Step one in a hit music career: Make songs that sound nice on the radio, as Charli XCX has done with Icona Pop’s “I Love It,” Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” and her own “Boom Clap” from this year’s “The Fault In Our Stars” soundtrack. Step two: Follow up with a fizzy album about breakups, getting rich and “living the dream like a London queen.” Step three: Pack the opening title track, “SUCKER,” with profanity worthy of the Geto Boys.
Charli XCX’s record label was with her until that third step. “That was like a whole row with the record company, about that particular song,” says the singer and songwriter born Charlotte Aitchison, in a phone interview from Los Angeles. “They sent out the wrong version to be reviewed. I was so mad. They sent out this ‘half-clean’ version. I corrected that. Obviously it’s quite aggressive, but for me it was very important.”
(After the interview, a publicist for Charli’s U.S. label, Atlantic Records, clarifies to say the label she was referring to was actually her British record company, Asylum U.K.)
“Why wouldn’t you open your album with screaming ‘f— you!’ 20 times?” adds Aitchison, 22. “That definitely had to be the first song on the album.”
In a lengthy interview with Time magazine this week, Charli XCX declared the bulk of today’s hits “plastic, overproduced, bad-lyric throwaway” and predicted, “I can see pop music changing into something I can really run.” This may be more than hubris. She tossed off “I Love It” while hanging with her boyfriend in a hotel room, and in Icona Pop’s hands it became a classic, “These Boots Are Made for Walking”-style kiss-off.
“When ‘I Love It’ came out, even though that song sounds very normal on the radio, a lot of people were freaking out; they wouldn’t play it because it was so hard, that club track,” she says. “This whole kind of shouty thing became a trend, and for the most part I was the person who began that. That was kind of a fresh thing.”
Aitchison grew up in Bishop’s Stortford, near London. Her parents gave her money to begin making her first album, “14,” when she was 14 years old, according to Time. Although she never sold the album commercially, she made tracks available on MySpace and landed performances at local raves. At first, her parents dropped her off at the events, but when they realized what kind of mayhem was going on, they stuck around. While the atmosphere may have reflected the lyrics of Charli’s new “Break the Rules” — “I don’t want to go to school/ I just want to break the rules” — the singer generally behaved.
“My dad loved it; I think he was reliving his childhood. And I think my mum was really proud,” Aitchison recalls. “There were definitely weird moments that parents and children probably shouldn’t have. … I was very young. Wanting attention, I’d sometimes take my clothes off — ‘I just remembered my parents are here, I didn’t really think of that.’
“We’re a normal, functional family,” she adds, “I think.”
After high school, Aitchison attended the Slade School of Fine Art but dropped out to concentrate on music. She put out the “Emeline/Art Bitch” and “iFrancehsckaar!” singles in 2008, and after selling merchandise at shows and giving away mixtapes, signed with Asylum. Her first album, last year’s “True Romance,” drifts into amorphous electronic sounds, like something by dance-focused singer Ellie Goulding. “SUCKER” is more focused and powerful, combining pop songcraft and new-wave spirit.
As “I Love It” sold 2 million copies, Aitchison relocated to producer Patrik Berger’s hometown, Stockholm, and began working on the record. They took a while to get started; rather than trying to make pop songs, they stayed up all night writing fast-and-loud punk songs. So “SUCKER” has the whooshing, motorcycle-gang quality that runs through “I Love It” — in the video for “Breaking Up,” Charli fronts a band at a bowling alley, perfectly reflecting the spirit of the song. (“I actually love bowling,” she says. “The last time I played, I came third — there were four people playing.”)
“We wrote some songs, but originally I started doing covers of (Berger’s) old band Snuffed by the Yakuza. We just wanted to make badass music. We weren’t worried about anything,” Aitchison says. “Making some punk songs with Patrik put me back in my zone of not really caring about crafting a song.”
With her rare ability to sound simultaneously like rocker Joan Jett and pop star Ariana Grande, Charli XCX may well represent the future of pop music. She’s prepared for pop fame and fortune — for the most part.
“Right now, (life) is not very different for me. I don’t really go out,” she says. “I don’t really know anyone and I get really bad social anxiety sometimes. Will it get harder? It depends, I guess. I don’t see myself as famous or a celebrity. I see myself as a musician. I’m a person who makes dumb mistakes.”
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When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday
Where: Jingle Ball, Allstate Arena, 6920 N. Mannheim Road, Rosemont
Tickets: $35-$100; 847-635-6601 or ticketmaster.com
