Keeping with the current motif in pop culture of how there are many different versions of ourselves (e.g. Anitta’s Versions of Me and Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All At Once), Charli XCX has decided to be just as of-the-moment with her latest single from Crash. Unapologetically sampling Robin S’ “Show Me Love,” Charli remakes it into her own on “Used To Know Me,” a video that highlights how, once a lover chucks us (or rather, you chuck them), they’ll never get a chance to know the versions of you that will come. And that’s somewhat ironic, considering that a person doesn’t truly change until they’ve experienced a romantic rejection.
Based on Charli’s arrogance (on par with Anitta’s in “Boys Don’t Cry”), one would think she hasn’t experienced very many. And yet, the theme of “Used To Know Me,” with its “out from under your thumb” lyrics, would suggest otherwise as she accuses, “You had me ’round your finger, you had me on the floor/I used to be your angel, now I’m walking out your door/You say I’m turning evil/I’ll say I’m finally pure/Shine bright in my reflection, think I lost myself before.”
Although Charli keeps her creative collaboration with Imogene Strauss going (who also worked on the “Baby” and “Every Rule” videos) as creative director, she’s this time enlisted Alex Lill to full-stop direct. As someone who has collaborated with The Weeknd and Phoebe Bridgers on their own creative visual concepts, he seems the perfect person to handle Charli’s balance between underground, “fringe” innovator and mainstream pop goddess. A line she’s toed for quite some time until finally deciding to declare with Crash that she’s been an international superstar all along.
And it is especially the superstar who can be quite messy (literally and figuratively). Ergo, “Used To Know Me” opens on clothes strewn all over the floor, including panties that read: “Sell Out” (more tongue-in-cheek, wink-wink flair). Charli XCX drives home that point by then plugging Amazon in a major way as she removes a pink feather boa from one of the company’s signature boxes. A corporation-glorifying move that also still renders her a “relatable queen.”
Later in the video, she’ll also flash a pair of underwear beneath her cheerleading uniform, pointedly bearing the Atlantic Records logo. But this comes well after Charli’s “getting ready” process that will include not only a deluxe bath, but also the donning of a slew of different outfits to demarcate her changing, chameleon-like phases (in other words, a few years in the life of Madonna). The first of which is a very Julia Fox-inspired leather bondage look that she sports with a slicked-back ponytail in the kitchen of what somehow looks like the same “scientist’s observation room” as the one Ariana Grande had in the video for “34+35.” Except here, we have a giant “X” to mark the spot where Charli might tie up her garçon du moment (either that, or it’s meant to represent the chains she herself has recently broken free from).
From there, the series of changes occurs more rapidly, with one scene being of “Aerobics Charli,” another of “Cheerleader Charli,” another of “Sexy Nun Charli,” another of “Poolside Vegas Showgirl Charli,” another of “Rave in a Box Charli” and, finally, another of “Marie Antoinette Charli” (again, very Madonna).
This last incarnation (or perhaps, depending on how you look at it, this “genesis” incarnation before the fuckboy came along) is meant to indicate that she’s taken back her queenly state, never to endure sentiments like, “Held me back, tied me up inside a cage” again. Which is why Charli also notes, “Had to change my life ’cause I knew you’d stay the same.” And there’s probably nothing worse for a Leo (which Charli is) or Sagittarius than a person who can’t adapt to a reinvention with the same ease as they do.
Therefore, Charli concludes, “Couldn’t see you were standing in my way/I can see clearly now, now, now” before plopping down on her bed (next to a piece of cake fit for Marie Antoinette, of course) exhausted from all the transformations. Which makes one think that, whoever her ex is in this “purely imagined” song scenario, maybe there was something to be said for his stagnation. Because just as you can die like a (certain kind of) shark from not continuing to move, you can also die from never switching off, as it were.
