Charli XCX has said that her relationship with her record label, Atlantic, has been “turbulent” but is in a “good place” now.
Speaking in a new interview with Vanity Fair, she evaluated her relationship with the label she originally signed with when she was 16 years old.
“It used to be quite a turbulent relationship, and now it’s just really not,” she explained, attributing it to the fact that “they used to really not like that I was kind of a bitch, and now I guess they know it can sell.”
She went on to say that she’s happy they don’t ask her to “collaborate creatively.” “I’m not open to feedback,” she said. “Like, that’s not what your job is. We can all pretend that it is, but it’s not.”
Charli also added: “I don’t go to the meeting,” explaining: “I don’t wanna make it sound like the label are idiots. They’re definitely not. But I think it’s like, everybody has their strengths, right?”
“They’re a bank,” she told the publication. “They want to just do that. They want to support the vision.
“We’re in a good place, and I wouldn’t swap it for anything,” she said, adding: “The devil you know.”
Charli has previously voiced her frustrations with her label, saying in 2021 that she “stormed out” of a meeting with them after they tried to make her more “real” and asked her to post photos with her dogs in an attempt to relate to fans.
The pop artist said in 2020 that her latest record, 2022’s ‘Crash’, would be her “5th and final album under my current record deal” with the label, and, at the time, she told NME that she was unsure of what to do next, given the positive sides of being signed to a major label.
“I like not having to foot the bill for everything at the beginning, that’s quite scary,” she told us. “Especially when you want to do things on the kind of scale that I did on the last record. I’m still exploring, definitely.”
The album track ‘Used To Know Me’ has also been interpreted as a goodbye to the label, with her flashing underwear with their logo in the music video, and singing: “You used to know me, now you don’t/ You used to hypnotize me, did it so easy/ I’m finally free from your control/ I don’t need a kiss goodbye, I’m on my own tonight,” on the song’s chorus.
The first of those came last year, in the form of ‘Brat’. It was followed by an accompanying remix record and became famous for the runaway cultural phenomenon that came with it, with the ubiquitous lime green cover filling social media as well as major international arenas and festivals. She recently said it’s “up to the world” when the ‘Brat’ era truly ends.
In May, she hinted that she was expecting her next album to go in a completely different direction, saying: “You can never really do the same thing twice and my next record will probably be a flop which I’m down for to be honest.”
And in February, her producers A.G. Cook, Finn Keane and George Daniel – also her husband – said that the follow-up is shaping up to be “anti-Brat”, Keane saying: “Some of the conversations we’re having and music we’ve been playing around with the last couple of months have been completely the opposite.”
NME gave ‘Brat’ a four-star review at the time of its release, saying: “Driven by her desire to fully embrace club music, the British artist’s sixth record fuses well-earned confidence and vulnerability in thrilling fashion.”
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