Over the course of five studio albums, four mixtapes, three EPs, and a slew of features, Charli XCX has proved herself as one of the coolest, nimblest, and boldest stars in pop music. So it’s almost easy to forget that the British star has only been at this for a decade—she stormed onto the scene with her debut album, True Romance, exactly 10 years ago today, on April 12, 2013.
While the bombastic pop of True Romance paved the way for a bright career ahead—albeit one that’s seen its share of label disputes, media scrutiny, and creative confinement—Charli was already on track to be a star while she was still a teen growing up in Cambridge. At 16, she regularly played at warehouse parties in London and made waves with early singles on her MySpace page. It took some time to release her own work, but she officially broke into the pop landscape at 20 with a memorable feature and co-writing credit on Icona Pop’s beloved banger “I Love It.” Although Charli technically gave the song away to the Swedish duo since it didn’t fit her “look” at the time, the song’s sugary, roaring production and bellowing, no-fucks-given chorus would eventually become a key component of her own artistic ethos.
From her visceral blend of bubblegum and experimental pop to her deft lyrics about regret and heartbreak, Charli’s vision of making vibrant, fun party music that oscillates between chaotic and melancholic, often simultaneously, was in sharp focus from the very start. Across 13 tracks, True Romance skillfully siphoned Charli’s rave-kid energy through her very raw, honest, true experiences detailing her own romantic history, a theme she has continued to return to time and time again.
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Though it would be another year before Charli scored her first No. 1 hit—for another feature, this time on Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy”—True Romance contained a consistently confident slate of lucid, luscious pop songs that felt perfectly of their moment and ahead of the moment, establishing Charli as a true pop luminary.
Charli’s albums consistently start off strong, and her debut is no different: The hazy, evocative opener “Nuclear Seasons,” the massive, Gold Panda-sampling “You (Ha Ha Ha),” and the shimmering “Take My Hand” begin True Romance on a high note, each song thrusting us into her world of sonic decadence and adventure. She masterfully balanced the upbeat with the downbeat on the striking deep cut “Stay Away,” the Twilight-inspired “Set Me Free (Feel My Pain),” the dreamy “You’re the One,” and the Todd Rundgren-interpolating “So Far Away.” While the Brooke Candy-featuring, hip-hop-inflected “Cloud Aura” flirted with the boundaries of Charli’s interest in genre fluidity to somewhat uneven effect, songs like “Grins,” “What I Like,” and “Black Roses” cemented her commanding ability to transform the familiar into something cathartic and addictive.
True Romance laid down a robust, reliable template for the rest of her discography to follow and build upon. It captured the sheer ecstasy of being lovestruck, the crushing defeat of unrequited love, and the clear-eyed optimism of being able to lick your wounds once the storm has passed. In talking about “Nuclear Seasons,” Charli compared the song to “being in a field of lavender with purple clouds.” The same can be said about the majority of the record: feeling lost and aimless while surrounded by a rich, colorful tapestry of roses, jewels, and other pretty, delicate things.
The album’s glittery/grungy aesthetic, Tony Scott-referencing title, and pensive reflections on cultural decay were particularly attractive during the peak of the Tumblr era in 2013. The website frequently spotlighted Charli and other artists who embodied a cool, disaffected, hipster-chic edge: the kind you’d see plastered in the record aisle at Urban Outfitters. With her choker, ripped jeans, platform boots, billowing purple-streaked hair, and cat-eye eyeliner sharp enough to kill a man, Charli was practically Tumblr incarnate, representing an alternative cross between the angsty yet accessible Lorde and the light yet political MARINA (fka Marina and the Diamonds).
Since then, Charli has refined her image but continued to push the envelope. She sported a slicked-back ponytail and PVC catsuit look during the Vroom Vroom period, a pink-tinged bob for the avant-garde Pop 2 and the more commercial Charli, and a devilish, femme fatale appearance while promoting the Cronenberg-inspired CRASH. Yet as Charli’s pop star identity became more polished and textured with each successive era, that rebellious, exploratory spirit she expressed on True Romance remained intact. In fact, much of the DNA of her later work can be traced back to this record. Sucker’s “Boom Clap” and “Doing It” echoed True Romance’s homage to ’80s New Wave. Ballads like Charli’s “White Mercedes” and how i’m feeling now’s “forever” ache with the same loneliness as the one displayed in “Stay Away.” Charli herself said that CRASH was “for the True Romance angels,” which does in some respects feel like a sexier, slinkier spiritual twin to her debut.
Additionally, True Romance deserves credit for forecasting Charli’s keen instinct for creative collaboration. On both her debut and its follow-up, 2014’s underrated rock-inflected Sucker, Charli worked with Ariel Rechtshaid, the prolific L.A.-born producer behind The Plain White T’s “Hey There Delilah,” Usher’s “Climax,” and other significant 2013 pop debuts, like Sky Ferreira’s Night Time, My Time and HAIM’s Days are Gone. Then, as she folded into the PC Music collective with hyperpop producers A.G. Cook and SOPHIE, Charli leaned deeper into her electronic roots with the Vroom Vroom EP, the Number 1 Angel and Pop 2 mixtapes, and exceptional one-off singles like “Boys” and “No Angel.” When the pandemic hit, Charli crafted the DIY dystopia antidote how i’m feeling right now in the span of six weeks with the help of her own fans, asking them via Zoom to help her choose song titles and single cover art. Virtually every collaborative endeavor Charli has made since True Romance has only continued to serve her well, expanding and challenging how pop music can sound through making meaningful, ambitious, joyful art with other talented people.
That said, despite garnering critical adoration and an intensely devoted, predominantly queer fanbase since True Romance, it’s frustrating that Charli’s more punk sensibilities haven’t quite registered with the broader public and have often been stifled by commercial interests. Even early on in her career, Charli wasn’t taken seriously, having infamously been mistaken in an interview for Lorde and memorably struggling to get an unenthusiastic German crowd pumped for her performance of “I Love It.” The hits she’s written for other artists—including Icona Pop, Iggy Azalea, Selena Gomez, and Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello—have somehow had more chart longevity and radio ubiquity than her own work. As she began to accumulate more clout, an online leak of what would’ve been her third studio album, XCX World, led her to scrap it altogether. Polarized reception of the unfairly maligned Vroom Vroom EP and her televised performances of potential XCX World songs “Bounce” and “After the Afterparty” also seemed to cast a dark shadow over the now-mythologized record.
But through all the professional and emotional obstacles that comes with trying to attain fame and cultural relevance, Charli has vocalized her frustrations—toward her fans, her former label Atlantic Records, and the music industry at large—usually with a sly sense of humor (with the exception of the occasional vent). She’s altered cheeky lyrics knocking Atlantic, trolled or feigned annoyance at people’s requests to play her XCX World track “Taxi,” and posted tongue-in-cheek tweets about getting snubbed for a Grammy nomination. Regarding the mistaken identity incident, she simply went along with it, pretending to talk about how she came up with “Royals” and later joking that she wanted to dress up as Lorde for Halloween. And her hilariously pissed-off chant during the “I Love It” concert—“I thought this fucking song was big in Germany!”—became immortalized as an internet meme in 2018.
As a performer and artist, Charli XCX stands out not only for embracing the absurdity of these moments, but also for openly sharing her flaws and doubts about her uncertain status in the pop landscape via her music, interviews, and social media. Walking that very thin line between self-deprecation and raw honesty is precisely what animated her debut: an unconventional, trend-defying soundscape through which Charli could communicate her longings and difficulty navigating her place in the world. Now, a decade later, Charli’s work is a little bit wiser and even more subversive, but remains just as exciting and versatile as True Romance.
