Charli XCX’s latest album, Crash from earlier this year, saw the artist breaking new ground: It was her first top-10 album in the US and her first No. 1 in the UK. Charli has said this pop breakthrough has come thanks to a concentrated effort to enter that realm, and now she has expanded on that in a new interview.
Speaking with NME, Charli said:
“To be famous – a stratospheric level of famous – you have to f*cking want that sh*t to happen to you, and you have to do the deal with the devil. You have to f*cking go there and run people over. I’m not saying it’s a negative thing, it’s not, but I think with Crash I definitely wanted to play that game. But I think because of who I am, and the artist that I am and the reference points that I have and the world that I come from, it’s like… there’s just this part of my brain that doesn’t want to function like that.”
She added, “I don’t think I was ever like, ‘I’m going to sell out the mainstream, but I’m going to do it my way,’ I was like, ‘I want to sell out and be mainstream.’”
Check out the full interview here.