Charli XCX stormed out of meeting with label execs after they asked her to be more ‘real’ on social media

‘I was like, ‘This is f***ing ridiculous’ because it was crazy,’ says singer

Charli XCX at the 2020 Brit Awards (Getty Images for Bauer Media)

Charli XCX has revealed that she stormed out of a meeting after label executives asked her to be more “real” on social media.

Talking to Trick Mirror author Jia Tolentino on Dazed’s A Future World podcast, the “1999” singer said that she’d previously felt pressure from her label to be relatable to fans.

“There is this real quest at the moment for authenticity within all art obviously, but particularly in music,” Charli said. “There’s this stigma of like, ‘They don’t write their songs, they’re not real, I can’t buy into it.’

“I feel like it’s been that way for a while, it definitely wasn’t that way in the Nineties but then there was this whole turn of, ‘If they didn’t write, are they real?’... I think that transferred to the way labels wanted artists to be on social media.”

She continued: “I remember having a meeting with my record label, probably around the time of ‘Boom Clap’ where they were like, ‘We just need you to post every Tuesday about your flaws and maybe you could take some pictures of dogs.’”

Charli said that she “stormed out” of the meeting, adding: “I was like, ‘This is f***ing ridiculous’ because it was crazy. I was like, ‘That’s not real… shut the f*** up.’”