By Kiera Jones
Kiera: Hi, I’m with Charli XCX. Say hi!
Charli XCX: Hello
K: You’ve just done a fantastic set at Summer ball. How was it? Was the crowd good?
C: OMG, the crowd was mental, it was so fun and I was really happy that Raye was playing as well, cos we just danced the set together. I had the best time.
K: Your’e good friends with Raye, she’s collaborated on your mixtape ‘No.1 Angel’, how did that come about? How did the friendship come about?
C: Umm… we met… gosh a long time ago now… a couple of years ago. I’ve trying to event think when. I think we were writing together in LA. She came out there and we did some writing sessions together, and we just go ton really well and we went back to her studio in the UK and we wrote my song ‘After the Afterparty’ and then just kept working together. And I directed a video for her as well, so we’ve done a lot of stuff together and I love her. I think she’s so talented. I absolutely love her song ‘the Line’. I think its amazing, she’s awesome… really cool.
K: You’ve got a lot of other collaborators on the album, who did some of those come about? Cupcakke for example is a massive one. I’m a massive fan of Cupcakke.
C: Cupcakke is amazing. That was actually a fan of mine hit me up on Twitter, and they knew I was making a mixtape, and they we re like ‘you have to get Cupcakke on’ and I didn’t know who Cupcakke was at that point in time and I checked her out and I was like OMG, how have I missed this. She’s amazing and I just hit her up, thinking she would never hit me back, but she did! She emailed me and I was like OMG lets do it and I was in the recording studio in Atlanta and I wrote the chorus for ‘Lipgloss’ and I sent it to her straight away and she sent me back this amazing verse the next day. I’m in love with her. She’s so cool and she’s so nice. She just a badass.
K: She is, she’s awesome. There’s loads of other collaborators like MØ. I’m quite surprised you’ve got some many collaborators as you apparently made the album, the mixtape in two weeks. Was it quite spontaneous or did you write some of them before hand?
C: You know, there were some songs that were pre-existing ideas that were floating around, half-done and there were some we wrote in that two weeks, but it felt like most of it came together in that two weeks. All the people that are on the mixtape are people who i’ve wanted to work with for a while, we’ve always spoken about working together, like MØ and I have know each other for a while and we’ve never really done anything together, but always wanted to. She’s one of the coolest people ever and she was like ‘yeah sure, lets do it’ – so easy going. I like working with my friends, you know because it’s like in any thing, walk of life, it’s always better to do things with people you love and are inspired by rather than people who you’re not really into. Its al about big a big friend-gang for me.
K: You’ve got an album on the works which you’ve mentioned before is pretty close to done, but you’re not releasing it until 2018. Do you want to get more collaborators on there or something?
C: No, its more just about… I guess, I just want to release a lot more videos, do some singles. I’v got some other collaborations coming out, but not on my own – with other artists. I’ve got a lot of stuff I want to release before i release a full record.
K: You mentioned in an interview with Fader something about a TV show that you wanted to produce or direct. Has that gone anywhere?
C: Yes, but i can’t really talk about it.
K: Ok, fair… secrets! Have you had a chance to look around Swansea?
C: Yeah, we actually went to the harbour today. Very beautiful. I had a hot dog. Good day, to be honest.
K: If you ever get a chance to come back you should check out the beach, it’s lovely. Thank you for speaking to us.
