Charli xcx

Early life and MySpace beginnings

Charlotte Emma Aitchison was born on 2 August 1992 in Cambridge, England, the only child of Shameera Aitchison, a nurse and flight attendant born to an Indian family in Uganda, and Jon Aitchison, a Scottish entrepreneur. She grew up in Essex and was still at school when she began recording. At 14 she persuaded her parents to lend her the money to make an early album, 14, which was never commercially released.

In 2008 she posted songs from those recordings to MySpace, which won her invitations to perform at London warehouse raves and parties that her parents supported. Around this time she adopted the stage name Charli xcx, drawn from an online handle of her youth. In 2010 Asylum Records, an Atlantic subsidiary, signed her, and she began work on her debut, travelling to Los Angeles to meet producers including Ariel Rechtshaid.

True Romance and the first breakthrough

Charli xcx released her major-label debut, True Romance, in 2013 to favourable reviews, with Stay Away as its lead single. Before the album even arrived she had already crossed into the mainstream as the writer and featured voice on I Love It, which she handed to Swedish duo Icona Pop; the track climbed to No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 2013.

In 2014 she co-wrote and featured on Iggy Azalea's Fancy, which spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned her first two Grammy nominations, for record of the year and best pop duo/group performance. Her solo single Boom Clap, supplied to The Fault in Our Stars soundtrack, reached the Hot 100's top 10, and Sucker, her second album, peaked at No. 15 on the UK albums chart.

The experimental turn

Restless after Sucker, Charli xcx began working with the Scottish producer SOPHIE in 2015. The Vroom Vroom single and the 2016 EP of the same name announced a harder, more experimental electronic edge, and she set up her own imprint, Vroom Vroom Recordings, that year. In 2017 she issued the mixtapes Number 1 Angel and Pop 2, releases that later became touchstones for the hyperpop scene she is closely associated with.

Her third album, Charli (2019), gathered collaborations with Troye Sivan, Lizzo and Christine and the Queens, while How I'm Feeling Now (2020) was written and recorded in six weeks during the COVID-19 lockdown with A.G. Cook. Crash (2022), a satirical album about playing the major-label game, became her first chart-topper on the UK Albums Chart and debuted at No. 7 on the Billboard 200. In 2023 she contributed Speed Drive to the Barbie soundtrack.

Brat and the 2024 breakout

Brat arrived on 7 June 2024 through Atlantic Records as Charli xcx's sixth studio album, produced with A.G. Cook, Finn Keane and George Daniel among its architects. Singles such as Von Dutch, 360 and Apple framed its abrasive, club-focused attack, and the record debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 before later topping the UK albums chart, where it became one of the year's defining releases.

The album's lime-green aesthetic metastasised into the brat summer meme cycle, complete with a dance routine for Apple and Charli xcx's post declaring Kamala Harris brat during the 2024 US presidential campaign, an association the Harris campaign folded into its own branding. A companion remix album, Brat and It's Completely Different but Also Still Brat, followed with appearances by Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, Lorde and others, and she co-headlined the Sweat tour with Troye Sivan.

Charli xcx has described the album's writing as confrontational and brutalist, with lyrics drawn from the kind of life texts she would send to friends, and she has said she sees the record as quite brutalist in spirit. Brat was shortlisted for the 2024 Mercury Prize, a second album-of-the-year nod after How I'm Feeling Now, and critics praised the record for balancing club bangers with anxious, emotionally raw writing about fame.

Grammys, BRITs and Glastonbury

For the 2025 Grammy Awards, Brat and its songs collected eight nominations, including album of the year and record of the year for 360, and Charli xcx took home three trophies: best dance/electronic album, best dance pop recording for Von Dutch and best recording package. It was her first batch of Grammy wins, a decade after the Fancy nominations that opened her awards account.

At the 2025 BRIT Awards in London she won five prizes in one night — album of the year, artist of the year, song of the year for Guess featuring Billie Eilish, dance act, and songwriter of the year, announced earlier that week — the second-highest single-night total in the show's history. The Ivors Academy named her songwriter of the year in May 2025, and she headlined at Glastonbury that summer.

Wuthering Heights and recent work

After the Brat campaign, the director Emerald Fennell approached Charli xcx in late 2024 about contributing to her Wuthering Heights film. A request for one song expanded into Wuthering Heights, a 12-track soundtrack album released by Atlantic on 13 February 2026, the same day as the film. Made chiefly with Finn Keane, it opens with House, a collaboration with John Cale, and includes the singles Chains of Love and Wall of Sound.

Charli xcx also released Music, Fashion, Film in 2026, a guitar-led studio album whose single Rock Music prompted talk of a rock pivot she pushed back on, insisting she still makes electronic music. Her screen work has expanded to include film roles and the 2026 mockumentary The Moment. In September 2026 she announced a six-date UK and Europe arena tour for February 2027 with Audrey Hobert, saying that intensive touring is emotionally and physically hard for her.