Charli xcx

The "I Love It" hook was everywhere in 2012 and nobody knew who wrote it. Charli xcx had been doing that, writing smash singles for other people while her own solo career barely existed, since signing to Asylum Records at 18. Then "Boom Clap" landed on The Fault in Our Stars soundtrack in 2014 and gave her a top-10 hit of her own. By that point she had Grammy nominations for co-writing Iggy Azalea's "Fancy" and a reputation as one of pop's most reliable backstage operators. The solo thing just took longer to stick.

BRAT won three Grammys, the Kamala Harris presidential campaign turned her endorsement tweet into a campaign aesthetic, and "brat summer" became the dominant cultural shorthand of 2024. That kind of saturation usually turns an artist cautious. She went the other direction. A soundtrack for Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights debuted at number one in the UK in February 2026, and her production company had already premiered The Moment at Sundance in January. She's figured out how to keep the machine moving without becoming its mascot.

Her MSN Messenger handle became her stage name. The XCX doesn't stand for anything, she has said. Before the pop deal, she was studying fine art at UCL's Slade School of Fine Art. Before that, she was performing at what she's described as illegal raves in East London at 16, having grown up in Cambridge. Her father is Scottish, her mother Gujarati Indian from Uganda. Her songwriting portfolio includes Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello's "Seniorita," which is either a fun fact or a warning about how wide her taste actually runs.