Charli xcx

After 2015, her sound took a radical leap when she joined the British collective PC Music and worked with producers like SOPHIE. The EPs Vroom Vroom (2016) and the mixtapes Number 1 Angel and Pop 2 (2017) are documents of that era: songs that sound like a dystopian future, with robotic vocals and beats that unravel at the most unexpected moment. Her third album, Charli (2019), marked another shift: more accessible but without losing her essence, with tracks like "1999" (featuring Troye Sivan) that sounded like futuristic nostalgia. During the pandemic in 2020, she recorded How I'm Feeling Now in real time, from her home, as if the album were an intimate diary made public. But it was in 2022 when her music delivered the definitive blow: Crash wasn’t just her first number-one album in the UK and Australia, it also sounded like a club anthem with 80s pop touches, as if she had found the formula to make the experimental and the mainstream coexist.

The year 2024 was pivotal: Brat not only repeated the success of Crash by topping the UK charts, it also became a cultural phenomenon. The album, with its neon pink aesthetic and lyrics about excess and authenticity, spawned the so-called Brat Summer, a moment when her fans adopted the style as their identity. Tracks like "Apple" and the remix of "Guess" with Billie Eilish played everywhere, and at the 2025 Grammys, she took home three awards, including Best Dance/Electronic Album. But the most interesting part wasn’t the accolades—it was how Brat proved that Charli XCX can reinvent herself without losing her DNA: her songs are still danceable, but now they’re also statements of principle. And if in 2026 she releases Wuthering Heights, no one doubts it will come with an unexpected twist.