Charli XCX Wants to Make a Lou Reed Record

If Brat Summer has taught us anything, it’s that Charli XCX is always full of surprises. This just in: She wants to make a Lou Reed record.

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In a cover story with Billboard , the pop star contemplated the future of her career and what it would be like if Brat was her final album. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m just so deep in this, I can’t see outside of Brat , but it’s funny. I kind of want to make a Lou Reed record, to be honest. That would definitely be a pretty big swing.”

Charli didn’t expand on the idea, so it’s unclear if she wants to make her own Metal Machine Music — a.k.a. a deeply polarizing cult album that some regard as one of the worst LPs ever made by a mainstream artist — or keep it simple with her very own Transformer . Then again, she can always take the sweet Coney Island Baby route.

Elsewhere in the interview, Charli reflected on her catalog, describing her early songs were “just not very potent,” while her Brat era is “truly potent.” She also admitted that she thinks 2014’s Sucker is “an attempt at what Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour was able to do much better.”

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She also went deep on the making of her excellent “Girl, So Confusing” remix with Lorde , explaining that she sent her the song about their fraught friendship ahead of its release. “I had to go through the process of telling her that this song is about her and her being OK with that first,” she said.

Charli also revealed that it was Lorde’s idea to be on the remix. “[She] was like, ‘Oh, my God, I had no idea you felt this way. I’m so sorry,'” Charli recalled. “And then was like, ‘You know, maybe I should be on a version of the song.’ I didn’t even ask her. She brought it up.”

Lorde also spoke for the piece, telling Billboard that her friend has always been ahead of the pop curve . “She’s been Charli this whole time,” she told the magazine. “She’s just put one foot in front of the other. Learned something from every project. Michelangelo apparently once said, ‘I’m just going to carve away all that is not David,’ and I feel that that’s what we are getting to witness in real time: Charli saying to herself, ‘I’m going to carve away all that is not Charli.’ It’s very, very big and special, powerful, fun, sick work that she does.”

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