Words by Arye Dworken

When listening to Charli XCX’s limited goth-pop output, one would assume she’s a child of the ’80s, yet Charlotte Aitchison missed that decade entirely by two years. And the frizzy haired British ingénue makes no apologies about nostalgia for times never experienced firsthand, either.

But then again, just about everything Charli does is unapologetic. During our interview, for example, she eats two slices of exceptionally cheesy pizza while carrying on a completely cohesive conversation about her spotlight-seizing stage outfits (midriff-baring belly shirts, catsuits, an earlobe-latched nose piercing that’s drawn blood before), epiletic dance moves, and the seemingly embarrassing songs she wrote and recorded as an adolescent, “!Franchesckaar!” and “I Wanna Be Darth Vader.”

“The expectations [based on those songs] were so low,” explains Charli, “that the new stuff will really impress them.”

By “the new stuff,” she means the mixtape (Heartbreaks and Earthquakes) and EP (You’re the One) that dropped this week. Here’s the full breakdown…