cuts across the reddening Victoria Park skyline, 35,000 phones capture Charli’s emergence onto the Victoria Park stage. Those phones have seen this set chopped up from other dates on this summer tour, and the beats of the set (and its bare bones, minimal setup compared to Charli’s 2022 Crash tour) are familiar through its virality. The set tears through the opening peaks of ‘Brat’: opener ‘360’, Charli pulling down the Brat flag backdrop during ‘Von Dutch’, a bouncing ‘Club Classics’. Screens show doing the viral Apple dance – as Chappell Roan did at Coachella – though that song’s highlight tonight is Charli’s brazen Aperol Spritz product placement (if anyone from the Italian beverage company is reading, it is indeed a refreshing summer drink and I will always have space for a crate.)

The uneven sound in the field means that the devastating transition to ‘I Might Say Something Stupid’ – the first crack of anxious vulnerability on ‘Brat’, and an important temperature change in this live set – is dulled. Around me, punters are unusually hushed to hear the set, between very audible moans about the need to turn it up (woundingly, someone near me complains that the set “sounds like Spotify”). 

—

—

Interestingly, it’s the material outside of the imperial ‘Brat’ that garners the most visible enthusiasm from its performer: is more dizzying and disruptive than it felt on the Barbie soundtrack, whilst a luminous and moving ‘party 4 u’, complete with pouring rain on stage, continues its journey to one of Charli’s signature masterpieces. Despite rumours throughout the day – and, possibly, with more features being saved for Glastonbury – the sole features are , who comes on stage during a slight mix-up with the incorrect version of ‘Rewind’ being begun and then culled, and a gently moshing . Vroom Vroom shows that it can bulldoze through any audio troubles, and clearly is beloved of its performer. As the set ends, screens show the message that brat “wasn’t just a summer thing. It’s a forever thing.”

During the long exit from Victoria Park, it becomes easier to sympathise with resident campaigners about the toll that one day festivals is having on their communities. London’s infrastructure doesn’t have an answer to this many people flooding its arcane streets, and fifteen minute journeys take an hour or longer. Tonight, Charli has cemented her command over her own cultural moment – but we knew that anyway. This time, PARTYGIRL feels closer to the close of something.

—

—

Words:
Photo Credit:

—

Join us on WeAre8, as we get under the skin of global cultural happenings. Follow Clash Magazine HERE as we skip merrily between clubs, concerts, interviews and photo shoots. Get backstage sneak-peeks and a view into our world as the fun and games unfold.