Charli XCX - Songs For Sale (2018)

Most fans of modern pop music are familiar with Icona Pop's massive hit 'I Love It' and, by association, the fact that the Charli XCX-penned track became a breakout hit for both artists. But alongside building a name for herself through her own tracks, Charli has built a huge career as a songwriter in her own right. She's lent her skills as a songwriter for hire on songs for Camila Cabello ('OMG'), Selena Gomez ('Same Old Love'), will.i.am ('Boys & Girls'), MØ ('Drum'), Danny Brown ('Float On') and 'father of disco' Giorgio Moroder ('Diamonds'), as well as being recruited to write for Britney Spears, Gwen Stefani, Ryn Weaver, Julia Michaels, and Sky Ferreira, and she's even penned songs for James Blunt and Blondie. On her career as a songwriter, Charli has been vocal about how it's both a creative outlet for her as well as a money-making exercise to fund her wider creative projects. "When it comes to songwriting for other people, I've become quite ruthless. I see it as a creative outlet whilst I'm creating it, but after the song has been made, I wanna make money. I want the biggest artists to cut these songs, and I want them to be No.1" she told Fader shamelessly in 2014, adding "When it comes to my own record, that shit doesn't happen, so that's where I think about what I believe to be artistic, what I believe to be beautiful". The oldest song on here is 'Gravity', written when she was 14, and in 2017 she submitted it to Blondie after they'd expressed an interest in working with her, with the band including it on their 'Pollinator' album. She's continued to write for other artists right up to penning 'Someone New' for Astrid S in 2018, and many of these artists have snapped up these songs and subsequently taken them to the top of the charts, so you can now hear her original demos for two dozen of her songs that she offered for sale. 

Track listing

01 Girls Like Us (demo for TWICE 2011)
02 Hate You (demo for Britney Spears 2013)
03 Hell Yeah Baby (demo for Gwen Stefani 2013)
04 Heart In My Pocket (demo for Britney Spears/Iggy Azalea 2013)
05 Baby Boy (demo for Liz 2014)
06 Hard 2 Love (demo for Gwen Stefani/Britney Spears 2014)
07 Good Things Come (So Wait) (demo for Gwen Stefani 2014)
08 Burnin' Up (demo for Liz 2014)
09 Reflecting (demo for Selena Gomez 2014)
10 NYC (No Way Out) (demo for Sky Ferreira 2014)
11 Hold On Tight (demo for Jacob Sartorius 2014)
12 OctaHate (demo for Ryn Weaver 2014)
13 Same Old Love (demo for Rihanna/Selena Gomez 2014)
14 So Alive (demo for Neon Jungle 2014) 
15 Swords (demo for Julia Michaels 2015)
16 Hurts Like Hell (demo for Madison Beer 2015)
17 Kingdom Come (demo for Rita Ora 2015)
18 Pop The Balloons (demo for Little Mix 2015)
19 Issues (demo for Julia Michaels 2016)
20 Tear & Tantrums (feat. RAYE) (demo for XYLØ 2016)
21 Gravity (demo for Blondie 2017, written in 2010)
22 The Middle (demo for Zedd 2017)
23 Someone New (demo for Astrid S 2018)

Charli XCX - The Punk Album (2014)

2013 was the breakthrough year for Charli XCX, releasing 'You (Ha Ha Ha)' and announcing her debut album, followed by the 'What I Like' single in March. 'True Romance' was released in April 2013 and peaked at number 85 on the UK Albums Chart, at number five on the US Billboard Top Heatseekers, and at number 11 on the Australian Hitseekers Albums Chart. It was received well by music critics and the public alike, and in May she released 'Just Deserts' with Welsh band Marina And The Diamonds, followed by the video for 'Take My Hand' later that month. She began writing her second album in mid-2013, saying she initially wanted to go to India to record, and later deciding she wanted to record it in France, but in the end neither of these plans came to fruition. Frustrated with the music industry, she ended up going to Sweden, isolating herself from her record label, and made a punk-inspired album over a month. Working on the album with Patrik Berger, they made it at a fast pace, not over-thinking it and making everything really spontaneous. It was no surprise, however, that the record company were less than supportive of this new direction, and insisted on a more commercial collection of songs, so the punk album was scrapped and new songs were written with Rivers Cuomo of Weezer and Vampire Weekend's Rostam Batmanglij, with 'Boom Clap' being the first result of this collaboration. It was the first single released from the soundtrack of the 2014 film 'The Fault In Our Stars', and also served as the lead single for what would become her second album 'Sucker'. The album gained universally positive reviews from the music press, and it was named the best pop album of the year by Rolling Stone magazine. However, despite the successful release of 'Sucker', fans still clamour to hear that legendary scrapped punk album, and so I've collected together all the known recordings that were made in Sweden, including a cover of 'Allergic To Love' by Swedish punk-rockers Snuffed By The Yakazu, and I've given it a suitably 'punk' cover for you to enjoy. 

Track listing 

01 Mow That Lawn
02 Can U Please Shut Up
03 One Two Bamboo
04 Light It Up
05 Japan
06 Problematic Song
07 Allergic To Love
08 Like This
09 Let's Make Love
10 What You Do To Me
11 Blow Me Away
12 Not In Love (feat. Noonie Bao)
13 I Wanna Be Like You

Charli XCX - Spoons (2012)

In addition to Ariel Rechtshaid, in 2012 Charli XCX also began working with Swedish producer Patrik Berger, and after he sent her two beats, she quickly wrote songs for each, with one of them becoming 'I Love It' and the other 'You're The One'. She didn't end up releasing 'I Love It' herself as she could not reconcile it with her sound, but later that year, Swedish duo Icona Pop re-recorded the song and released it as a single featuring her vocals. The song became an international hit, hitting number 1 in the UK and climbing to number 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2013. In June, she released 'You're The One' as a single from her EP of the same name, followed by her debut mixtape 'Heartbreaks And Earthquakes', a one-track file consisting of eight songs segued together and interspersed with film snippets, and including a cover of the Blood Orange song 'Champagne Coast' and Odd Future's remix of 'You're The One'. She followed that with a Halloween release of the single 'Cloud Aura' featuring Brooke Candy, followed by her second mixtape 'Super Ultra', which was released exclusively through her website in November. Despite 2012 being her most prolific year for official releases, there were a number of unreleased songs left over, enough in fact to have released a full-length album that year if she'd wanted to. 

Track listing 

01 Spoons
02 Heart Beats Hard
03 Dance 4 U
04 Losing My Cool
05 Rhinestone Hearts
06 Duke
07 Heatwave
08 Strobe Light
09 Diamonds
10 I'm Not Sorry
11 I'll Never Know
12 Valentine
13 Midnight

Charli XCX - Rock Star (2011)

After Charli XCX met with American producer Ariel Rechtshaid, they had a two-hour session and wrote the song 'Stay Away', and it was at this point the she realised that things were starting to come together. Early in 2011 she was featured on the Alex Metric single 'End Of The World', and after leaving during the second year of her degree course at the Slade School of Fine Art to focus on her music career, she released two singles, with 'Stay Away' coming out in May, and 'Nuclear Seasons' in November. The singles gained attention from music website Pitchfork, where she earned "Best New Track" accolades for both, with the former eventually being named in the site's "Best Tracks of 2011" list. As well as those two singles, she also recorded more unreleased music that year, making enough for yet another album that could have been released in 2011. 

Track listing

01 Electronique
02 Silver Bullet
03 Tonight
04 What The Hell
05 Kiss My Beauty
06 Rockstar
07 End Of The Night
08 The Lonely Jaguar
09 Mess
10 Tough Love
11 Jungle (Phaeleh Remix)
12 We Collide
13 Time Off
14 Heal My Heart
15 Train In Vain (feat. Viv Albertine)

Charli XCX - Candyfloss (2010)

After signing to Asylum Records in 2010, Charli XCX took a break from music which she's described as a lost period in her life, and she eventually attended the Slade School of Fine Art at UCL before dropping out after her first year. In an interview with The Guardian, she said: "I was still in school, I'd just come out of this weird rave scene, and I wasn't really sure what to make of that. And when I got signed I hated pop music; I wanted to make bad rap music. I didn't know who I was. I didn't know what I liked. Even though I was signed, I was still figuring it out". She eventually flew out to Los Angeles to meet producers, and found it "wasn't working out for me" until she met with American producer Ariel Rechtshaid. Before that happened she was still recording her songs, and this third post features tracks recorded in 2010 and never released, and you can hear her music maturing, with the songs sounding more professional than those from 2008 and 2009. 

Track listing

01 A Princess Song
02 Dynamite
03 Interior
04 Boyfriend Material
05 Camdyfloss
06 Get Dirty
07 Supernova
08 X-Ray Spex
09 Angry All The Time
10 Atomic
11 Nothing Too Serious
12 Tulips In The Fields
13 Violins & Violence
14 Jungle
15 You, Me, And The Radio

Charli XCX - Pop Princess (2009)

Following the cancellation of her album in 2008, Charli XCX continued to write and record her songs, publishing the odd one on her MySpace page, but mostly just for herself. In April 2009 she supported Peaches on her Ether 09 show at the Royal Festival Hall, alongside London drag-scene queen Jonny Woo, wearing the outfit on the cover of this album. She also released her second single, the double A-side 'Emelline'/'Art Bitch', on her own Orgy Music label, and she spent the rest of the year amassing a collection of songs which you can now hear on this post, which she could easily have released as an album in 2009. Obviously these are early examples of her songwriting, and so titles such as 'I Wanna Be Darth Vader' and 'Dinosaur Sex!' are in evidence, but some of these songs pave the way for how she her sound would change over the next couple of years.    

Track listing

01 Art Bitch
02 Emeline
03 I Wanna Be Darth Vader
04 Pop Princess
05 Too Cool
06 Another Romantic Situation (feat. Daisy Geggus) 
07 Beach Hut In Hawaii
08 Dinosaur Sex!
09 Do It Well
10 Falling In Love Again
11 Fearless
12 I Like You
13 Jungle Time
14 Photography
15 Pirates

Charli XCX - 14 (2008)

Charlotte Emma Aitchison was born on 2 August 1992 in Cambridge, and raised in Start Hill, Essex. While her parents were not very musical, she demonstrated an affinity for music from an early age, being interested in pop acts such as the Spice Girls and Britney Spears, and she began writing songs at the age of 14, writing a song called 'Fish and Chips Shop'. She managed to convince her parents to apply for a loan for her to record her first album '14', and in early 2008, she began posting songs from the album, as well as numerous other demos, on her official Myspace page. This caught the attention of a promoter running numerous illegal warehouse raves and parties in east London, who invited her to perform. She was billed on flyers under the stage name Charli XCX, which was her MSN Messenger display name when she was younger, and despite the illicit nature of the gigs, her parents were supportive of her career and attended several raves with her. In late 2008 promo copies of her album were released, along with two singles, '!Franchesckaar!' and the double A-side 'Emelline'/'Art Bitch', all on her own Orgy Music label. At the time it came out she included a short bio about herself, saying that the songs she writes were about her mates and experiences, and that she played all the instruments and did all the singing, including the backing vocals, but her drumming was a bit shit so she got her producer Darren to drum on 'Lucy'. Her influences at that time were Kate Nash, Hadoucken!, Justice, Crystal Castles, Calvin Harris and things like afro-beatz and other jamz, and the CD came with a 16 page colour booklet, with photos and lyrics to all the songs. Little is known about this album, other than it was distributed to friends, and possibly press, before a full commercial release was cancelled. In the first post of what will be a number of unreleased albums by the young singer, here are the very first songs that anyone would hear from her, and although they are pretty different from what was to come, they show Charli XCX blending together pop and nu-rave in a brash style that embodies her DIY beginnings. 

Track listing

01 !Franchesckaar!
02 Lucy
03 Chas's Song
04 Leave Me
05 I'll Teach You A Lesson
06 Machines
07 Supermodels And Holiday Stunners
08 Watch The Rain
09 Live Life
10 Neon Fashion And Glowstix
11 Mauritius
12 Alcoholic
13 Yet Again
14 14

Charli XCX - XCX World (2017)

Charli XCX has been writing songs since she was 14, and following her breakthrough debut album 'True Romance' in 2013 she's achieved significant success among young pop fans. Following the success of her second album 'Sucker', and the singles from it 'Break The Rules' and 'Doing It', she began working alongside producers associated with the UK collective PC Music, developing a more experimental sound and image. While working on her third album, she released the 'Vroom Vroom EP' in 2016, and a couple of mixtapes appeared in 2017, with 'Number 1 Angel' and 'Pop 2' both delighting fans. The same year she released the singles 'After The Afterparty' and 'Boys', both of which were to feature on her third album, tentatively titled 'XCX World'. The album was completed in mid-2016, but after being delayed multiple times it was eventually shelved, although it was leaked online in August 2017, ultimately causing its release to be cancelled. Charli XCX then started working on new projects, which eventually became 2019's 'Charli' studio album. The scrapped album's photoshoot, shot by Bradley & Pablo, also leaked in August 2018, so fans now had the complete package of songs and artwork, and she's since admitted that she's aware of the album's popularity amongst her fans, and that she loves the songs that were meant for it, but that the album will likely never be released. Despite its unfortunate fate, Charli XCX repurposed some of the songs, and officially released 'No Angel' and 'Girls Night Out' - previously teased as unreleased songs from the album - as installments from a series of monthly singles in the summer of 2018, and so 'XCX World' has ended up as a mixture of released and unreleased tracks, and what she has described as "the most pop thing, and the most electronic thing" she had ever done. Following this introductory post, I shall be posting a series of albums made up of unreleased songs from the last 14 years, taken from the nearly 200 tracks that she's recorded over that period which have never seen the light of day, including the legendary punk album from 2014 , and a collection of demos that she recorded to offer her songs to other artists. 

Track listing

01 Girls Night Out (feat. TyNi)
01 Taxi
03 Come To My Party
04 The One I Die 4
05 Bounce (feat. Kyary Pamyu Pamyu)
06 Waterfall (feat. Nooie Bao)
07 Down Like Woah
08 Queen Lizzy
09 Good Girls
10 Can You Hear Me?
11 No Angel
12 Boys
13 I Wanna Be With U
14 After The Afterparty (feat. Lil Yachty)