Charli XCX has definitively destroyed the Brat era. Between the release of his The Moment -mockumentary presented at the 76th edition of the Berlinale – and the album Wuthering Heights – the soundtrack of the homonymous film adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel – the pop star closed the acid and neon green chapter to leave room for a new phase. On the other hand, she herself at the press conference in Berlin said “For me Brat Summer ended with The Moment. And maybe when something like that ends, you can’t be the artist you were before.”.
For the last greeting to what has been a real cultural phenomenon of the last two years, Charli chooses to stage his period of crisis with the direction of Aidan Zamiri: author of numerous music videos, including 360 of Charli himself. In the videoclip, released on May 10, 2024, Zamiri reconstructs all the brat aesthetics by gathering a large array of “it girl” alongside the British pop star. From Julia Fox to Chloë Sevigny, and with the participation of Chloe Cherry and Rachel Sennott (present also in The Moment in the role of herself).
The Moment tells the birth of Brat and what it has represented for its creator to pass from a niche of faithful to a worldwide and heterogeneous audience. Yes, because for Charli the pandemic represented a watershed: as an artist looking for rivalry to a reference figure of an entire subgenre, the hyperpop. While part of the world was engaged in singing on the balconies and kneading bread, Charlotte Emma Aitchison (in Charli art) started a transmedial narrative with the involvement of fans and friends.
In 2020, Charli, blocked as everyone from lockdown, decided to produce, write and record a record in 40 days, sharing the entire creative path with its audience through Instagram. In his directs he shares the first breaths of the new songs, asking opinions on melodic and text choices. For artwork, photo shots, post-productions, discussion moves to Instagram posts and story while Zoom entrusts talks about quarantine life with exchanges of thoughts, fears, anxieties. The result is How i’m feeling now. An album son of the historical situation in which he was born, made of peaks of enthusiasm and emotional downs, accompanied by the futuristic productions of the trusted A. G. Cook.
A prototype of the mature album that would come out four years later and that would mark the aesthetics of summer 2024: Brat. Cambridge’s 1992-class popstar tells all the insecurity, competitiveness, ambition and pride of its generation. What does it mean to be a 33-year-old woman who lives between glamour and club with a career started but not yet burst? With Von Dutch, 360, Sympathy Is a Knife, Girl, So Confusing and I Think About It All the Time, Charli XCX addresses the theme of maternity, depression, relationship with colleagues, sense of inadequacy, all on electropop basis that characterize its production since 2007. Since, at the age of 14, Charlotte Aitchison began recording her first songs and publishing them on MySpace, thus beginning her career in the rare illegal parties in London with the nick used on MSN Messenger.
The vocal collaboration in the song “I Love It” by Icona Pop makes it popular, but it is the combination with the cinema that is always winning: Boom Clap for the film Colpa delle Stelle, Miss U in the soundtrack of the TV series 13 Reasons Why and Explode, an original song for Angry Birds, a film for which he also voiced the blue bird with the striped cap. But again, Hot Girl for Bodies Bodies Bodies, the black comedy horror directed by Halina Reijn, until she got involved in the Barbie soundtrack of Greta Gerwig with the hit Speed Drive.
But the connection with the cinema is not limited to the musical composition, the queen of the raves has shown to be also a big camera when just over a year ago her letterboxd profile was released. With more than 200 films only seen in 2024, the “itscharlibb” profile delivered sagacious and ironic comments to fans, such as the one on the biographical film on Bob Dylan with Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown: “There were a lot of songs in this movie!” Charli’s husband, George Daniel (drums of rock band The 1975), was also mentioned in reviews, whose activities during the viewing of the film by the pop star were documented. “I watched it while George built the Legos,” she reads in Charli’s review of The Tragedy Of Macbeth.
“It seems that my creativity is moving towards cinema. I like to recite, I like to write, I like to watch and above all I like to discover a new profession” he confessed to users of his newsletter. And in fact, after The Moment, many projects have already been announced in recent months that see her as actress: 100 nights of hero by Julia Jackman; Erupcja, Polish film by Pete Ohs focused on the relationship between two childhood friends and the new boyfriend of one of the two, also presented as “the film response to Girl, so dissolution of the same Charli”. He will also be the protagonist of Gregg Araki’s first feature film alongside Cooper Hoffman and the next work of Takashi Miike. He also chose Dakota Johnson for his directing debut with A Tree Is Blue, the actress of Material Love will direct the film based on a script written by his co-star Cha Real Smooth, Vanessa Burghardt, who apparently will appear in the film along with Charli XCX and Jessica Alba.
“At the moment I feel more inspired by cinema than music. I am really enjoying my career as an actress, I feel incredibly creative and I just want to do things that inspire me and give me energy” he added. Confirming the recent trend of pop stars that distance themselves from the stage to devote themselves to cinema or other activities that disassemble the gold cage that binds them.
Rihanna has been the founder, now away from the musical world for about ten years to devote to her brand Fenty Beauty, but more recently we see other personalities like Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez, The Weeknd and the chatter Bad Bunny. The protagonist of the last Halftime Show of the Super Bowl, had appeared in an uncomfortable circumstance of Darren Aronofsky, and in Bullet Train of David Leitch, alongside Brad Pitt. But now it is his first role as a leading actor for the debut of Puerto Rican rapper René Pérez Joglar, aka Residente. According to the first indiscretions, it will be a Caribbean epic, and together with the star there will be Edward Norton, Javier Bardem and Viggo Mortensen.
In short, the icons of modern pop find themselves increasingly to take refuge in other creative worlds to escape from stressful tours, market rules, the weight of those expectations that Charli faced with his Brat. In the end it is a nice paradox that global success has arrived with an album that bare the insecurities and fragilities of the “party girl” and that perhaps, just the arrival of that success so much agonized, pushed her towards the exploration of a new career, apparently, already flourishing.
L’articolo Charli xcx: the party girl lent to the cinema proviene da SentieriSelvaggi.
