The 20 greatest Charli XCX songs, ranked

When I first ranked the best Charli XCX songs nearly three years ago, I introduced the list by quoting an article from Billboard stirring up discourse at the time. The article, titled “Pop Stars Aren’t Popping Like They Used To,” reported on the pessimistic outlook among industry executives for their inability to break new music, particularly new pop artists, to audiences.

The irony, of course, is the last three years have been chock-full of clever, fresh, and magnetic new stars. Since 2023, we’ve seen the stratospheric rise of Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan, breakout success from RAYE, PinkPantheress, and Addison Rae, and zeitgeist-capturing hits from established artists like Tinashe, Zara Larsson, and Ravyn Lenae. Yes, the charts still have plenty of radio fodder from the likes of Sombr, Alex Warren, or D-Tier Taylor Swift songs, but you could also argue mainstream pop has never been this interesting.

No artist dictated this shift more than Charli XCX. After this list was published, Charli put out an album you may have encountered, a nauseating-green force of nature that moved, no, forced the culture her way. Thanks to Charli’s influence, pop stars are now free to go their own way and make it, to paraphrase “360.” The Khia Asylum has been emptied. Out-of-the-box, riskier artists—previously relegated to “flop-star” status—have been celebrated, while traditionalists glued to the industry playbook have lost their allure.

As Charli closes the book on BRAT and pronounces the dance floor officially “dead,” it’s the time to take a retrospective on her best work. Don your black sunglasses, hop into your lavender Lambourghini, and read which Charli’s tracks should be cemented as true club classics.

20. “Roll With Me” (Number 1 Angel, 2017)

Number 1 Angel, one of two mixtapes Charli released in 2017, is often overlooked next to the brilliance of its twin, Pop 2. Still, the project has a spontaneous and carefree charm to it, made as Charli and producer A.G. Cook first developed their musical chemistry. Highlight “Roll With Me” is Charli at her most playful. Over SOPHIE’s needly, bubblegum synths, she takes a deliciously straightforward hook (“Do you wanna roll with me?”) and lays it on thick. “Roll With Me” is cheeky and ecstatic, with Charli operating in full party-girl mode. Do you want to roll with her? With a song like this, the answer is obviously yes.

19. “Next Level Charli” (Charli, 2019)

You can’t talk about Charli XCX without mentioning her Angels. Charli’s fans love her fiercely, although that fierceness can be volatile. On the one hand, Charli’s relationship with her fans is a source of inspiration and partnership. She included her followers in the creative process for 2020’s how i’m feeling now, and she still cites the importance of her queer fanbase as she pivoted into PC Music’s more ambitious musical terrain. At the same time, Charli fans have often felt entitled to ownership in her artistry. They’ve lashed out at her for changing a song title, an album rollout strategy or her decision to keep an unreleased track with SOPHIE in the vault.

But if there’s any doubt as to the mutual love between Charli and her angels, “Next Level Charli” resolves it. She hypes up her audience, belting over a classic repetitive A.G. Cook synth line like she’s sprinting on a hamster wheel. Its lyrics allude to other songs in her catalog (including the unreleased ones), little Easter eggs for the true XCXperts to identify: “Bounce, never sleep,” “burn rubber,” “no crash,” and the “it’s Charli baby” tag. Even as Charli’s fanbase has scaled up to arenas after BRAT, “Next Level Charli” still feels like a love-letter to the forever angels.

18. “Nuclear Seasons” (True Romance, 2013)

“Nuclear Seasons,” the highlight from Charli’s scrappy debut True Romance, has all the teen angst and moody aesthetic of a Twilight movie (I mean, check out this single artwork). But it’s still, well, Charli. Her ear for hooks and adventurous production dates back to the very beginning of her career. The crunchy bass synths and volume-boosted handclaps smother the song in texture, like little bombs going off in the chorus. “Nuclear Seasons” is gloriously melodramatic (“Good times/dark nights” she sings in the final chorus, and you can practically see a GIF of Edward Cullen brooding). Is that so wrong?

17. “Xcxoplex” (Apple vs. 7G, 2021)

An underrated deep cut, “Xcxoplex” is Charli’s remix of A.G. Cook’s “XXoplex,” from 2020’s Apple. The original track—a burst of buzzsaws and baby-pitch vocals—is mostly forgettable. But, as per usual, they capture magic together. Even with its noisy synths, “Xcxoplex” is stark and minimal: Charli sings about searching for a euphoria over a brittle bass line. The result is unexpectedly tender, the duo’s maximalism condensed down to its simplest, most essential parts. They don’t need much to capture that feeling.

16. “Talk talk” (BRAT, 2024)

One of Charli’s greatest strengths as a songwriter—and a technique that’s fully realized on BRAT—is her ability to say a lot with only a few words. Minimal, repeated choruses appear across her discography (“I got it,” “I just wanna go real hard,” “All alone,” “Fall in love again and again”). On “Talk talk,” she bundles up the euphoria, uncertainty, and vulnerability of a new crush in one line: “Wish you’d just talk to me! Talk to me! Talk to me!” Charli zeroes in on that feeling over shimmery synths, the very sound of stomach butterflies. She can try and play it cool, but Brats are yearners too.

15. “Constant Repeat” (CRASH, 2022)

Remember CRASH? Looking back on Charli’s so-called “sell-out” era is delectably ironic, given the memes that followed. In hindsight, CRASH seems like a necessary exorcism for Charli, something she needed to get out before she could make BRAT. But the album also flexed her ability to imbue any song with her unparalleled persona. It doesn’t matter whether she’s blowing out the club speakers with Cook, penning mean-girl anthems, or taking on basic pop songs. Charli makes them her own. “Constant Repeat” proves that when Charli sells out, she still does it on her terms. It’s dark and misty, synths flashing like strobe lights in smoke. And she gifts its hook with her unfailing confidence. “Got me on repeat-peat,” she coos in the outro, a final message to anyone that doubts her. She’ll sell out if she wants to, and you’ll still be playing it on repeat.

14. “I Got It” feat. Brooke Candy, CupcakKe, & Pablo Vittar (Pop 2, 2017)

On “I Got It,” Charli, Brooke Candy, CupcakKe, and Pablo Vittar came together to make a track that is defiantly, flamboyantly gay. “Brooke Candy, fag mob / Charli XCX,” Candy slurs in the song’s first five seconds, a bold announcement if there ever was one. The song is raunchy and strange. Its production morphs as each artist takes their turn behind the mic: metallic and minimal for Candy, ballsy and noisy for CupcakKe, a pivot to happy hardcore for Vittar. Charli herself barely says more than three words. But the song’s disparate parts unite under the banner of its title. Charli turns the phrase “I got it” into a mantra of self-worth, repeating it like she’s hyping herself up in the mirror at the club. Hypersexual rappers, a drag queen and a pop star come together on “I Got It” to insist that they truly have it, a declaration of worth in a world that might’ve never given them their due otherwise.

13. “forever” (how i’m feeling now, 2020)

Written and recorded during six weeks of lockdown in 2020, how i’m feeling now is an album about claustrophobia: love for a romantic partner collides with a need to escape, love for friends is tempered down by loneliness. Every good feeling on how I’m feeling now sure doesn’t seem all that great. “forever” captures all this turmoil. It’s a love song, sure, but what love song ever sounds this uneasy or paranoid? Waves of noise crash in the verses. Grating, stormy production contorts the word “forever” till it’s barely recognizable. “Love you,” Charli’s vocals echo in the outro, just audible above the abrasiveness. “Forever” is a torch song for the apocalypse.

12. “So I featuring a.g. cook” (Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat, 2024)

If nothing else, BRAT is honest. Charli dishes on industry rivalries, petty feuds, insecurities, and, hell, even the existential dread of wondering if she’ll ever settle down and have kids. But the album’s single rawest moment is “So I,” where Charli grieves for her collaborator and friend SOPHIE. Reworked by Cook, the “So I” remix encapsulates all different sides of grief into one song—regret alongside the joy of SOPHIE’s memory. In an album so preoccupied with the pressure of being an It-Girl, the line “That’s as cool as I’m ever gonna feel” is a punch in the gut, a puncture in the balloon of BRAT’s inflated ego. Cook jumbles Charli’s vocals into a puzzle of scrambled words, as though lingering on a single memory or line is too much. The “So I” remix dissolves into a beam of noise, a finale worthy of SOPHIE’s legacy.

11. “Von dutch” (BRAT, 2024)

You cannot call your album BRAT and not back it up with some serious arrogance. For that, “Von dutch” is perfect, a two-minute taunt that feels like thirty seconds and, in a just world, would go on for ten minutes. Charli is fully in character on “Von dutch:” snotty, brash, and obnoxious. Synths fray and sizzle while she gives her opp the lyrical equivalent of a swirly: “Do that little dance/Without it you’d be nameless.” Being a mean girl never sounded this good.

10. “visions” (how i’m feeling now, 2020)

how i’m feeling now is a ticking time bomb. The album spends its first ten songs pacing, anxious, and claustrophobic. On “visions,” it finally blows up. The song unleashes into a single, galaxy-sized, white-hot drop. There’s no moment in Charli’s discography quite like it—kinetic, cathartic, unusually optimistic, and emphatically earnest. “I got pictures in my mind,” she repeats over Cook’s pulsing trance. The way out is through, “visions” seems to suggest, offering the rave as an escape to take us there.

9. “Unlock It” feat. Kim Petras & Jay Park (Pop 2, 2017)

For years, critics accused PC Music, A.G. Cook’s label and collective, of irony. The label’s output was too plastic, too bubblegum, too commercial. It must be subversive, they thought. It must be poking fun at the capitalist artifice of pop music. But Cook, Finn Keane, Hannah Diamond, and other members of PC Music crew were never dismissive of pop’s commerciality. They were embracing it, taking the plasticine nature of bubblegum pop to its logical endpoint. “Unlock It” is the pinnacle of PC Music’s mission. The song pushes pop tropes to such an extreme, not from a place of satire, but out of love. Charli’s repetition of “Lock-it-lock-it” is disjointed, like a text-to-speech system stumbling over the same word. Cook’s synth-bubbles pop like heart eyes. “Unlock It” marries Cook’s uncanny valley production with the sparkle only pure pop can provide.

8. “Gone” feat. Christine and the Queens (Charli, 2019)

“Gone” is Charli’s ultimate outsider’s anthem, a paean to anyone who ever feels like they don’t belong at the party. Over colossal, big-room synths, Charli and Christine and the Queens take to the dance floor to, essentially, say “Fuck this.” In its outro, “Gone” reaches fever pitch, glitched-up and broken down but still pushing forward. “Keep/keep keep,” Charli’s vocal repeats like a mantra. And then it ends—“I’m already gone, baby”—with the finality of two artists who don’t need anyone else’s approval to dictate their own worth.

7. “Sympathy is a knife” (BRAT, 2024)

There is no mystery as to who “Sympathy is a knife” is quote-unquote “about.” The girl who “taps Charli’s insecurities” is glaringly obvious. But it’s just as much of a waste to interpret “Sympathy is a knife” as about Taylor Swift as it is to listen to “All Too Well” and think of Jake Gyllenhaal. The brilliance of both songs is in their songwriters’ bleeding hearts, not in how they feed celebrity gossip rags. And “Sympathy” really bleeds. “All this sympathy is just a… knife,” Charli howls, the most forceful her voice ever sounds on BRAT. This is no diss track; it’s a song to scream into your pillow.

6. “Backseat” feat. Carly Rae Jepsen (Pop 2, 2017)

The car is a frequent symbol within the XCXverse, surfacing across her discography to crash into bridges, take her to the airport, or speed like Alonso. On “Backseat,” Charli pens an ode to the car as an ultimate escape. There’s still some speeding here (“Drive so fast”), but “Backseat” takes to the road to express big feelings. And there’s no one better to do that with than the reigning queen of Emotion, Carly Rae Jepsen. It’s a duet for feeling alone, a shared car ride spent brooding. By the outro, the duo put the pedal to the medal. It erupts in a barrage of buzzsaw synths and metallic beats, as forceful as a Ferrari.

5. “365” (BRAT, 2024)

BRAT—as an album, a concept, and even a meme—would never have worked if Charli didn’t have the music to make everyone feel like a club kid. She warns the listener as she warms up: “Okay, okay, okay/Here we go” she sneers. And then, we’re off. “365” whirls through acidic synths and snotty chants, ending in a K hole of dizzying, blown-out noise. Charli has been penning odes to the club for years, but “365” is her final form, fueled by a coke-high and pure love of the game. “365” can turn anyone—Charli fans, bandwagon Brats, and even failed presidential nominee Kamala Harris–into Party Girls.

4. “party 4 u” (how i’m feeling now, 2020)

For all of her club-kid antics, Charli XCX can still make a party seem like the most heartwrenching place in the world. On “party 4 u,” she is a Gatsby for the TikTok era, throwing parties just to see one person. She’s surrounded by crowds and feels lonelier than ever. Abandoning the broad strokes of her usual lyricism, “party 4 u” describes the scene in detail: red balloons, purple pills, the “DJ with your favorite tunes.” She establishes herself as a true authority on hosting ragers. That’s what makes “party 4 u” so devastating, and likely why it became a runaway hit. Even at the party—the setting where Charli insists she’s at her most confident—she’s never sounded more wounded. The best party in the world isn’t fun at all without the right people by your side.

3. “Vroom Vroom” (Vroom Vroom, 2015)

For the grizzled Charli fan, “Vroom Vroom” is as holy as the Bible and twice as iconic. But even those who have screamed its lyrics like maniacal demons since the bob era can forget how weird this song is. “Vroom Vroom’s” composition defies logic. It flips between sections with abandon; sneering raps in one moment and “Lemme ride! Lemme ride!” chants in the next. “Vroom Vroom” requires buy-in. Its production—courtesy of SOPHIE—is brutal and unapologetic. But if you let yourself get swept up by its harsh chrome and steel, you’ll be rewarded with one of the 21st century’s most magnetic bangers. And if you resist it, the song speeds right by, maybe skirting in a quick circle around you in the process.

“Vroom Vroom” treats going out, looking hot, and driving fast with the kind of intensity it deserves. It leans into chaos, and, in doing so, it creates a space where anyone can be the baddest versions of themselves. The only possible way “Vroom Vroom” gets any better is the way Charli utterly devours it live. She performs it like it’s a number one hit, which, in some circles, it is. (Please see the definitive 2022 Lollapalooza performance for a demonstration.) Charli XCX and SOPHIE give pop a much needed tune-up on “Vroom Vroom,” one bubblegum pink Ferrari at a time.

2. “Girl, so confusing featuring lorde” (Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat, 2024)

Celebrities are not allowed to have Letterboxd anymore. After Heated Rivalry star Hudson Williams’ supposed-Letterboxd leaked to the public, Twitter went aflame with screenshots of his reviews, furious with the actor for, God forbid, having his own tastes and preferences. Celebrity Letterboxd accounts break an unspoken code of conduct among public figures: be polite and don’t talk about anyone in your peer group unless it’s with total adoration.

“Girl, so confusing featuring lorde” tears down that artificial veil of politeness and decorum in favor of brutal vulnerability. Behind that veil is, unsurprisingly, insecurity, hurt feelings, and a whole lot of tenderness. The stakes here feel particularly high since both artists here are very famous. But “Girl, so confusing” is not about celebrity drama. It’s a blistering and empathetic embrace of life’s messiness. Lorde’s verse is virtuosic, connecting the dots between snarky comments from childhood to canceled plans and awkward voicemails. It’s the phrase “hurt people hurt people” turned from meme into meaning, a therapy session breakthrough put to tape without losing its rawness.

1. “Track 10” (Pop 2, 2017)

When Pop 2 was released in December 2017, Charli XCX was a different kind of pop artist. There were no Apple dances, endless parade of movie roles, or, seemingly, any space for a pop artist to break out of their designated path. Her music leaked constantly, stalling any official releases and keeping her in major label purgatory. Her two mixtapes of 2017 were self-funded and named “mixtapes” in order to bypass label red-tape. She was best—or perhaps only—known as “the Boom Clap girl.”

It’s hard to separate “Track 10” from this period. After all, the components of the song are a near-literal metaphor for this era. She repurposed the much less interesting “Blame It On Your Love,” a track destined for anodyne pop-workout-playlists, and Frankenstein-ed it into this five minute epic. In the deconstruction, Charli made something uniquely brilliant. “Blame / Blame / Blame / Blame,” her vocals repeat, like a feedback loop. Whether you know the song’s lore or not,“Track 10” embodies the frustration of feeling stuck.

And then, Charli gets un-stuck. “Track 10”’s build is turbulent, and then it dispels like a supernova. It takes all that frustration and casts it out in fluorescent arpeggios, autotune and thunderous cracks. “Track 10” is a staunch refusal to be anyone but herself. That’s the quintessential quality of a Charli song—her rebellious, assertive flair. You can call it Brat, but, as she reminds you in the song’s final whisper, there’s only one thing it could be: “It’s Charli, baby.”

Listen to Charli XCX’s 2012 Daytrotter session here.

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