While Charli XCX might have sung, “It’s a knife when the mean fans hate the nice fans” on her remix of “Sympathy is a knife” (featuring Ariana Grande), those lyrics can now be repurposed to: “It’s a (hurts so good) knife when the old fans troll the new fans.” This little amendment relates to Charli’s 2020 track, “party 4 u,” recently going viral as a result of OG “Angels” showing love for it on TikTok (though that doesn’t mean that post-Brat fans haven’t gotten in on it as well). To that end, the significance of choosing this song is that it was created in the years between the release of XCX’s mixtapes, Number 1 Angel and Pop 2, and originally planned for being potentially included on the latter. In other words, it’s a song that came about when the Charli fans a.k.a. Angels could be effortlessly certified as “real” because there was no Brat train to jump on yet (nor was TikTok a “dominant force” to make everything so accessible/easy-to-disseminate to faux acolytes).
Alas, now that true devotion must be visually verified through Coco Montrese-level perfect lip-syncing of XCX’s “deep cuts,” the Angels chose a song with a complex verse that requires being delivered as rapidly as “party 4 u.” Indeed, the quickness with which Charli sings the verse is part of the intensity of the challenge, and one that differentiates old fans from new fans (or “mean fans” from “nice fans,” if you must) via the ability of certain fans’ ease in lip-syncing it. Mainly because those lyrics have been “inside them” for much longer.
As for the record that “party 4 u” appears on, How I’m Feeling Now, it would surely not exist without coronavirus. For when 2020 rolled around and XCX was in the midst of carrying out her plan to record material for two new albums (right on the heels of 2019’s Charli), gears quickly shifted as it became apparent that the then novel virus, Miss Rona a.k.a. Covid-19, was going to upend the entire globe (not just China). Changing tack (as many musicians were forced to), Charli took the opportunity to, in lieu of what she had planned, make an extremely “of the moment” album. A time capsule of life/making art in quarantine. Which also incited her to let her guard down in terms of collaborating with fans on the record in a way that she never would have were it not for the pandemic’s sweeping limitations on socializing IRL. In short, XCX was just bored enough to do it like this.
And, as such, many fans were able to give their input on songs, including the suggestion of which “old” songs of hers she should rework. This being a desire of hers that she expressed during a live stream in early April of 2020. And while “Interior,” a song written during the True Romance album cycle, was suggested, XCX ultimately went with, well, her own interior decision to rework “party 4 u” instead. Compared to other songs on How I’m Feeling Now, “party 4 u” is actually one of the “mellower” ones, sonically speaking. For, while the other songs bear a “SOPHIE-like” quality in their intent to disrupt and “annoy,” “party 4 u” is the only track apart from “C2.0” produced by A. G. Cook alone. In other words, with just one “Cook” in the kitchen, it’s able to maintain its overall “flow,” instead of meandering (usually with violent stabs) the way many of the other offerings on the album do. It’s also the perfect lead-in to the track that follows, “anthems,” which is the musical equivalent of watching Project X (a movie that Charli has stated is her favorite).
As for the verse that OG Angels are wielding to prove their much-longer commitment to Charli than the Brat newbies, it goes, “You could watch me pull up on your body/Like it’s summer, take my clothes off/In the water splash around and get you blessed like holy water/I don’t know what you were waiting for/You know that I’ve been waiting for you (I only threw this party for you)/If you saw my tears, would you touch me?/Kiss me on the mouth, say you love me?/Leave a message, tell me you’re sorry?/Hit me right back, hit me right back/Why you treating me like someone that you never loved?” With regard to who that accusation is directed at, many believe it has to be Mike Kerr of Royal Blood (an ex that she was dating around the time “party 4 u” was made), what with Charli mentioning his June 19th birthday in the lyrics, “Birthday cake in August, but you were born 19th of June” (and yes, Charli went even further, specificity-wise, than Lana Del Rey on “Chemtrails Over the Country Club” in terms of alluding to a boyfriend’s birthday).
That such a detail would only really be known to the die-hard Angels is also part of the “party 4 u” allure. Charli herself, all too aware of what an OG fan favorite the song has been since its early inception (back in the days when she was only playing it during live sets), even felt obliged to express her surprise and gratitude over the track’s sudden entry at number eighty onto the US Spotify Viral 100 chart (because, of course, TikTok has spurred the need for charts that pertain to “viral traction”). Of the song’s sudden belovedness, Charli took to Twitter to write, “it’s p crazy that this song is suddenly getting love in this kinda way. i know this song means so much to so many angels. she’s a cutie <3.”
Needless to say, she means the Angels that existed well before these Brat phonies, who took far too long to comprehend the majesty of XCX’s music. The Angels who were even given a songwriting credit on How I’m Feeling Now—namely, for “anthems.” Though, now, after making it such a hit, perhaps XCX ought to consider giving them a retroactive honorary credit on “party 4 u.” With the asterisk, “Only Angels that were with me prior to 2024.”
