Charli XCX is lifting the curtain on her astronomical fame and admitting it’s actually pretty ’embarrassing’ to be a pop star.
The Apple hitmaker, whose Grammy-nominated dance album Brat took pop culture by storm last summer, notes that her profession inevitably comes with ‘pros and cons’.
A major con, she reckons, is the ‘stupidity’ of it all, despite the lavish perks like designer gifts and once-in-a-lifetime experiences, living out the ‘cliches’ and ‘meeting interesting people’.
Over the past year, the performer, whose real name is Charlotte Aitchison, has become synonymous with the party girl image, often pictured smoking a cigarette and on wild nights out with her famous friends.
But that’s just one side to fame, according to Charli, who has some profound thoughts on the reasons we make artists feel so ‘special,’ which are pretty surreal once they are dissected.
Writing on her Substack, the Guess singer dives deeper into her lifestyle as a celebrity with nine million Instagram followers and two number-one records to her name: ‘You get to feel special, but you also have to at points feel embarrassed by how stupid the whole thing is.’
She explains: ‘You also get to hear a lot of incredible music that undoubtably is going to shift culture and public perception months before its released (the time Addison played me Diet Pepsi for the first time while driving around New York after dinner at Casino springs to mind).
‘Sometimes you get to help out your other pop star friends by providing an opinion or lending an ear or a helping make a decision relating to their work which allows you to feel a part of a interconnected community of people you love and respect.
‘You also get to have fans and their dedication to your work makes you feel like they will be there for you until the end of time, even though in reality they won’t. [sic]’
Charli, 33, goes on to say she can stand on stage and ‘feel like a God’, ‘make people cry with happiness’ as her music soundtracks their lives, and ‘travel the world and see all kinds of places’ without worrying about ‘booking a single element of travel’.
Once she spells it all out, it’s pretty wild to imagine such a level of fame, particularly as she admits ‘you get to call in sick whenever you want, and you never have to worry about bailing on work last minute because you know for certain that there’s another pop star out there who’s actually way more unreliable and flakey than you’.
The Brit Award winner proceeds to address the public’s perception of her, feeling that some people are ‘simply determined to prove that [she] is stupid’.
Defiantly putting that misconception to bed, the star, who admits it’s ‘fascinating’ to be viewed as a ‘fantasy’ by the world, lays out how women in particular tend to be perceived in one of two ways.
‘At the end of the day the consumer gets to decide whether a pop star is a symbol of sex, or anarchy or intelligence or whatever else they wish to see,’ she pens.
‘Sometimes people don’t like to be lumped in with general consensus, they like to go against the grain of public opinion and that’s when a totally opposite defiant stance is born.
‘Instead of “she’s a sex symbol” it becomes “she’s a w***e”. Instead of “she’s anarchic” it’s “she’s a f***ing drug addict”. Instead of “she’s intelligent” it’s “she’s pretentious and said a whole load of nothing” and so on and so on. I find that this is often where the stupidity narrative can be born.’
Charli further muses over ‘why someone else’s success triggers such rage and anger in certain people’, which she believes sadly boils down to society being ‘brainwashed’ by the patriarchy.
‘We are still trained to hate women, to hate ourselves and to be angry at women if they step out of the neat little box that public perception has put them in.’
For Charli, her ‘box’ is ‘the party girl who smokes cigs, does coke, loves the colour green and has the capacity for nothing else’, which while she accepts is ‘part of the deal’ and a small price to pay, she’s far from ‘a silly little idiot’.
This isn’t the first time Charli has spoken frankly about being a female artist, having made no secret from the start that she doesn’t desire to be a ‘role model’ for others.
Speaking in 2015, aged 22 at the time, Charli proudly declared to Sunday Style magazine: ‘Being a b***h is the best.’
‘Even though I probably am [a role model], because certain people look up to me, that’s never been an aim of mine.’
Fast forward to October 2025, a decade later, and she had a more eloquent way of putting it: ‘I think there is a correlation in that there’s a messiness and a lack of perfection.
‘It’s the combination of talking about those things whilst also embracing them and really struggling with them is what makes me whole. And I think that it makes me honest.’
The Von Dutch songstress, whose lyrics include references to sex, alcohol, and drugs but who also champions female friendship and self-expression, added to E! that her honesty can come back to bite her.
‘I have a big mouth, and I say s**t, and sometimes it gets me into trouble.’
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