Why Charli XCX Says She ‘F***** Herself’ With ‘Break the Rules’
Charli XCX continues to carve out her own niche in the pop star hierarchy. She is more than willing to experiment with her sound and explore new ideas with leftfield producers while also earning mainstream success that expands her reach in the music industry. One of Charli’s earliest breakout singles was “Break the Rules” in 2014. The song earned plenty of praise at the time. But the artist has since stated that, in hindsight, she would’ve left the track on the cutting room floor.
‘Break the Rules’ was one of Charli XCX’s first big hits
“Break the Rules” was the second single for Charli’s second album, Sucker. The rebellious pop song contains hints of pop-punk and dubstep.
“The song is inspired by a lot of the things I was listening to whilst in Sweden at the end of last year,” she said to Buzzfeed at the time. “I spent about a month making a punk record and covering songs by Swedish punk bands like Snuffed By The Yakuza and stuff. This song was written when I came out of the other side of that punk phase and translated it into something more pop. Obviously, it’s about not giving a f***.”
It’s not the most sophisticated song. But it is catchy. And the pure attitude Charli displays in her vocals struck a nerve with a number of critics. They cited the track as one of the reasons why she was viewed as a young star on the rise. The appeal of “Break the Rules” was less clear to the general audience. The single is certified gold in the US but topped out at No. 91 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.
Despite the acclaim, she regrets making the song
Whenever the topic of “Break the Rules” comes up, Charli reaffirms her distaste for the song. In a 2017 interview with Q Magazine, she was firm in her dismissal of the single’s merits. “That was so bad. I hate it. I wrote it at a writing camp for other artists with Benny Blanco and Stargate, and I was like, ‘Whoever sings this song is an idiot.'” After it made it onto the album, she said, she realized “I f****** myself.”
In 2020, the artist referred to the song as the “one song in my life that I didn’t feel good about when I was making it” in a career-spanning conversation with Red Bull. (The discussion of that album begins around the 25:40 mark of the video.) Charli had a much more nuanced perspective on “Break the Rules” when speaking to Vulture in March 2022. She acknowledged that she only put the song out because the label convinced her it would be a hit.
“I will say, when I play it, it does go off. I would never play it at my own show. It’s like a little party trick that I bring out. When I was opening for Taylor [Swift], a lot of people who were at the show and were completely confused by a song like “Vroom Vroom” would actually get the same kind of experience from “Break the Rules” in that they would be able to identify me as ‘a girl with attitude,'”she said. “The song was familiar. So, that’s why it’s still in my back pocket, just in case.”
Charli still feels the need to check people who dare to place the single too high in her discography. She agreed with a fan account on Twitter who took issue with the website Consequence of Sound naming “Break the Rules” as her best song ever.
Charli XCX is much more proud of the rest of her catalog
Charli’s albums have branched out in various directions since the Sucker days. Now she has the clarity of vision to know which songs she should give to other artists and which to keep to herself.
Her main takeaway from that album was to double down on her own taste with little regard for how people with less eccentric interests (aka Atlantic Records) would react to her music. The bet has worked out for her. Charli is far from the most prominent artist in the world. But her frequent collaborations with the PC Music collective and the late electronic innovator SOPHIE helped her create her own hyperpop lane with very few imitators.
In that same Vulture piece from above, the singer was asked to define songs by specific superlatives. The track she wishes got more attention was “Stay Away”, the first single from her debut album True Romance.
Pop 2 highlight “Unlock It (Lock It)” gets some overdue praise (“We knew this was an iconic bop”) after getting some run on TikTok. But the songs Charli says she is most proud of are “Vroom Vroom” (“a f****** masterpiece”), “Track 10” (“so euphoric and symphonic in the way that it builds”), and Crash’s “Constant Repeat” (“the perfect marriage between my more experimental instincts and very classic pop.”)
