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Charli XCX Toys with Stardom on “BRAT” | The New Yorker

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Halfway through Charli XCX’s new album, “brat,” the British pop star delivers a lyric that is “pop” in neither form nor content. She is rapping, more or less, her voice slightly warped by Auto-Tune. Flouting conventions of rhyme and meter, she acknowledges the sorts of concerns that stars like her are typically expected to ignore, at least on record: I used to never think about Billboard But now I’ve started thinking again Wondering ’bout whether I think I deserve commercial success A decade ago, Charli did not seem like someone who needed to wonder about that sort of thing. She was twenty-two when she released her second album, “Sucker,” at the end of 2014, by which time she was riding the momentum of a trio of hits. “I Love It,” a 2012 collaboration with the Swedish duo Icona Pop, was a worldwide phenomenon, reaching No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. “Fancy,” with Iggy Azalea, reached No. 1, and “Boom Clap,” a Charli XCX solo track, went to No. 8. It was a great start, but in som

Save this story Save this story Halfway through Charli XCX’s new album, “ BRAT ,” the British pop star delivers a lyric that is “pop” in neither form nor content. She is rapping, more or less, her voice slightly warped by Auto-Tune. Flouting conventions of rhyme and meter, she acknowledges the sorts of concerns that stars like her are typically expected to ignore, at least on record: I used to never think about Billboard But now I’ve started thinking again Wondering ’bout whether I think I deserve commercial success A decade ago, Charli did not seem like someone who needed to wonder about that

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