Charli XCX has been on the music scene since 2007 and debuted with her 1st album “True Romance”. In 2014 she released the hit song “Boom Clap” which was featured in the soundtrack for the movie “The Fault in Our Stars”, which peaked at number 8 on US Billboard Hot 100 and in 2012 she was featured in Icona Pop’s hit song “I Love It”. So why is it that it is only recently that Charli XCX has risen to mainstream stardom, selling out stadiums on tours and hitting new levels of virality? Not only Charli has risen to fame though, house music and EDM has also become quite popular, with artists like John Summit making their way onto the scene. This shift in music, and the new artists on the scene, are creating a new sound for the music industry.
While there have definitely been a lot of artists contributing to this new industry of music, Charli XCX is one of the main stars. Her album “Brat” debuted at number 3 on Billboard and accumulated 40,000 pure album sales and 46.7 million on-demand streams within its first week. This begs the question, what made “Brat” so successful? Part of what made the album so undeniably successful is Charli’s marketing tactics. She has created a new system of marketing, having multiple successful influencers and even pop stars associate and be featured in her music videos and other promotions. She appeared on multiple podcasts or tik tok videos promoting her album. However it is the truly pivotal collabs that Charlie has created that draw extra attention to her. For example she brought in Billie Eilish to feature on her song “Guess”, which has reached over 600 million streams recently. Billie’s verse went viral on tik tok and has accumulated over 184 thousand streams on the official sound. She also brought in Addison Rae for the famous and iconic scream in her song “Von Dutch”. However, her most show-stopping collaboration might be “Girl, So Confusing” with Lorde. The two artists have had internet “beef” for years and with this duet they totally broke the internet clearing up that beef for good.
The album peaked in virality as an internet sensation and the creation of “Brat” Summer. Which was another genius branding move by Charli XCX. However even with the end of “Brat” summer Charli XCX continues to soak up success. She was recently featured in the new Amazon Prime show Overcompensating which she also scored the music for. The soundtrack featured many of her own songs and has been blowing up on platforms like TikTok. Yorba Linda High School Senior Faith Alam (12) says that
While this article mainly focused on the newfound success of Charli XCX, it is important to note that with her success comes the success of many new artists she is paving the way for. For example Addison Rae, who is gearing up for their pop debut. On June 6, new rising star in pop music Addison Rae released her debut album “Addison”. While some still see her as the iconic tik tok dancer who went viral dancing to Renegade and other famous tik tok dances, she has pulled a complete 180 and is creating new and unique music. Kaylie Cao (12) says that “Addison’s music is unlike a lot of pop music on the scene right now, and it reminds me of the uniqueness of Charli XCX’s music”. Her 5 singles have all been doing insanely well and they seem to hint that this album will be a hit as well.
