Draped in black and hanging onto a microphone stand, Charli xcx listlessly sang “I think the dance floor is dead,” a vocal-fried message from her song “Rock Music” seemingly lost on the thousands of fans who headbanged, jumped and most definitely danced throughout the British pop superstar’s headlining set at Lollapalooza on Friday.
Helping her tear through her 23-song set was a three-piece rock ensemble, about 15 dancers and a made-for-the-movies downpour for peak dramatic effect.
Having already graced the stage Thursday for a thrilling appearance in Lorde’s set for their “Girl, so confusing” collaboration, Friday night was Charli’s turn to deliver one of the most anticipated sets of the weekend.
The night marked Charli’s first large-scale live performance since releasing her seventh studio album “Music, Fashion, Film” last week. Judging from the massive chorus of voices, fans were already off-book despite the tight turnaround, ready to welcome yet another new era for the artist.
Still, the set’s biggest moment happened during pulls from her previous albums, especially her ultra-popular 2024 release “Brat” and its subsequent remixes — an era still so recognizable that even the top of Willis Tower looked like it was lit in the record’s green theme Friday night.
The ground pulsed as Charli’s bass-heavy hits “Sympathy is a knife,” “Von dutch” and “Guess” moved the crowd to dance hard. Her band would leave the stage for these cuts, letting them blast through in all their clubby glory. The musician said hardly a word between songs, choosing instead to let each bleed into the next.
And it was pure drama when Charli played 2020’s “pink diamond,” a heady hyperpop track from 2020 that ended with a torrential downpour before giving way to a brooding monologue from rock legend John Cale that’s featured on her song “House,” penned for this year’s “Wuthering Heights” movie adaptation. The bit of real-life Hollywood magic sent fans screaming and Charli continued undeterred, rolling in the puddles on the catwalk while fire shot from the stage.
Just about every open space, from the stage’s barricades to Balbo Drive, seemed to be filled with someone taking in the spectacle. A massive three-tiered platform proved to be a wise design, with Charli, along with her band and dancers, appearing intermittently on different levels, granting the crowd vantage points from multiple football fields’ worth of distance.
If “Music, Fashion, Film” is the holy trinity of the Charli xcx dogma, each piece was present Friday in moments like when her guitarist shredded on a Stratocaster, her dancers strutted on the catwalk in fashion-show formation and audio from intense monologues played.
Charli’s current aesthetic is devoid of color, evidenced by the black and white outfits she wore Friday, along with the blinding white strobe lights and black, crate-like structures towering on the stage. The new songs on the setlist saw Charli swap her familiar autotuned intonations for drier vocals over fuzzed-out guitar tones and clashing cymbals.
New selections like “Card Declined” saw Charli sing languidly about the empty pursuit of happiness in retail. “I’ll buy some shoes, I’ll buy a smile, I’ll buy some jewelry, a personality,” she demurred. And on “SS26,” she grappled with the trappings of fame and the cult of celebrity in a chaotic world. “We’re walking on a runway that goes straight to hell,” she sang — less shoegaze and more navel gaze.
There was a euphoric wave of phones-down, in-the-moment heated dancing when Charli blazed through her “Brat” pack of songs and big singalongs on back catalog cuts like “party 4 u.” The smell of sweat, mud, weed and cigarettes wafted heavily in these moments.
But the wave felt like it crashed all too soon when the mid-tempo designer doom and gloom returned for the set’s closer, “No One Lasts Forever,” which ended with her standing still looking hauntingly straight ahead, as her dancers grouped around her and the voice of director David Cronenberg shared harrowing musings on art, death and that “oblivion is freedom.”
The words appeared on the screens before the stage went black — a stark, depressing, arguably pretentious ending to an absolutely electric, unforgettable performance by one of pop’s great innovators and risk takers.
Set List
1. Rock Music
2. Yeah
3. Apple
4. Wink Wink
5. Card Declined
6. Track 10
7. Girl, so confusing (Lorde remix)
8. pink diamond
9. House
10. Dying for You
11. Club classics
12. 365 (shygirl remix)
13. 360
14. Sympathy is a knife
15. Von dutch
16. Guess (Billie Eilish remix)
17. If You Take Away the Music Then What Has She Got?
18. 2007
19. Camera
20. party 4 u
21. Playboy Bunny
22. SS26
23. No One Lasts Forever