Charli XCX admits the music industry is “beginning to catch up” with her “a little bit”.
The New Shapes singer has released her fifth studio album, CRASH, and the 29-year-old pop star finally feels her future-leaning music is a “tangible genre” – not just loved by the “weird kids”.
Speaking to Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, she said: “I’m on my fifth album in my five-album deal. I’ve arrived at this place where I’m incorporating all of the different things that I’ve done in the past into one body of work. I also feel like — and this might sound like a negative but I actually think it’s a positive — I also feel like we’re at a time in the music industry where the music industry is beginning to catch up with me a little bit.”
Charli explained: “We’re at this time now where being an artist like me is actually quite common and the norm and with things like hyperpop existing. It’s like that is now a tangible genre that not only weird kids who have great taste can understand but playlisters can understand or whatever.
“This album feels very cyclical in many ways … people can understand who I am now.”
Charli describes her LP as “hyper-sexualised” and recently explained how she wanted to “challenge” herself with the dancing in the promo for the single Baby.
She said: “It’s probably the most sexy song I’ve ever made. It’s about sex and sexuality and having good sex and just feeling yourself essentially. I know that that’s the tone. I knew that that was the tone I wanted to carry across for the entire record. This kind of hyper-sexualised, feminine power zone was where I was feeling myself going, and Baby was the genesis of this.
“Also I think that’s probably why I wanted to challenge myself on the choreo for this song, which was really, really tough and I have so much respect for dancers, professional dancers, anyone who communicates emotion through dance. It is so hard and challenging, but so rewarding.”
