’t want to wear yourself out, you just do it for your brain. Chris is 100 percent, 150 percent, every time, and he raises the flow of commitment and energy for everyone around him.

CHRIS I’ve been a fan of Caroline forever. I love how artistic everything is, how deliberate everything is. There is an elegance, demanding but also super melodic.

CHARLI XCX I think Caroline sees its potential to be anything pop music can shape. She can create and vocalize or do anything she wants, because she has all the skills to do that.

With Caroline and Chris, I sometimes envy their music, to be honest. When I heard “Girlfriend,” I said, God, I want to work with her. [Christine’s collaborator] Dam-Funk. So I did, and I said, while he’s great, I don’t have this magical connection with this person. For example, I wish Chris was here to figure this out for me.

CHRIS Charli, I am so deeply joyful write a song. I can say that you make music with what you experience and the emotion you experience. There is something very serious in your post.

CHARLI XCX You’ve been like my therapist for a while. You give good advice.

Especially in the last few years I have been able to return to both for many personal things besides music and also for personal things connected with music. Sometimes I think it’s hard to say that you’re going through tough times as an artist, because frankly, we’re very lucky to be able to sustain ourselves from the things we create. But at the same time, everyone has struggles. It’s nice to talk to others who are in the same situation as you, to trust them about what they’ve achieved. I’m really, really grateful for that.





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