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After a Brat summer, the Essex-born singer confirmed her talent on the bewilderingly popular American comedy show
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While pop stardom has many upsides, it also has a few negatives. One is the obligation to host hysterically unfunny American comedy “institution” Saturday Night Live, aka the place laughter goes to die. Adele had to submit to this unpleasant ritual in 2020, and now it is the turn of Essex-born singer and producer Charlotte Aitchison, aka Charli XCX.
It’s been a big year for Charli, who went from cult artist to mainstream entertainer with her Brat album. It was a decent-sized hit – topping the UK charts and peaking at number three in America – but an even bigger internet meme. Aitchison cleverly sold the concept of “Brat” as more than a sound. It was a vibe and lifestyle choice that she defined as a sort of elevated messiness – a sensibility reflected by the LP’s lime-green colour scheme. For a surreal moment, it even seemed possible that her support of Kamala Harris might meaningfully impact on the US Presidential election after she tweeted, “Kamala is Brat”.
This turned out to be a figment of social media’s imagination, but Charli is nonetheless still riding a wave. Coming ahead of a sold-out UK tour, her Saturday Night Live appearance showcased her charisma as a pop star and, more surprisingly, her talents as an actor and impressionist.
She made her big entrance after a quintessentially unfunny “cold open” sketch in which actors portrayed Donald Trump and Joe Biden while looking and sounding nothing like them (Alec Baldwin joined as Robert F Kennedy Jr, Trump’s incoming health secretary). That dreary drum-roll led into Charli, who gamely slogged through the traditional Saturday Night Live opening monologue.
“I’m a triple threat,” she said in a laugh-free three-minute address. “In England that means I sing, I drink, I smoke”. That chill you feel is your funny bone shrivelling away to nothing. She was joined by comedian and former SNL Kyle Mooney, whom you won’t have heard of but who wafted in on a cloud of smugness – followed by Charli explaining that “keeping it real is very Brat”.
Charli was up against it in trying to get out of SNL with her dignity intact – but she did well given the circumstances. A dead-on-arrival sketch in which the show’s regular cast impersonated celebrities auditioning for the movie version of the movie Wicked benefited from her excellent Adele impersonation. She also paid a weird tribute to this year’s other big breakout singer, Chappell Roan, in a skit that featured a comedy version of Roan’s Hot to Go! It wasn’t amusing, but Charli pulled off a decent American accent.
There comes a point when watching Saturday Night Live where, inevitably, you begin to lose hope and wonder if it will ever end. Last night, this arrived midway through when comedian Andy Samberg delivered a pop song about being a nosy neighbour, which threatened to inflict PTSD on sensitive viewers until Charli XCX turned up as his busy-body wife and rescued the song. She later impersonated Victoria Beckham in a bizarre sketch about Thanksgiving and then appeared in a bit where she pretends to have snogged the star of Shrek the Musical – a random and grim non-gag.
Amid the avalanche of anti-humour, the only reason the episode was worth watching was for Charli’s fantastic performances of Brat highlights 360 and Sympathy Is A Knife. These confirm how special she is – her music catchy as anything but also edgy and brimming with attitude.
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