Concert review: Charli XCX was all style, no substance at Target Center
The woman born Charlotte Aitchison has been kicking around the music industry since when she began posting songs online and exploring the London rave scene It took a while but she s at last got to the point where she filled Minneapolis Target Center on Saturday night under her stage name Charli XCX The -year-old landed her first big single in as a guest on Icona Pop s I Love It which popped up in her encore and returned to the charts two years later after she contributed vocals to Iggy Azalea s Fancy which was nowhere to be located Saturday much like Iggy Azalea s career But Charli never really built a substantial following in the States until in recent times with her sixth album Brat entering the charts at No last summer The record s purposefully garish lime green cover swiftly went viral online and only got hotter when the Kamala Harris campaign adopted the look It s tempting to lump her in with other current female pop stars like Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan but Charli doesn t have a crossover classic like Espresso or Pink Pony Club in her repertoire Instead she makes polarizing electronic dance songs that are more aggressive and angry than say euphoric So it was strange to see her largely youthful crowd with a substantial number of queer people in attendance dancing and cheering to Charli s bass-heavy and often discordant songs cursed with vapid lyrics But the audience turned it into a celebration for the devoted that s not likely to win over any skeptics Charli performed on a massive stark stage with two large screens and a two-level catwalk that extended into the crowd There was no live band she sang to a prerecorded track with plenty of canned vocals on it or dancers and the only other person on stage was the occasional camera operator The set list included nearly all of Brat but almost nothing from her early career not even s Boom Clap her biggest solo hit Then again a multitude of of those in the crowd were still in grade school in Clad in a series of revealing outfits and ever-present wraparound shades Charli didn t spend the show dancing as much as she did stomping around pumping her fist swearing incessantly and acting more like a hype wo man than the main attraction When she did sing live it was usually through heavy electronic effects After a while watching her onstage felt like scrolling through a particularly tedious Instagram feed full of leering influencers Again the up-for-anything crowd ate up every last minute of what swiftly turned into a concert heavy on style and lacking in substance Related Articles Lowertown Sounds announces nine free Mears Park summer concerts Ten years after she canceled Meghan Trainor will headline the Minnesota State Fair Folk rock favorites the Avett Brothers set to return to Minnesota State Fair Stevie Nicks to twirl her way to Xcel Potential Center in August Coachella Benson Boone Tyla and GloRilla perform in the desert
