Charli XCX in Manchester: 7 Best Moments From Her Biggest U.K. Gig Yet

Pop stardom is a game Charli XCX knows exactly how to play. Having been signed to a major label since she was a rule-breaking teenager on the London underground scene, the 32-year-old has spent the past decade manifesting – and preparing for – the transition from a rocky state of career perpetuity to genuine, mercurial global success. She’s been everything from a liberated, independent vanguard (2018 critically-adored mixtape Pop 2) to a cult starlet tirelessly chasing the bright lights of the mainstream (2022’s Crash), though it would take until this year for her to finally grasp a bonafide crossover moment.

Charli’s world changed entirely with the release of June’s career-elevating LP Brat, which has gone on to rack up seven Grammy nominations and become something of a zeitgeist-shifting moment. A riveting, assured and structurally adventurous record filled with moments of pure dance-pop transcendence, it saw Charli finding her own conviction, with smart, searingly self-aware lyrics and production that confounded expected song formulas. Over the summer, its neon album art permeated online culture like nothing else we’ve seen this year.

The archetypal brat, as Charli explained on TikTok, is “just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, who feels herself, but then also maybe has a breakdown, but kind of parties through it.” Her fans live in thrall to this mission statement, to the hedonism she conjures in her music as well as the intimacies that she shares with them on social media. At the start of the Brat campaign, Charli added some of her ‘Angels’ to a private Instagram account where she shared clips from the studio – for her most devout supporters, the album has been akin to an immersive experience from day dot. 

All of this momentum has laid the groundwork for Charli’s first-ever U.K. headline tour, which kicked off at the country’s largest indoor arena last night (Nov. 27), Manchester’s 23,500-capacity Co-op Live. Off the back of her hugely successful Sweat tour with Troye Sivan across North America – plus a recent guerilla performance in Times Square and her debut hosting at SNL – Charli’s pop career has rocketed to even greater heights, a stature she is set to build on with the rest of her current tour leg. Here are the best moments from the night.