Charli XCX Opens Up About Fame’s Ups and Downs in Honest Substack Post

Charli XCX has detailed the intense highs and numerous lows that come with pop stardom in her first, painfully honest blog post for online discussion group Substack. 

The British singer developed a niche following of fiercely loyal fans following the release of her debut album, True Romance, in 2013. 

But the unprecedented commercial success of BRAT, her sixth LP, over the summer of 2024 has earned her a significantly broader fanbase and placed her in the same pop pantheon as superstars Taylor Swift and Adele. 

Reflecting on her life in the public eye, Charli, 33 – who married The 1975 drummer George Daniel in July – admits global fame has inevitable ‘pros and cons.’ 

Launching her new Substack platform with a blunt assessment of her lifestyle, she wrote: ‘One of the main realities of being a pop star is that at a certain level, it’s really f**king fun. 

‘You get to go to great parties in a black SUV and you can smoke cigarettes in the car and scream out of the sunroof and all that cliche s**t.

‘At these parties you sometimes get to meet interesting people and those interesting people often actually want to meet you. 

‘You get to wear fabulous clothes and shoes and jewelry that sometimes comes with its own security guard who trails you around the party making sure you don’t lose the extortionate earrings sitting on your lobes or let some random person you’ve just met in the bathroom try on the necklace around your neck that is equivalent to the heart of the ocean.’ 

She adds: ‘You get to enter restaurants through the back entrance and give a half smile to the head chef (who probably hates you) and the waiters (who probably hate you too) as they sweat away doing an actual real service industry job while you strut through the kitchen with your 4 best friends who are tagging along for the ride.’ 

And the Cambridge-born star admits the privileges that come with fame often present some of the biggest obstacles. 

‘You get to feel special, but you also have to at points feel embarrassed by how stupid the whole thing is,’ she writes, admitting the vacuous nature of her job is most evident when she’s around those who have known her since childhood. 

‘Sometimes being a pop star can be really embarrassing, especially when you’re around old friends of family members who have known you since before you could talk,’ she adds. 

‘The discrepancy in lifestyles becomes more and more drastic the more successful and paranoid you become. 

‘As a British person the longer you stay in LA the more you lose touch with the realities of certain things, but that’s why being a pop star can also be seriously humbling too, especially when your old friends mock and ridicule you for caring about something absolutely pointless.’ 

Despite her enormous success, Charli claims being a woman in the public eye comes with its own set of challenges because ‘some people are simply determined to prove that you are stupid.’ 

She writes: ‘I’ve always wondered why someone else’s success triggers such rage and anger in certain people and I think it probably all boils down to the fact that the patriarchal society we unfortunately live in has successfully brainwashed us all. 

‘We are still trained to hate women, to hate ourselves and to be angry at women if they step out of the neat little box that public perception has put them in. 

‘I think subconsciously people still believe there is only room for women to be a certain type of way and once they claim to be one way they better not DARE grow or change or morph into something else.’ 

Following her BRAT triumph, the singer, whose real name is Charlotte Aitchison, announced earlier this year that she was writing the soundtrack for Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. 

Discussing the writing process, Charli posted a statement on her Instagram story which said: ‘After being so in the depths of my previous album I was excited to escape into something entirely new, entirely opposite.

‘When I think of Wuthering Heights I think of many things. I think of passion and pain. I think of England. I think of the Moors, I think of the mud and the cold. I think of determination and grit.’

Wuthering Heights is released on February 13, 2026.