Charli XCX + Troye Sivan

Los Angeles | October 15, 2024

On the heels of Brat summer and four days after the release of the remix album Brat and It's Completely Different but Also Still Brat, Charli XCX and Troye Sivan bring their Sweat tour to LA’s Kia Forum for two sold-out nights. A sea of Brat-green and futuristic/Y2K-styled club looks descend upon the venue as night falls on Inglewood and the doors to the Forum open. The vibes are most of what’s going on here, which is fine. In lieu of a purpose or a genuine cultural moment, the looks will do. Everybody’s cute and we love to see the enthusiasm. 

As a Charli fan, I’ve mostly been vexed by the Brat of it all. The album itself strikes me as less compelling than much of her other music from the last decade. The rollout and ongoing promotion are a masterclass of disruptive communications, largely led by creative director Imogene Strauss and design agency SPECIAL OFFER, Inc. In terms of the landscape of contemporary design, only the Make America Great Again hat can boast such a large impact from such stark, minimal design. 

The album is perhaps the most zeitgeist-defining album since Beyoncé’s Renaissance, and had less anticipation and inbuilt fandom to start from. But upon closer inspection, it feels less like capturing the zeitgeist than tapping into the collective need for reassurance that there still is a zeitgeist, as the last vestiges of the monoculture disappear and the media landscape continues to fragment. For all the yearning and ‘vulnerable’ interpersonal intrigue on the record, there’s not a lot going on beyond reflecting the desperation and emptiness of the culture back at itself; providing a ready-made aesthetic in which to package the anomie of the age.

We arrive at the tail end of Shygirl’s opening set, and settle in as a pre-show mix including classic Aphex Twin and SOPHIE cuts plays in the background. The floor is packed with It Girls; Ayo Edibiri, Lily-Rose Depp, Kaia Gerber, Sasha and Malia Obama… Troye opens the show with three songs including fan favorites ‘Got Me Started’ and ‘My My My!’. He’s charming and has a retinue of wonderful back-up dancers, all doing their best Janet Jackson. He’s always been plausible as a pop star and the goal of his part of this tour seems to be affirming his place in that conversation. 

After Troye’s opening set, things gear up for Charli’s first appearance. Discordant synths and flashing lights work the crowd up to a fever pitch as a 20-foot tall Brat-branded curtain drops to reveal Charli, going straight into ‘365’, one of the better tracks from the album. From there, Charli and Troye trade off in sets of two to three songs each, mostly from their new albums. Charli’s stage presence elevates performances of just-okay songs into a kind of irresistible party experience; the idea of the ‘underground’ concentrated into a single, ephemeral atmosphere, minus anything truly subversive. For all the appeals to contemporary Gen Z disaffection, ‘kamala IS brat’ was the pinnacle of millennial cringe.

Troye, for his part, dutifully plays his role, earnestly delivering his material with a handful of calculated theatrics. In these moments, he seems to be asserting his status as the first openly gay pop act to reach this level, with a lap dance for TikToker (and Troye doppelganger) Vinnie Hacker and an open-mouthed kiss for one of his male backup dancers. Along with all the clumsy swearing in Troye’s stage banter, these moments feel forced and intended for something like shock value. I don’t know who’s going to be scandalized by a pair of white gays making out but whatever, girl, here we are. 

The show comes to a close with a three-part encore. First, Charli playing ‘Track 10’ from her genuine masterpiece of a mixtape, Pop 2.  Next, Troye playing his ode to poppers and the club, ‘Rush’. And finally, the two performing their Brat collab, ‘Talk talk’. There were some other antics involving Kesha (the original ‘Tik Tok’ girl) and someone called Tate McRae, but this is meant to be a micro-review and ain’t nobody got time for them. To close, we’ll leave you with some recent words from Azealia Banks: