charli xcx

[11] Charli XCX, ‘Boom Clap’

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Junior thinks this is Katy Perry, but all three of them know all the words.

And that’s Charli XCX in a nutshell. Thank you.

(Other than that, simple but hugely effective pop song – with an onomatopoeic but also self-fulfilling title/chorus that Junior appreciates (“It’s like, ‘BOOM! CLAP!'”) – sulked out by someone who doesn’t appear to play the game, hence relative lack of recognition, but who might end up at its top. Kind of startling that a blogstar’s breaking through. Come back in 2015 for a trio of No.1 singles from Jai Paul.)

[19] Iggy Azalea feat. Charli XCX, ‘Fancy’

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I’ve got a bit of a love/hate relationship with this one. Clearly it’s as irritating as a mohair codpiece but, more beneficially, it slams you up against the wall with the full force of its stark bullishness. Iggy crunks, jerks, drawls and brags while Charli XCX comes up with another undeniable nursery rhyme chorus, and we all go home a little shaken.

The girls over here are trying to place who it is. “Katy Perry,” says the four-year-old. “Is the rap will.i.am?” asks Junior. I’ve no idea what’s going on there. “Oh, she says Iggy in that other song,” she adds. Anyway, they all agree it’s “good” and perfectly fine for a dad to have it on his iPod. I mean, I wasn’t worried about that but you know how snobbish these kids get.

[19] Charli XCX, ‘I’ll Never Know’

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We did the ‘Saturday Night’ dance to this cute pelting kitten of a dance-pop frippery. Well, if we’re getting picky I think we did the Macarena, but you know, details. Either way, 18 years on – EIGHTEEN YEARS ON – plundering Whigfield is fair game, or even long overdue. And this is a promotional song for Red Bull so it’s not exactly bearing any standards for purity of art.

In fact, Charli – one of the planet’s leading blogstars – doesn’t even sound as if she’s particularly arsed, coming on like the sulky teenager I’m looking forward to Junior being in (oh God) six years. Blogstar, blogstar. It’s a different stratum of pop, isn’t it? Amazing popstars, loved by daytripping indie boys, barely getting within a whiff of Reggie’s Top 40 cologne. Maybe Charli, Robyn and Solange are just rubbish popstars after all.

Junior’s now moved onto the funky worm and declares ‘I’ll Never Know’ “fabulosa”. It’s everyone else who doesn’t know.