One Liner: Forgettable pop at the top of the pile
Poster Position: Headliner
Both Weekends
Friday at 8:40 (just an 1:20 set from the main headliner is weaksauce)
American Express Stage
Thoughts: I truly can't believe this is the top artist on the poster. Like, yes, I understand economics and popularity and all of the similar drivers for the purpose of this poster. But I also cannot wrap my head around the fact that good old ACL is now this sort of package for forgettable pop drivel.
In 2015, I wrote an extremely short review of her second album, 2014's SUCKER:
Charlie XCX - Sucker. Boom Clap is a damn jam. Although, when my four year old can make a reasonable approximation of your lyrics, then you aren't exactly beating back the world with your lyrical innovation. That being said, great song. The rest of this album is forgettable pop with a weird punk-lite bent. British Avril Lavigne. Remember her? "He was a sk8ter boy, she said see you later boy." Ugh. Replaced with the effortlessly boring "Gold coins everywhere, dollars up in the air, it's a billionaire's love affair."
Here is "Boom Clap," in case you need a refresher. 598.6 million streams.
Ten years later in 2025, here is what I had to say about her world-conquering 2024 album BRAT:
Charlie XCX - BRAT. I am well aware that I am extremely late to this party, as this was the big album of last summer and the Kamala campaign and Saturday Night Live and everything else. But my ACL listening needs really interfere with my other listening action, and to be quite honest every time this album has popped up I have found something else to listen to. I got in to this a little with my Sabrina Carpenter review the other day, but I just can't get on board with the poptimism movement and the world declaring that this sort of thing is important music. I can't stand it. Sadly, this likely means that she will almost certainly be on the ACL lineup and I will be forced to dive more deeply into this stuff, but I have made my way through this album a handful of times and I hate the vocal effects and the generically uninteresting beats and the repetitiveness of it all. And I am for sure biased, because I wouldn't think a thing of it if the Black Keys had a generic and repetitive riff. But this is just not giving me any pleasure at all. The playcount is interesting to me, in that several of these songs, on the supposedly biggest album of 2024, have less than 40 million streams, while only four have more than a hundred million. Makes it seem to me like this wasn't as big a deal as the critics and media tried to make it seem. The top track by a ways is the album opener, "360." 334.9 million streams [now up to 531.4 million in 2026].
The start of that being a Google ad was deeply annoying to me as well, as, for sure, was the skit at the start. I hate it even more than the song itself. I'm sure its some meta commentary that an old white guy would not like that portion or the song, but at the end of the day I am what I am and this is not good. It just really feels like people felt like they needed to get on board with this in order to be cool or relevant or whatever despite its actual value. It sort of reminds me of the flow of Iggy Izalea. I will absolutely not be saving this album for later listens.
So, you're saying you really love her, huh, Jack?!? Let's go into the background, because I literally know nothing about her.
Charlotte Emma Aitchison is from Cambridge, England. Her mother is Indian and her father is Scottish, and she says she got bullied by the white people in school for her Indian heritage. She got her start by posting songs onto MySpace in 2008, but then got her big break by co-writing and being featured on Icona Pop's massive "I Love It" in 2012.
That song was an international smash and hit number one in the UK and number 7 in the US. Interestingly, none of her original songs appear to be on Spotify. Her first entry on there is 2012's You're The One EP (not to be confused with Tom Petty's excellent You're The One Soundtrack). Wikipedia says that her debut solo album, 2013's True Romance, "failed to meet commercial expectations." Personally, I didn't love it. Generic dark pop to my ears. Reached #85 on the charts in Britain.
But then, apparently being a very intelligent and opportunistic gal, she hopped on board with another One Hit Wonder mastermind and was featured on Iggy Azalea's "Fancy." Which is almost assuredly why she popped into my mind last year when writing that review. Her following albums made her more and more popular, culminating in BRAT, which pulled in three Grammys for Best Dance Pop Recording for "Von Dutch", Best Dance/Electronic Album, and Best Recording Package (the visual look of the album, which is dumb as hell in this instance, because the look of this album was just a slime green cover with the word "brat" on it).
Her name is apparently Charli Kiss Charli Kiss, which was her MSN Messenger name when she was a child. Her other biggest song, from before BRAT, is "party 4 u" that was on her 2020 album. 547.6 million streams.
Her most recent album is apparently just the soundtrack to the new Wuthering Heights movie. Which is sort of odd, but sure, why not. I've tried BRAT a little more, listened to some of 2022's CRASH, 2020's how i'm feeling now, and 2017's Number1 Angel, and I'm still in the same boat. Overly auto-tuned, relatively basic background music, nothing particularly interesting about the lyrics. I can't imagine choosing to go see this show, but I assume my girls will go and claim it was amazing. Good luck.
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