Secondhand Setlists

Not to be bratty, but I’ve seen Charli 10 times now – this was one of her best performances.

In 2013, an intrepid (and in some ways, fully-formed at that point) pop star ventured into an American Apparel in Harvard Square, where she struck up conversation with my then-boyfriend. This enthusiastic English girl in platform creepers invited him to her show across the street at the Sinclair Theatre and handed him tickets, asking that he bring his friends, too. And so in November, shortly before my 21st birthday, I ended up at the Sinclair for my first of many Charli XCX shows. Afterwards, I met and thanked her outside the venue, where she gave me some life advice while smoking a cigarette. Here was this also 21-year-old artist, charting in the Billboard Top 10, writing with Britney Spears and winning over Pitchfork, now in front of me dishing out life advice between drags on a street in Boston. She felt within reach, even if her own coolness and charm conversely seemed incapable of emulation, and Charli XCX has remained close to me ever since.

At this point, I’ve seen Charli XCX live 11 separate times, and I’ve got the posters, setlists, and paraphernalia to prove it. I saw “SuperLove,” “Taxi,” and “Out of My Head” all performed in full. I attended two performances with SOPHIE, the Pop 2 celeb extravaganza, and one of the DJ events leading up to her latest album, brat. I followed her transition from Tumblr girl to schoolgirl baddie to countryclub-clubkid to Matrix raver. I’ve been in the Google Drive, and I’ve seen her film work, too. Keeping an eye on her has rewarded me in more ways than I can put to paper, blessing me with new artists, friends, and memories all along the way. All were a glorious build up to the career she’s established in 2024, where she now helms one of the world’s most hotly sought-after concerts.

The brat show at the Shrine Expo Hall felt transcendent, a thrilling new stage for Charlotte Aitchison to claim as her own. In 2016, I remember buying a ticket for her and SOPHIE’s El Rey concert day-of for somewhere around $40/50. The day of the brat show in LA, you had to shell out $300+ on Stubhub for a chance to party with Charli XCX, alongside Rachel Sennett, Tove Lo, and Alex Consani (and maybe not Tinashe, I suppose). Every twink and their sugar daddy rolled up to the Shrine Expo Hall in their finest Aphex Twin green, giving the effect of Lara Croft but somehow even more like a video game. Of all the big pop releases of this year, be they Bey’s, Dua’s, or Taylor’s, none landed with the glorious impact of brat.

“It feels like ‘finally,’ she did it with brat,” my friend said as we pregamed. Other mutuals of ours, likewise longtime XCX attendees, also shared that they found the brat shows in NYC and Primavera to be their favorite times seeing her. Fellow shameless Brit Lily Allen shared in the sentiment. Needless to say, the expectations were high.

Now, I famously do not like the Shrine. The acoustics and the length of the crowd section presents a number of challenges for acts. Typically, you need vocals, choreography, and/or other bodies to fill the stage in a way that translates to the back, as Rahim Claude Redcar, fka Christine and the Queens, utilized to wonderful effect when I saw him open for Grimes, also in 2016. Singular vocalists with modest staging or little choreography have a hard time pushing their sound and persona to fill the whole hall – sorry to Kali Uchis. Electronic artists like Porter Robinson or the Chemical Brothers make up for this with towering light fixtures and immense visuals, while bands simply fill up the stage with bodies and instruments.

Yet on this stage Charli XCX stood by her lonesome, framed by strobes, La Gooney Chonga ponytail down to her ass, and kept us in her pocket, in a little sandwich baggie, all night.

Perhaps brat-summer, as some are calling it, is a type of mania akin to what NoBells attributed to raving Swifties, but live at least, brat mania translated to actual bodily movement. Never went to the Eras Tour, yet I can imagine the audience behaved much the same as the other pop icons I’ve seen in concert over the last year (Beyoncé, Madonna, Janet Jackson, Kylie Minogue). Most of the attendees at those shows stood around, if they got out of their seats at all, occasionally raising their hands to hold up a phone. Kylie somewhat circumnavigated this by performing for an open park at WeHo Pride, and though she tried her best to get the gals off the wall (ie, closing with “Love at First Sight”), it paled compared to the manic energy at the Shrine.

No one at brat showed any sort of inhibition or held any prude notions about personal space. From the top, “365,” the Easyfun remix, locked all attendees into a sweaty, green, pulsating mass. As if to test our metal, Charli unleashed “spring breakers” only three tracks in. She called for violence and we were like begging for it, baby. How couldn’t she hold our attention? She’s fuckin’ Charli, baby, a phrase which I have to say, is one crowds never tire of hearing. Especially as it led into the beloved “Track 10,” one of a few Pop 2 tracks on the setlist. Its sentimentality bled over to “so i,” a moment of reverence for the aforementioned SOPHIE. Moments of reprieve like this, as well as the pairing of “I might say something stupid” and “I think about it all the time,” were akin to stepping out of the warehouse for a bit of air or to lift oneself out from a dip in serotonin. Charli knows as much about the lows as she does the high of a night out, and a low shared among friends was one easier to bear.

And make no mistake, all attendees became friends that evening. The whirling synths of “club classics” swept my own pals and I off our feet, bouncing off each other as well as those around us, all of them just as weightless. Charli, too, appeared equally caught up in the euphoria of tracks like “talk talk,” “apple,” and “mean girls.” She certainly drank the Kool-Aid she’s been doling out. By simply designating her music as ‘classic,’ Charli got the room to buy into it as well. Bratty, to be sure, but you don’t become a brat without being good at getting your way, and it’s even brattier if you can get your way by doing things your way. “You gon’ jump if A. G. made it,” and jump we did. We also gyrated, thrashed, and (to borrow an English phrase) snogged, which has happened to me before at a Charli show. It felt familiar, as if pieces and motifs of her previous shows and career thus far all coalescing to form the perfect storm we were witnessing now.

Remix culture, something which seemingly gets more popular with pop acts every passing year, served to Charli XCX’s advantage. Remixing allowed her to tease and recall different songs more than once throughout her set while also speaking to her knack as a real pop auteur – pop music tends to incorporate sounds we’re already familiar with, an upgrade to your stereotype, if you will. Charli found a way to keep the party running all while reusing, recycling, and revamping her material, which you hear across brat itself. I hear as much Calvin Harris, T-Pain, and “sellout” Dizzee Rascal as I do Uffie, Katy B, or Boys Noize. Studio-wise, she’s found this balance between the Top 40 and 40 feet below and has imbued her show with that same knowledge. Looping “365” around the setlist proved genius, ushering everyone into the hedonist life of the people’s pop star princess from the first downbeat. This and “von dutch” each got repeated seamlessly throughout the set, and the latter track’s repeat appearance came with something of a Top 40/A-list element in the form of the evening’s singular cameo.

Before the reup of “von dutch” came the cleverly placed “guess,” which poked at a question I’d pondered beforehand: would there be a special guest? The guest happened to be one of the most famous Zoomers out there, Addison Rae, who writhed and screamed onstage alongside Charli. It made you wonder that as shows continue throughout the year, who else might join her – Rina, Caroline, Robyn? As per usual, her show left you speculative and ravenous for more, the mark of a real entertainer.

The closest crowd I can compare to the brat show is that of another British wonderkid – Fred Again… Though I’m not a veriFred devotee of Mr. Again, his crowd movement is impressive when very few of the big pop girlies can get fans moving anymore. Charli XCX, however, can and did do that. “It’s okay to just admit you’re jealous of me” — well, we kinda are, babe. This concert went against my usual prerequisites for good live music: choreo, visuals, vocals at the very least – all cast aside to make space for a gigantic personality, one bolstered by a decade of catchphrases, Easter eggs, and good old-fashioned mythos-building. Charli XCX needed no backup dancers, riffs, or much by the way of props sans strobe lights. That Leo sun carried her to stardom and kept her elevated above us all, a pop genius eager to share in the fun, not just produce it. It was the result of constructing your career in a proper build up: finding the right tagline, proudly working alongside your talented friends and leaving behind those who don’t get it, and simply trucking away at it, the last aspect not unlike another pop girl of the hour, Chappell Roan. However, whereas Chappell’s career went from stagnant to meteoric, Charli’s has remained more or less a continuous, steady rise upwards, culminating in the cultural supernova where everyone wants in on XCX World, even if said world was just her alone on stage barely singing over her backing tracks. Clocking over 10 years in the business, with fans and celebs alike clamoring to see you do something similar to what Britney Spears does, which is press ‘play,’ but without any of the choreography, mind you: her spunky voice, that trademark arm-thrusting dance she does, and relentless strobes were more than enough. In her book, Grace Jones, talking about her famous accordion shots, makes note of how by playing with light and shadow one lends the mundane a sense of drama. Charli figured out how to do that onstage with various light fixtures, near the end tugging wistfully at a single, brilliant, glowing LED cable. In addition to edge and appeal, her show gave us one of pop’s most important ingredients: high-drama. She can call her shit ‘classic’ if she wants to.

In case you held your doubts on her credentials or longevity, Charli XCX shelved those for you by the finale. First, “party 4 U,” a How I’m Feeling cut that’s become a staple, and then “Vroom Vroom,” which might well be considered a classic to the right crowd. But if “Vroom Vroom” isn’t just yet, “I Love It” certainly is, and that’s what closed us out. It sounded just as fun as it did in this 6000-person expo hall as it did in the 500-person room I first heard live it in all those years ago, and today, Charli XCX can say it’s just one of the reasons she’s so many people’s Number 1.