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Interview with Charli XCX

November 25, 2013
Jon Berrien
Latest posts by Jon Berrien (see all)

 GroundSounds was recently on the grind at U Street Music Hall in Washington D.C., catching up with Charli XCX. After the release of her debut album, True Romance, in April, the pop sensation had finally begun her much anticipated North American tour.  She was busy getting prepared to hit the stage,  luckily she spared GroundSounds a few minutes for an exclusive interview, check it out below.   

You are on this North American tour how has it been?

The tour has been really good, yeah it has been really cool, some of the shows have been sold out. I’m on a tour bus for the first time, which has been really crazy, it makes me feel like Almost Famous, you know that movie.  I don’t know it is also just sort of weird it’s my first big headline tour. 

You were just in New York how was that? 

Yea I was at Irving Plaza a couple days ago which was really cool.  I was performing at the Out Awards, which were really cool. Blondie, she played after, I mean Debbie Harry as Blondie.  Meeting Debbie Harry that was pretty fun.  She is so iconic so that was cool sharing a stage with her.  She has so much style.

Can you tell us about the inspiration and creative process behind you track “Superlove”?

That track was actually written like maybe two years ago. That is when I first started working on it. I just had this vision in my head about shooting the video in Japan. As soon as I finished the song, I knew that I had to go to Tokyo to shoot the video.

 The whole kind of theme of the second album is…well a see my songs in color and I see the second record as being the color red. The record is very like feminine and it is about like sex and love and passion, and anger and this just kind of like raw energy.  So yea I wanted to shoot the video somewhere that embodied all of that.  I feel like Japan is the future it is just so like wild and raw.

Where does seeing you album in colors stem from? 

I don’t know I think I have always just like associated sounds or like songs with color. Like the first record, I saw as being the color purple, um I don’t know, I guess that’s just the way I see things. I don’t like songs that are the color green and yellow; those are like dubstep songs I hate that. 

In the video Superlove you shot it with a biker gang what was that like?

 We got in touch with them through someone we knew out there. It was very sketchy the whole thing, they were a real biker gang. They were the real deal ex-Yakuza style. The leader had a finger missing. We actually had to drive outside of Tokyo to shoot that parts, because it is illegal to ride in a bike gang in the city, so we went to this crazy bridge and were like waiting for them at night, and we were told that they might not show up because they are very temperamental, and we were like ‘shit that would suck’. But while we were waiting we just heard this like roar and there were 25 bikers who came down it was really cool. I got to ride on a motorbike and that was fun.

You remix a lot of songs when you remix them how do you choose what songs you would like to work with? And when you start to remix them what do you set out to accomplish?

Generally that songs that I have remixed have been my friends songs like Kitten, and Little Daylight and I do all of my remixes with Twin Idol, um who use to be in my band but he is like this awesome up and coming producer. I feel like everything I do whether it is writing my own music, remixing whatever, I also try and make everything like super emotional. I feel like with remixes especially what Twin Idol, we set out to do is like this epic-ness overload.

Can you tell us a little bit about your sophomore album? 

It is really inspired by French ye-ye pop and new wave bands like The Waitresses, Bow Wow Wow, Flying Lizard, people like that.  It’s very fast the whole process and nature of the music is like a rush. It is also very quick and simple and kind of punk. It’s also inspired by The Ramones and it’s very kind of shouty but clever.  The hooks are really dumb but in a really clever way. For example Bow Wow Wow’s, ‘I Want Candy’ is a very simple hook, but it is also amazing, that is kind of what I am going for.

I’m recording it really fast, like I don’t want to spend time on it I want to bang it out, it is much more live. I feel like everyone is expecting me to make like an electronic record but this isn’t an electronic record it is a very live record.

True Romance has a lot of different layers, like the production is very detailed. There are samples and like a thousand synth parts there are so many layers to True Romance, it is a very luscious record. Where as this record that I am working on right now is very like it’s not detailed its like very garage, I personally think that this next one is going to be better. But I don’t know it is just a very different way of working. 

Does this album have a title?

It does but I can’t say yet.

Is there a release date?

I want it to come out in March but that is just in my brain maybe March, April, May timeframe. 

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