Charli XCX proves her staying power at the Kia Forum in LA

The line for the men's room at the Kia Forum for Tuesday night's Charli XCX and Troye Sivan show was suspiciously long. Once inside, it was clear why: It was mostly women inside, dressed in Charli's shade of lime green from her summer LP Brat.

“This is like the only show where gender doesn’t matter,” one woman said to her friend, laughing in a fishnet crop top that was only slightly more opaque than the Juul cloud that followed her.

She was right. Charli's album release in June heralded the arrival of Brat Summer, the much-publicized season of desperation for a good time despite the global chaos of 2024. For a minute or two, it even defined Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign.

Charli XCX, who did not allow The Times to photograph her Forum show, strikes a dramatic pose during an earlier stop on her tour.

(Henry Redcliffe)

But how does an artist like Charli keep the fire burning when presidential candidates stop using her font?

This smart, ambitious and uncompromising electro-pop artist finally achieved the fame she had been searching for for almost two decades. Now she has to ensure that the music remains important for the next 20 years.

The start of a two-day stand on Tuesday showed the way forward. Charli – one of the most insightful and confident songwriters of our time – is not only a pop star, but also an artist who deals very well with the machine of fame and the joys and fears it wrings out of you. The only way to cope is to bring lots of friends.

This package tour with Sivan – an Aussie with a tantalizing falsetto who delved into blistering house music on last year's “Something to Give Each Other” – was booked long before Charli hit the A-list over the summer. Sivan is captivating and becomes more and more interesting as his music sounds like it belongs in the bathhouses of the Castro District.

This tour's round-robin format, featuring three or four songs from each artist before swapping them on the same set, demonstrated Charli's generosity and enthusiasm for collaboration. This flexibility and camaraderie will give her stability.

A short set by the convincing British singer, DJ and label owner Shygirl opened the evening with a fitting mix of pheromone-soaked, forward-looking electronics. Her album Nymph deserves arena stages and what a joy to see her find it.

Then Sivan took the baton with strobing odes to desire like “What's the Time Where You Are?” and “Honey.” Sivan has come a long way from the azure-eyed, incredible-cheekboned Seraph he embodied early in his career, and on club songs like “Silly” and “Rush” he danced like someone who has seen the range of human possibility in a Berlin fetish -Dungeon.

Troye Sivan performs with Charli XCX during his tour.

(Henry Redcliffe)

It also gave him room to take real risks, like the biting ballad “One of Your Girls”: “Give me a call if you ever get lonely / I'll be like one of your girls or your homies / Say what you “I want to, and I’ll keep it a secret.”

Charli, for her part, is no longer a secret to pop girlies, gays, etc. She was a dervish with black curls on one of LA's biggest stages, licking the Plexiglas stage floor while simultaneously flashing her underwear for the cameras as the insanely slutty Billie -Eilish collaboration “Guess” began (sadly no Eilish in person on Tuesday).

Charli's stage setup was minimal – no dancers, no band, just Charlotte Aitchison alone on scaffolding and a large LED rig. She seemed determined to strip her fame of all artifice and yet claim its pleasures for herself.

Seeing and listening to “Brat” was a vivid reminder of how smart this record is, feverishly assessing its place in the pop firmament in “Sympathy Is a Knife” and owning up to the jealousies and in “Girl, So Confusing.” Insecurities of public femininity.” “Brat” has pulled off one of the hardest tricks in pop. It's an album about how strange it is to be a pop star, made clear and relatable in the details.

While Charli bounced back and forth between club bashers like “Von Dutch” and “365,” she worked on older material like “Vroom Vroom” and tracks like “Speed ​​Drive” from “Barbie” to make the point that the This author's ambition and dedication has always been there.

Charli's late collaborator Sophie hovered spiritedly over the set, a producer in love with pop's emotional dimension but dissatisfied with its clichés. Kesha was at her side, reclaiming “Tik Tok” as the founding document of Charli's sultry aesthetic and polished songcraft. As Charli nodded to her after-hours Boiler Room DJ triumphs on “365” or thrashing on the floor on “Blame It on Your Love,” she changed what was possible for an artist of this level of fame.

Judging by the Chartreuse-clad Forum audience, Brat Summer may endure as Generation Z's own Margaritaville, a timeless mentality steeped in decadence and unruliness. Charli finally got what she wanted, but knows she has to move on.