Charli XCX doesn't perform like a headliner so much as she performs like the loudest person at the afterparty — stomping across a two-level catwalk stage, swearing between verses, occasionally acting like she's forgotten her own lyrics on purpose. It's part of the bit. The lime-green glow that took over festival season in 2024 traces back to Brat, her sixth album, which somehow turned a Tumblr-green album cover into a genuine cultural moment and won her three Grammys the following year, including Best Dance/Electronic Album.
She'd been building to that for over a decade before it landed — the British singer-songwriter got her start writing hits for other people, including Icona Pop's 'I Love It' and Iggy Azalea's 'Fancy,' long before brat summer made her a headliner in her own name. When the remix album arrived that October, she brought half of pop with her: Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, Lorde, Kesha. The word 'brat' stopped meaning what it used to mean.
By 2026 she'd already moved on — Music, Fashion, Film, released this July, trades some of Brat's chaos for a more emotionally exposed register, and she also scored Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights adaptation this year. Onstage none of that restraint shows up. Expect the two screens, the fist-pumping, the sense that the show could fall apart at any second and somehow never does.