{"id":307006,"date":"2025-11-22T12:04:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T12:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/307006\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T12:04:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T12:04:10","slug":"charli-xcx-details-the-realities-of-pop-stardom-in-new-substack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/307006\/","title":{"rendered":"Charli XCX Details the Realities of Pop Stardom in New Substack"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt\u2019s fitting that Charli XCX<\/a> accompanied her post on X about \u201cthe realities of being a pop star\u201d with a photo of Lou Reed \u2014 the enigmatic frontman of the Velvet Underground. The image is a screenshot of Reed from a 1974 interview <\/a>where he answers rapid-fire questions as laconically and languidly as possible, much to the chagrin of the rabid journalists huddled around him. As Charli, who once said she wants to make a \u201cLou Reed record<\/a>,\u201d might put it, that\u2019s art, baby.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn her new Substack published Friday<\/a>, Charli begins with a few clarifications. While she writes \u201cbeing a pop star has its pros and cons like most jobs in this world,\u201d she says, \u201cI don\u2019t view what I do as a \u2018job\u2019 and I secondly don\u2019t really view myself as purely a pop star, I\u2019m just using that terminology specifically for this piece of writing.\u201d Instead, she opts to describe herself \u201cmore as a \u2018creative\u2019 (gross) or plain and simply put: an artist.\u201d However, for the purposes of her essay, she focuses \u201cpurely on the the realities of being a pop star because it was my original dream, because it\u2019s the role in my life I have the most experience navigating and because it\u2019s also the most ridiculous one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFirst, she addresses the obvious: being a pop star is \u201creally fucking fun.\u201d Charli proceeds to list off the benefits of the gig: parties in a black SUV and \u201call that cliche shit\u201d; meeting interesting people and \u201cthose interesting people often actually want to meet you\u201d; getting \u201cfree shit\u201d such as phones, trips, clothes, and shroom gummies; entering restaurants through the back entrance with your best friends and smiling at the staff (who probably \u201chate you\u201d); and hearing Addison Rae\u2019s \u201cDiet Pepsi\u201d before it\u2019s released. She also adds that, yes, \u201cYou get to feel special, but you also have to at points feel embarrassed by how stupid the whole thing is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, Charli acknowledges the parts that go beyond this and nods toward her fans and how their \u201cdedication to your work makes you feel like they will be there for you until the end of time, even though in reality they won\u2019t,\u201d adding that performing on stage can make you \u201cfeel like a God.\u201d She says, \u201cYou get to make people cry with happiness, you soundtrack their break ups, their recovery, their crazy nights out, their revenge, their love, their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Brat singer then moves on to the time spent \u201cin transit,\u201d likening a pop star\u2019s time spent traveling from one matter of business to another as feeling like a commodity inhabiting \u201cstrange and soulless liminal spaces.\u201d She offers an example of when Rachel Sennott arrived to shoot a scene in Charli\u2019s upcoming mockumentary The Moment <\/a>\u201cbundled up with blankets and pillows and shipped directly to us like a package.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe public\u2019s perception of her a pop star has also caused Charli to \u201cthink about the person I used to be compared to the person I am now.\u201d Old friends and family members have a way of humbling you, she points out; after asking Yung Lean whether he thought she had changed, he replied via text that while she\u2019s still the person he knew when they were younger, the \u201cyes people\u201d around her \u201cblow smoke\u201d up her ass.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn ending her thoughts on the pop star life, she muses that while there is a \u201clevel of expectation for you to be entirely truthful all the time,\u201d all her favorite artists are \u201cabsolutely not role models nor would I want them to be, but maybe that\u2019s just me.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI want hedonism, danger and a sense of anti establishment to come along with my artists because when I was younger I wanted to escape through them,\u201d she adds. \u201cTo me that\u2019s the point, that\u2019s the drama, that\u2019s the fun, that\u2019s the FANTASY.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe offers a link to Reeds\u2019 interview from the Seventies<\/a>, before asking and answering: \u201cIs it performance? Is it truth? Is it lies? Who fucking cares? In my opinion it\u2019s just funny and cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen speaking<\/a> to Vanity Fair <\/a>about The Moment last month, Charli, once again subverted the line between fact and fiction, said, \u201cIt\u2019s not a tour documentary or a concert film in any way, but the seed of the idea was conceived from this idea of being pressured to make one.\u201d She added, \u201cIt\u2019s fiction, but it\u2019s the realest depiction of the music industry that I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s fitting that Charli XCX accompanied her post on X about \u201cthe realities of being a pop star\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[19905,88,216],"class_list":{"0":"post-307006","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-charli-xcx","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}