The woman born Charlotte Aitchison has been kicking around the music industry since 2008, when she began posting songs online and exploring the London rave scene. It took a while, but she’s finally got to the point where she filled Minneapolis’ Target Center on Saturday night under her stage name Charli XCX.
The 32-year-old landed her first big single in 2012 as a guest on Icona Pop’s “I Love It” (which popped up in her encore) and returned to the charts two years later after she contributed vocals to Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” (which was nowhere to be found Saturday, much like Iggy Azalea’s career). But Charli never really built a substantial following in the States until recently, with her sixth album “Brat” entering the charts at No. 3 last summer. (The record’s purposefully garish lime green cover quickly went viral online and only got hotter when the Kamala Harris campaign adopted the look.)
It’s tempting to lump her in with other current female pop stars like Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan, but Charli doesn’t have a crossover classic like “Espresso” or “Pink Pony Club” in her repertoire. Instead, she makes polarizing electronic dance songs that are more aggressive and angry than, say, euphoric.
So it was strange to see her largely youthful crowd, with a substantial number of queer people in attendance, dancing and cheering to Charli’s bass-heavy and often discordant songs cursed with vapid lyrics. But the audience turned it into a celebration for the devoted that’s not likely to win over any skeptics.
Charli performed on a massive, stark stage with two large screens and a two-level catwalk that extended into the crowd. There was no live band — she sang to a prerecorded track with plenty of canned vocals on it — or dancers, and the only other person on stage was the occasional camera operator. The set list included nearly all of “Brat” but almost nothing from her early career, not even 2014’s “Boom Clap,” her biggest solo hit. (Then again, many of those in the crowd were still in grade school in 2014.)
Clad in a series of revealing outfits and ever-present wraparound shades, Charli didn’t spend the show dancing as much as she did stomping around, pumping her fist, swearing incessantly and acting more like a hype (wo)man than the main attraction. When she did sing live, it was usually through heavy electronic effects. After a while, watching her onstage felt like scrolling through a particularly tedious Instagram feed full of leering influencers.
Again, the up-for-anything crowd ate up every last minute of what quickly turned into a concert heavy on style and lacking in substance.
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