1992–present
Latest News: Charli XCX Wins Multiple 2025 Grammys
Charli XCX winning her first Grammy Awards? That’s brat.
The British singer became one of breakout artists of 2024 thanks to her acclaimed album BRAT. Its success translated to eight Grammy nominations, including Album of the Year, at the February 2 ceremony. Ultimately, Charli XCX won three trophies for Best Dance/Electronic Album, Best Dance Pop Recording for “Von dutch,” and Best Recording Package.
BRAT quickly became a cultural tour de force after its June 2024 release. It sparked brat summer, a viral Tik Tok dance, and many discussions on exactly what brat means. In November, the 32-year-old British singer appeared on Saturday Night Live as both the host and musical guest. Several critics and publications—including Billboard, Rolling Stone, and Stereogum—named BRAT the best album of 2024.
The first-time Grammy winner was previously nominated a decade ago for “Fancy.” The collaboration with Iggy Azalea vied for Record of the Year and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance but didn’t win either title.
Who Is Charli XCX?
British electronic-pop singer Charli XCX is a Grammy-winning artist known for the songs “Boom Clap” and “Fancy” as well as her 2024 album, BRAT. The artist, whose real name is Charlotte Emma Aitchison, first shared her music on MySpace before releasing her first self-funded mixtape at the age of 14. After connecting with music producers in Los Angeles, she dropped out of art school in London to pursue her music career. She found early success as a songwriter and collaborator on Icona Pop’s “I Love It” and Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy” before her first solo hit “Boom Clap” debuted in 2014. Charli XCX’s sixth studio record, BRAT, resulted in three Grammy Awards in 2025.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Charlotte Emma Aitchison
BORN: Cambridge, United Kingdom
BIRTHPLACE: August 2, 1992
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Leo
Where Is Charli XCX From?
Charli XCX is the stage name of Charlotte Emma Aitchison. She was born in Cambridge, United Kingdom, on August 2, 1992, as the only child of Jon and Shameera Aitchison. Charli described her Scottish father as “mental” and “eccentric” to The Telegraph. Her Indian mother, a former nurse and flight attendant, was born in Uganda before her family moved to the United Kingdom.
“I grew up in two half-lives, I suppose,” Charli told Vogue Singapore, explaining her multicultural upbringing. “When I would go and visit my mum’s family, I felt very Indian,” noting that her family always had Bollywood movies on and spoke Gujarati. “But then I’d go home to this other world which was largely white. It was almost like I would experience the Indian part of my identity only on the weekends. I never quite felt like I fit into either world, which I think commonly happens with mixed-race kids.”
Charli attended private school from the ages of 4 to 18 at Bishop’s Stortford College in Hertfordshire, about 35 miles south of Cambridge. She told The Standard that as a kid, she wasn’t cool: “In 1999, I was a little loser, nerd kid running around trying to pretend to be Baby Spice. I was not very cool. I imagine most young girls now are really cool and in touch, but I was not.” She spent her time doing performance art, making videos with friends.
Early music and voice lessons weren’t particularly compelling for young Charli, but she eventually learned to play guitar and keyboard and began creating her own music. “I didn’t grow up in a house that was full of music or anything,” she told The Telegraph. “My parents never played instruments. The only real music of theirs I heard was when my mum would play [1970s soft rockers] Bread or The Monkees in the car on the way to school.”
Even so, Jon and Shameera supported their daughter’s music career early on. When she was 14, they gave her a loan to make her first mixtape, 14, that she self-released in 2007. “I don’t count that as the beginning of my career. But whatever,” she told The Telegraph. “Everyone did embarrassing s–– when they were 14. My mistakes just live online for everyone to hear.”
Charli has shared that there is no real meaning to her stage name, Charli XCX. “People have speculated that it means ‘Kiss Kiss,’ but I really just chose the name because I thought it looked cool and sounded catchy,” she told Rolling Stone.
Songs and Albums
With musical influences such as Grimes, Niki & the Dove, The Spice Girls, Uffie, and Britney Spears, Charli XCX began releasing her music on MySpace as a teenager. She initially found traction within London’s rave scene, where she began playing shows at the age of 16. “My first one was at the Peanut Factory in Hackney,” she told The Telegraph. “My parents drove me there. They were cool—my dad was really into it. We arrived at, like, 9pm and they just stood at the back of the sweatbox with all the hipsters. My mum helped someone out of a K-hole, and we didn’t leave until 7am.”
The exposure led to her first record deal with Warner’s Asylum Records in 2010. She began making music professionally, traveling back and forth to Los Angeles to make connections and write songs, while applying for college. She began attending the Slade School of Fine Art for a fine art degree at 18 but dropped out during her second year.
After connecting with music producer Ariel Rechtshaid in Los Angeles, they collaborated on singles such as “Stay Away” and “Nuclear Seasons.” Both songs appeared on Charli’s first studio album, 2013’s True Romance. “I was conscious of trying to be cool throughout making it, and it is a really cool album,” she shared with The Telegraph. “It got really cool reviews by really cool people and so I succeeded in my act. But I didn’t feel like it was totally me.”
“I Love It,” “Fancy,” and “Boom Clap”
One song that didn’t make the cut for her debut album was “I Love It,” which she co-wrote with producer Patrik Berger. Instead, the 2012 track was recorded by Swedish duo Icona Pop with Charli as a featured guest. The following year, “I Love It” became a No. 1 hit in the United Kingdom and peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the States.
Arguably, an even more successful collaboration followed in “Fancy,” a song Charli co-wrote with Iggy Azalea and others. Azalea was the primary artist on the track, released in early 2014, as Charli again sang as a guest. The smash hit led the Hot 100 for seven weeks that summer and earned them a pair of Grammy nominations, for Record of the Year and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance. “When I put that song out, I wasn’t really aware of how big it was because I was so in it, and I had so much other sh– going on around that song,” Charli told Billboard in 2018. “Now when I got to play that on this tour [opening for Taylor Swift], I was like, ‘Wow, this song is a big deal!’”
Her work as a songwriter also extends to Selena Gomez’s “Same Old Love” from 2015, Madison Beer’s “Hurts Like Hell” from 2018, and the Shawn Mendes–Camila Cabello hit “Señorita”’ from 2019. Collaborators on her own music include Troye Sivan, Lizzo, Rita Ora, Bebe Rexha, Cardi B, and Billie Eilish.
To date, Charli XCX’s most successful single as a solo artist is “Boom Clap.” Released in May 2014 as part of the soundtrack for the movie Fault in Our Stars, it peaked at No. 8 on the Hot 100. It was later added to her sophomore album, SUCKER, which was released in that December.
Over the next decade, the singer released three more albums—Charli (2019), how i’m feeling now (2020), and CRASH (2022)—as well as multiple mixtapes. CRASH became a No. 1 album in the United Kingdom and broke into the Top 10 of the Billboard 200, but greater heights were still ahead.
BRAT
In early June 2024, Charli released BRAT, which rocketed her to mainstream success more than ever before. Her sixth studio album, BRAT debuted at No. 3 stateside, led the U.K. chart come fall, and spawned a viral Tik Tok dance to its song “Apple.”
Beyond these standard metrics of success, the record left a major cultural imprint. The album’s iconic bright green cover became an empowering Gen-Z symbol with its anti-establishment undertones. “I wanted to go with an offensive, off-trend shade of green to trigger the idea of something being wrong,” she told Vogue Singapore. “I’d like for us to question our expectations of pop culture—why are some things considered good and acceptable, and some things deemed bad? I’m interested in the narratives behind that and I want to provoke people.”
Fans loved it, and the term brat summer caught on, alluding to a brat aesthetic. The singer has acknowledged the word can be interpreted in different ways, referring to luxury or snobbery in some instances. “But it can also be so trashy, just like a pack of cigs and a BIC lighter and a strappy white top with no bra,” she shared on the Sidetracked podcast. Charli proceeded to offer up a humorous definition during her opening monologue on Saturday Night Live that November before providing a clearer picture during an interview with Variety.
“The whole idea of being a brat is interesting to me, because why are people brats? Why do people act out and be difficult and misbehave?” Charli XCX said. “I think it’s because sometimes you’re overcompensating for insecurity or feeling uncomfortable, and I think that’s where the two fit together.”
In October 2024, she released a remixed version of the album titled Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat that featured the likes of Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande, Lorde,Kesha, and more. The new version of “Guess” featuring Eilish became a hit on both sides of the Atlantic and earned the artists a 2025 Grammy nomination for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance. The nod marked one of eight Charli XCX received for BRAT and its songs. She was also nominated in the major categories Album of the Year and Record of the Year for “360.” Ultimately, the singer won Best Dance/Electronic Album, Best Dance Pop Recording for “Von dutch,” and Best Recording Package.
Fiancé George Daniel
Charli XCX is currently engaged to George Daniel, the drummer for The 1975. The singerannounced their engagement in November 2023.
Charli and Daniel met in 2021 while working on a project together, and he has produced a number of her songs. She told The Sun that he has helped her hone her own creative process: “Now that I’m in a relationship with another musician he’s influenced me a lot with his process and how he and his band work… I used to be very, ‘Quick, quick, quick, album a month, let’s go.’ Now I’m like, ‘Oh, maybe it’s cool to take some time and live in the music that you create.’”
Daniel sung his fiancée’s praises during an interview with Variety. “Charli’s conviction, honesty and vulnerability are the most potent things that make her a brilliant artist and songwriter,” he said. “You believe absolutely everything she does.”
The “Boom Clap” singer previously dated Welsh director Ryan Andrews, who helped shoot five of her music videos. “We were living together and continuously talking about me and my world and my music videos,” she told The Telegraph. “It was great for me but not so great for him. It probably led to our break-up. We were just too consumed by Charli XCX every second of the day.”
She later dated video game producer Huck Wong for seven years before splitting in 2021.
Quotes
- I realized that I just wanted to be a f––ing boss. I decided I didn’t have to choose between being an artist and being a songwriter and just started to do both.
- I’ve always been very blunt. I’ve taken one step forward and two steps back in terms of being secure in who I am as a person, but I think that’s just a human thing.
- Music is not important. I need an artist to create the world. A great artist to me is more than the songs, it’s the entire culture and space that they inhabit.
- There’s no formula to pop music or successful music. It’s so about a moment. A lot of people don’t know what they’re doing. I guess the best people who are going to be able to tell you whether your song’s good are kids—they’re the ones who are going to listen to it more.
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Emily Shiffer has worked as a writer for over 10 years, covering everything from health and wellness to entertainment and celebrities. She previously was on staff at SUCCESS, Men's Health, and Prevention magazines. Her freelance writing has been featured in Women's Health, Runner's World, PEOPLE, and more. Emily is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she majored in magazine journalism at the Medill School of Journalism and minored in musicology. Currently residing in Charleston, South Carolina, Emily enjoys instructing barre, surfing, and long walks on the beach with her miniature Dachshund, Gertrude.
Adrienne directs the daily news operation and content production for Biography.com. She joined the staff in October 2022 and most recently worked as an editor for Popular Mechanics, Runner’s World, and Bicycling. Adrienne has served as editor-in-chief of two regional print magazines, and her work has won several awards, including the Best Explanatory Journalism award from the Alliance of Area Business Publishers. Her current working theory is that people are the point of life, and she’s fascinated by everyone who (and every system that) creates our societal norms. When she’s not behind the news desk, find her hiking, working on her latest cocktail project, or eating mint chocolate chip ice cream.
