Charli XCX explains how making her 'extremely pop' album Crash was a 'really personal journey'

Pop visionary Charli XCX has always avoided playing by music-industry rules — which makes her surrendering to record label feedback feel a bit like Neo willfully guzzling down a handful of blue pills in The Matrix. But that's kind of the intent with her new album.

"I wanted to lean in as much as possible to the nature of a stereotypical major label recording artist," the recent Saturday Night Live musical guest says of Crash, her first release since her 2020 DIY pandemic project How I'm Feeling Now. In layman's terms: "I wanted to work with multiple collaborators across all the songs. I wanted to write in L.A. I wanted to feel that full pop-writing camp kind of feeling of creating a record." For a long time she's been closer to the experimental producers she'd worked with, like SOPHIE or 100 gecs, than the popstars she'd written for, like Selena Gomez or Camila Cabello.

To achieve that goal of doing "a couple of songs in a very classically stereotypical major label artist type of way," like singles "Good Ones" and "Beg For You," Charli felt it was important to work closely with the A&R team at Atlantic Records, specifically Brandon Davis. "I A&Red all of my own records and don't really collaborate with people from the record label like that. But with this album, I did," she says, describing the process she has so far used to determine what songs go on her projects.

"This is my final album on my five album record deal," adds Charli. "In many ways, although I'm talking a lot about my inner demons within my relationships and my personal life, I think you can also apply some of the same things to my relationship with my record label and my journey through music. And I wanted to explore that in a multitude of different ways outside of just lyric content. I wanted to explore that through the way I created this record as well."

With the music itself, "even though this album is extremely pop, it's extremely dark in many ways as well. It's me talking about a lot of my inner demons within relationships and the way that I behave within relationships," says the singer-songwriter. "It's also me embracing my sort of femme fatale and my sex, I suppose. And I think that felt like a really personal journey."

Rather than poring over every lyric, or taking her usual hands-on approach to production, Charli's creative vision became a purposeful expedition through every aspect of the modern pop song machine with a focus on highlighting what she has to offer as a performer.

"I wanted to have that classically pop minefield of people on this record and show that actually my voice and my vision and personality can tie it together," she explains.

In other words, she wanted the good girl-gone-bad experience. "It doesn't really matter who wrote the songs, because all you care about is what's coming out of Rihanna's mouth and that you believe her. That's kind of my take on pop music: I don't care if you wrote it. I don't care who produced it. If you sell it to me and I believe you, that's all I care about."

Crash will begin streaming on all platforms on Friday, March 18.

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