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Los Angeles, CA - Variety is
excited to announce that singer-songwriter Charli xcx will
be honored with the Hitmaker of the Year award at its eighth
annual Hitmakers celebration.
The Dec. 7 event and accompanying magazine look back at the
year in music and recognize the writers, producers,
publishers, managers and executives who helped make — and
break — the 25 most-consumed songs of the year, as measured
by Billboard and Luminate Charts. Hitmakers culminates with
an invitation-only brunch held on Saturday, December 7.
Wells Fargo will be a premier partner of the event.
“We’ve been following Charli xcx since her first album,
‘True Romance,’ back in 2013 and have been with her every
step of the way. We’re so happy to see that the world has
finally caught up with her innovations in pop music, which
have reached a new peak with ‘BRAT,’” said Variety Executive
Music Editor Jem Aswad. “We’re overjoyed to honor her as our
Hitmaker of the Year.”
Charli xcx is indisputably one of the greatest pop
innovators of the 21st century. She began making music as a
teenager, posting songs onto MySpace and performing at
raves, and signed with Warner subsidiary Asylum Records in
2010, at the age of 17. She scored her first hit just two
years later with her composition “I Love It,” which was a
global smash for Icona Pop, and followed with her debut
album, “True Romance,” in 2013. She had two more major hits
over the following months — her own “Boom Clap” and the Iggy
Azalea collaboration “Fancy” — but began making more
innovative, challenging music, initially with the late pop
savant Sophie and then with A. G. Cook, who remains one of
her closest collaborators. Her two 2017 mixtapes, “No. 1
Angel” and “Pop 2,” are acknowledged as pioneering works in
the genre now known as hyperpop, and reached fruition with
her 2019 hit album “Charli.” Also in that year, she scored
another global hit with her work on Shawn Mendes and Camila
Cabello’s smash “Senorita.” A serial collaborator, over the
years she has worked with Billie Eilish, Lizzo, Lorde,
Robyn, Caroline Polachek, Haim, Raye, Clairo, Tove Lo and
many others.
With the pandemic came another shift in direction, and
Charli first challenged herself and Cook by successfully
completing an album in five weeks — 2020’s “How I’m Feeling
Now” — before stripping back her sound with “Crash” two
years later. She landed another major hit with her 2023 song
“Speed Drive” from the blockbuster “Barbie” soundtrack, but
with “BRAT,” it seems the world has finally caught up with
her. The album’s sound is as challenging and dancefloor-ready
as any of her previous records, but its driving rhythms and
indelible hooks have landed in a music world that
understands it, largely thanks to her work over the past
decade. Charli’s fame and influence have also grown
exponentially thanks to the album’s simple yet iconic cover,
which has reached far beyond the music world and became a
catch-phrase of the summer of 2024, even being referenced by
presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ campaign. Currently,
her “Sweat” tour with co-headliner Troye Sivan is selling
out arenas across North America through October 23.
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About Charli xcx
Avant-pop and electronic superstar Charli xcx has become an
iconic figure in the arts, having helped expand the
landscape of popular music over the last decade by
seamlessly traversing the underground and mainstream with
her artistic output. Over the course of a trailblazing
career, the multi-hyphenate creative has earned critical
acclaim for her innovative style and entrepreneurial spirit
and seen her forward-thinking approach reshape pop culture
in the process.
She released her sixth studio album ‘BRAT’ in June which has
become the most critically acclaimed album of the year.
‘BRAT’ has also well and truly made its mark on the cultural
zeitgeist; the audacious campaign has seen Charli cause
roadblocks around the world with her pop-up ‘PARTYGIRL’ DJ
sets, break the internet with viral videos and surprise
collaborations with the likes of Billie Eilish, Lorde,
Addison Rae, Robyn, Yung Lean, Julia Fox, Chloë Sevigny, and
Rachel Sennot and introduce a new tone of green to the
social lexicon. The album has since been nominated for the
Mercury Prize 2024 while ‘Guess featuring Billie Eilish’
debuted at Number 1 on the UK Official Singles Charts,
making Charli the first British artist to land at the top of
the charts this year. She is set to release ‘Brat and it's
completely different but also still brat’ – a brand new
version of the acclaimed album – on 11th October.
Charli has also been working on multiple film & TV projects
following the breakout success of her Barbie soundtrack
contribution ‘Speed Drive’ last year. She is co-executive
producing the score for the A24 film ‘Mother Mary’ with Jack
Antonoff and also producing original music for Benito
Skinner’s series ‘Overcompensating’ on Prime Video. In
addition, Charli will star in the Daniel Goldhaber remake of
1978 cult horror film ‘Faces of Death’.
Her lasting impact was cemented last year when Charli was
honoured with the Visionary Award at the annual Ivor
Novellos in London, while she also received the Powerhouse
Award at Billboard’s Women In Music ceremony in March and
the ASCAP Global Impact Award in May.
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