Naughty Pack: Charli xcx’s Top 20 Songs – Ranked! | Charli xcx

20. Claws (2020)

Such was the extent of fan involvement in the How I Feeling Now album that the Claws title was decided by online voting. In contrast to the album’s more serious depiction of lockdown, it celebrates being trapped with someone you love, although the rattling percussion track adds a vague sense of unease.

19. Taxi (2016)

According to a fan database, there are 260 unreleased songs of Charli xcx existing on the internet. Taxi, from the canceled album XCX World, remains their most famous for a reason: the funny, snotty saga of a mid-week blind date so spiraling out of control, it’s a perfect example of Charlie and producer Sophie’s twisted approach to pop music.

18. Apple (2024)

The poppiest track on Brat — which was neglected roughly halfway through the recording sessions — Apple’s earworm tune carries a lyric about strained parental relationships and generational trauma. It also sparked a TikTok dance craze and earned her a Grammy nomination. The remix, featuring the Japanese house, sounds sweeter – and equally gorgeous.

17. New Forms (with Caroline Polachek, Christine and the Queens) (2021)

It’s easy to see Pratt’s predecessor, Crash, as Charli xcx trying to fit into standard ideas about mainstream pop music, rather than forging her own distinct path. But its highlights are very high: New Shapes uses Christine, Queens, and Caroline Polaszek in a ferocious confrontation of ’80s electro.

16. Roll With Me (2017)

There was a rule of thumb that Charli xcx reversely released her best songs not on her albums but on her mixtapes. Listening to Roll With Me, you can see how this idea blossomed: producer Sophie provides relentless drumming and sparse, extremely spiky electronics, while Charli brings the situational pop wit.

15. Nuclear Seasons (2011)

If you’re looking for early proof that Charli xcx was different, this track from her debut EP, which would later become the opener to her debut album, is a good place to start. The lyrics combine relationship trauma with post-apocalyptic imagery and the suggestion that popular culture is a state of decadence. The music replays pop music from the 80s. It’s also insanely attractive.

14.360 (2024)

“I took my own path and I made it / I’m your reference, baby… I don’t care what you think”: 360 is the show’s swaggering (or perhaps stunning) Pratt-era sound and a great pop song, whether you opt for the original or the remix with help from Robyn and Young Lin.

13. I Got It (2017)

The Pop 2 mixtape sounded like Charli

12. The House (2025)

However, while you may have been expecting Charli xcx to follow Brat, you’re unlikely to have expected it, starting with the soundtrack coming to Wuthering Heights: a distorted electronic tribute to the Velvet Underground, full of drones, noise shards and a guest appearance from John Cale, which explodes into angry, distortion-laden industrial noise at its climax.

11. Club Classics (2024)

Pop music didn’t covet songs about nightclubs, but few captured the feeling of ecstasy and euphoria on the dance floor in the small hours like the club classics. It feels chaotic, relentless, artificially accelerated, and celebrates complete abandonment: “Sweat marks on all my clothes… I want to be blinded by the lights.”

10. Gone (with Christine and the Queens) (2019)

Another collaboration between Christine and Queen, “Gone” improbably turns the lyrical theme of crushing social anxiety — “I feel so unstable / I hate these people” — into anthemic pop. There’s a strong sense of catharsis about the way it explodes from the meditative verses into an upbeat, upbeat chorus.

9. Backseat (with Carly Rae Jepsen) (2017)

Charli xcx and Carly Rae Jepsen once drunkenly conspired to make an album together; Their IRL one-on-one collaborations are great. Thematically, Backseat feels like two different songs — one about a breakup, the other about the alienating nature of celebrity — joined by a chorus (“I’m on my own”) and a shifting, innovative electronic backing.

8. The Boys (2017)

By modern xcx standards, Boys is musically and lyrically straightforward – a giddy fantasy of lust with an appropriate backing of daydreams – but utterly charming and exhilarating. Bonus points for the video, which featured the Vampire Weekend lead singer lurking between his displays of muscular desirables.

7. Anthems (2020)

Written and recorded while Covid raged, and its lyrics collected collectively by fans online, “Anthems” perfectly captures those moments of lockdown when the desire to, in Charlie’s words, “get out, let off some steam, and let some discomfort” become overwhelming. If his voice was so shrill that it sounded a little crazy, well, that’s what it felt like.

6. Boom Applause (2014)

Originally intended for former Disney star Hilary Duff (she turned it down), the songwriter turned Boom Clap into the highlight of her second album, Sucker, and her first Top 10 hit in the US. No wonder: it’s so catchy and admirably elegant, as the chorus swirls amid squeaky, pulsating vocals — even though she hates it now.

5. Next Level Charlie (2019)

A paean to her fans, filled with references to her previous work, Next Level Charli’s brilliance lies in the gap between the music, which lulls the listener into believing they’re getting a dreamy 80s-influenced song, and the lyrical tone of voice: “In the rave – go forever and ever!”

4. Von Dutch (2024)

You could call Von Dutch a diss track — rumored to be aimed at FKA twigs — but it sounds more like an infectious expression of self-confidence: someone who knows she’s reached her imperial phase, and created an irresistible landmark pop song almost entirely out of grinding, accelerating noise to prove it.

3. Vroom Vroom (2015)

A step left which garnered quite mixed reviews upon release, Vroom Vroom now feels like the birth of Charli xcx 2.0, parlaying her songwriting skills with the skeletal and avant-garde sound of PC Music’s Sophie. A decade ago, she felt completely out of touch with mainstream pop trends. Today it seems incredibly prescient.

2. A Very Confusing Girl (2024)

A class apart from the usual pop star genre writing a prickly song about her fellow pop stars, “Girl, So Confusing” is a stunning ballad and an intimate epic. The original depicts a charged relationship with Lorde, accompanied by a vibrating and roaring synthesizer; The remix showed Lorde herself responding to criticism and poignantly explaining her own issues.

1. Track 10 (2017)

On the face of it, the No. 10 song, from her mixtape Pop 2, is unlikely to top the charts. It’s a remix of the demo — eventually reworked into Lizzo’s 2019 single Blame It on Your Love — with what looks like a placeholder title. But it’s also a masterpiece: an experimental and genuinely moving epic song. The words sound like a drunken confession from someone who can’t stop her fears of ruining a relationship. Anyone else might have been tempted to play a song like this live, but somehow, the overload of theoretically off-putting electronics – the glitches and distortion, the deliberately excessive auto-tune, the icy rave synths at its peak – only amplifies its effect.