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.”
Listen to the full interview on Apple Music.