it's an xcx world, we just live in it
bumpin that bumpin that bumpin that bumpin that bumpin that
I’ve been thinking about Charli xcx.
It Girls have always been a part of the conversation. Culture seeks out women to stand in for the moment’s idea and ideal of femininity: in 2013 it was Alexa Chung who staked her claim to the title by naming her “collection of writings”/extended photo-collage It. Before that it was Paris and Nicole (or Kim Possible if you, like me, wanted to wear combats and run covert ops).1 But the first to bear the title was Clara Bow in “It”, who earlier this year was lyrically disinterred by Taylor Swift to explore her tenure as the monolithic girlie du temps. “You look like Taylor Swift”, she sings in the final verse of the song named for the 1920s actress, acknowledging that one day she too will be an archetype to be replicated and reflected upon. An icon, It.
As Richie Shazam puts it in the opening for the video for 360: “You need to be, like, known. But at the same time, unknowable.” And the push-pull of you could never be me/I’m also a person is an idea that Charli skirts around on Brat, intentionally or otherwise. On Rewind she talks about calling the paparazzi on herself and being insecure about her weight; on I think about it all the time she questions whether she’s made the right choices around her career and not having children. She then immediately follows that with a love song to cocaine the likes of which we’ve not heard since The Weeknd’s Can’t Feel My Face, and with 360 and Von dutch she positions herself as being everyone’s favourite reference.
So, do we believe her when on she says she doesn’t fucking care what we think, while staring down the barrel of the camera? Keep in mind that is the same artist who was papped wearing a shirt with the slogan “they don’t build statues of critics” the day before the release of her last album; who made Tiktoks appearing to poke fun at the marketing ideas her label had put before her. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that these are also performances of a cool, deeply uninterested persona who doesn’t want to sell you stuff but still has to because - ugh - the machine demands it. Anti-promo as promo! Everything is an ad! Yipee!
But selling things doesn’t read very It Girl. It Girls simply need to exist and the universe bends to rotate around them. Herein lies the tension between It Girl and celebrity. Celebs sell, It Girls are.
Celebrity is about inviting people in. Celebs tell all on their podcasts, which are either about recapping a show they did decades ago, giving advice, or hanging out with their smartest and funniest friend. They may try to seem relatable either to cash in on their familiarity or seem like real people, but it’s typically to sell something, even if that something is themselves as a brand. Being a celebrity is being a marketable entity, being an It Girl is about embodying an intangible quality and speaking to the current moment. Alexa Chung was ballet flats, the indie scene, thinspiraiton, T4; Gabbriette is bleached eyebrows, dead-eyed stare, instagram photodump, cherry emoji knife emoji chain emoji.2 Celebrity and It Girl can intersect, but they may not always coalesce.
By this same token, It Girls almost always reflect the beauty standard. Even if they deviate from the norm slightly, what they present has to be palatable to the mainstream. Apologies if you thought that hotness wasn’t a requirement for being an It Girl, because it most definitely is. They can dissent from the norm, rebel and be edgy in a way that’s appealing for the seeker of vicarious pleasures; smoking, party drugs, committing crimes so long as they’re perceived as glamorous and ideally result in a ✨slay mugshot✨, being a shitposter on the social media platform of your choice - you get the picture. I suppose I’d sum it up like this: It Girls can make us want to reach out to them as celebrities can, but a true It Girl shouldn’t want to reach back towards us because they already have everything they need.
Where does this leave Charli xcx?
On Brat, Charli presents herself as a complete person. 365 party girl,3 a woman who’s turning 32 this year and wondering about her life choices, and someone who compares herself to her peers in the professional and social spheres. Brat feels like the next logical step after How I’m Feeling Now, following the sideways glance to full-fat pop that was Crash. A song like So I, which is eulogises legendary producer SOPHIE and details a specific regret about not answering a call from her shortly before she passed, exhibits vulnerability that is earnest and expressed in a sonic language that feels reflective of who she is. It’s also an album with some all-time bangers, so that helps.
The version of Charli we hear on Brat is sharp and obscured in leather-clad, smoke-filled darkness where the only light source is the flash of a strobe. Charli can say that Brat summer is “a pack of cigs, a Bic lighter, and a strappy white top with no bra” and it rings true to her - or at least the version of her that she lets her audience know. If Brat is sleaze, it’s authentic sleaze. This summer get some dirt under your fingernails in the literal and metaphorical sense, it’s what Charli would want. Even if she doesn’t fucking care what we think.
I would be remiss not to mention Aaliyah’s Interlude’s It Girl as an attempt to step up to the plate.
Gabbriette is also incredibly thin, but right now we’re at the tail end of a moment in which the mainstream pretends to embrace other body types so that’s slightly less essential.