Clearly, it was as much fun to make as it is to watch. To bring it to life, Charli and her creative director Imogene Strauss turned to Torso, the maverick photography and filmmaking duo behind the Mugler campaign films that broke fashion’s internet during the pandemic. “I had this concept that I wanted to be kind of physically attacking the camera, who I suppose sort of represents my ‘rival’ in the song,” she says. “I filmed a load of stuff on my iPhone and sent it to them, I explained I had this idea that was deeply rooted in camera tricks. I know they have this super expansive knowledge of camera rigging and how a camera can move; I’ve seen it in a lot of their work—particularly the films they’ve shot for Mugler—and so I knew they could translate my vision into something truly epic.”
As a jet-setting pop star who’s likely been on a million airplanes in her lifetime, how did it feel to, well, dance on the wing of one? “It was actually so scary,” she says, laughing. “I was in a harness so I was safe, but it had rained just before the shot and the plane wing had this massive curve to it—so sometimes I would just randomly slip and fall and slide towards the edge of the wing, which was terrifying. Fun though!”
The video is a balls-to-the-wall return that feels fitting for a song that more than lives up to the album’s title. (As the opening lyric goes: “It’s okay to just admit that you’re jealous of me!”) “It’s kind of a punch: aggressive, confrontational, icy, in-your-face,” says Charli of her decision to lead with “Von Dutch” as a single. “All the things a brat is. It just felt natural.”
The album’s clubbier sound, on the other hand, takes its cues from the east London warehouse parties where Charli staged her first performances as a teenager, as well as her love for the boisterous electro-pop of the late-’00s bloghouse era, particularly the artists who came up via the Paris-based label Ed Banger Records. “I just needed to go back there, particularly after how traditionally pop Crash felt,” she says of the dance-inflected sound. “I always work in contrasts—each thing I do has to be completely polar opposite to the next thing. Electronic music is also my true love, and at the beginning of my career I was starting out in raves in London, so it kind of feels like going back to my roots.” On “Von Dutch,” co-produced by her “Speed Drive” collaborator EasyFun, though, these references are whizzed up into something entirely fresh: A squelchy synth line threads its way through the song like a ribbon of rocket fuel, beginning as a pulsating growl, then erupting when the chorus hits into a squeal like tires hitting the tarmac.