Charlotte Aitchison, known professionally as Charli XCX, began releasing music on MySpace as a teenager in 2008. After getting the attention of local promoters in Essex, she started to perform at illegal raves, with the support of her parents. It didn’t take long for XCX to get signed to Asylum Records and begin working on her dark-electro debut album True Romance.

A year before True Romance came out, however, XCX had her first brush with hitmaking thanks to the 2012 single “I Love It.” She ended up not feeling like it was a fit for her own sound at the time, and it eventually was recorded by Swedish pop duo Icona Pop, who kept XCX’s vocals on the track as well. The song became a Number One hit around the globe, and hit Number Seven on the Billboard Hot 100.

In 2014, she would have her first Number One hit in the US, as the featured artist on Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy,” as well as her first Top 10 single as a solo artist with “Boom Clap.” Her sophomore album Sucker, released that October, would become her first album to chart.

Soon, XCX would establish herself as pop’s most forward-thinking auteur. Her 2016 EP Vroom Vroom was made in collaboration with DJ, producer and singer Sophie. The experimental hyperpop release would end up setting the tone for XCX’s career to come, including the 2017 mixtapes Number 1 Angel and Pop 2.

After a few years tipping the scales of what pop music can be, she ventured back into more mainstream pop releases with 2019’s Charli and, later, 2022’s Crash. But she can’t avoid looking towards the future of pop for too long: her pandemic-era How I’m Feeling Now was a great example of how she can’t help but continue to experiment with both her sound and image.

With 2024’s Brat, XCX became bigger than ever before. From the lime green album cover to the global DJ sets, the pop star not only went back to the raves of her youth but found a way to make an opus that celebrates all the incredible nuances of her pop career thus far. —Brittany Spanos