Photo by Harley Weir

Every new Charli XCX album cycle comes with the disclaimer that it’s “the album she always wanted to make.” You’ve got to appreciate the audacity from a pop artist who has been one of the most consistently forward-thinking forces of the past decade, even when she’s played nice with label expectations when crashing basic norms. With “Von Dutch”, the first single from her new album, BRAT, we’re supposedly hearing her full ambitions unfiltered. In the XCX World, maybe mainstream dominance is still the end game, as it’s sounding like a happy medium between her experimental energy careened into straight lines while paying homage to those blips in the y2k timeline where moments in culture were lost in a hot mess of maximalist, plasticine, sensory-overloaded production. “I’m just living that life / Von Dutch, cult classic, but I still pop,” she proclaims in its chorus. Whether anyone is calling for a revival of pink trucker hats, $200 designer jeans with gaudy back pocket stitching, and glowing orange spray tans on bodies writhing in the club is debatable, you can’t say Charli has never been one to put her confidence foremost with her music.

Directed by: TORSO

Charli XCX’s “Von Dutch” single is available now on Atlantic Records.