Charli XCX is the Andy Warhol of pop

Hello blog and today I've come to discuss the gay popper icon herself, Charli XCX. I was listening to some vulture podcast on Charli XCX a while ago and came across a particular point that was being made on the similarities between what Andy Warhol was doing with his troupe of weirdos in the 60s and Charli XCX's troupe of gay hyperpop freaks and their transcendence on what defines pop music and subculture as a whole. So I decided to write this dumb piece on how I interpret it.

Andy Warhol's impact on the art world

Okay so just some quick background for those not familiar, Andy Warhol's studio "The Factory" is just as elusive and illustrious as it sounds. Regulars of The Factory included, David Bowie, Basquiat, The Velvet Underground & Nico, Betsey Johnson, William Burroughs, Halston, Keith Haring and Mick Jagger, and blah blah blah. Anyone fucking cunt and creating new and exciting things was at The Factory. What Warhol did was shed light on corruptions that ensue with consumerism, and his art served as a reflection of society, and social commentary. #wokeking? The Factory was a space of performance art, psychosexual drama, music, art, and as Fran Lebowitz best puts it, "A medieval court of lunatics."

Now that you know what went down with his crowd, how does that relate to Miss XCX? The london based music label PC Music run by producer AG Cook is the modern day factory of the pop scene. Charli XCX is bringing an experimental “hyperpop” spin on traditional pop music into the mainstream, and her band of thieves are helping to carving the path. Similar, but even more exponentially so than Warhol, the hyperpop space is queer dominated and is a space where not only pop music is cultivated but political, queer, and experimental performance art thrives. What Charli XCX and the PC Music collaborators do is make overexaggerated surrealist deviations on pop music, one of the most notorious and quintessential tracks being Track 10 on Charli XCX's fourth mixtape, Pop 2. Track 10 is a pop song turned on it's head, produced by the legend SOPHIE herself. The Fader eulogized her with these perfect words "a pioneering Scottish artist whose vibrant electronic productions expanded modern pop music's scope." Other Charli XCX collaborators include Dorian Electra, a performance artist that melds political commentary into their hyperpop. Caroline Polachek and Rina Sawayama are similar pop artists that are finding their audience and breaking into the mainstream with their subgenres of pop. Charli XCX and her collaborators molded the zeitgeist of music to make room for their internet subculture, while simultaniously critiquing the relentless nature of media consumption. They break down pop tropes and reconstruct them to show their perceived tackiness is intentional irony. To quote the tmrw article on how PC Music infulences the pop landscape, "signifying a new creative space where artists could playfully mesh together a singular vision that exists outside of traditional radio play guidelines. It imbued pop music with artistic perspective."

What Charli and friends are doing right now in pop music is incredibly reminiscent of what Andy was doing back then in the art and music world.

"“I feel really good right now. I feel like I’m in a very creative space. I feel like pop music has changed in a way that’s really good for me. Everything is less structured. People are so much more experimental with the way they want to release music.” - Charli XCX

xoxox - its charli baby