Charli XCX has a confession to make. When Harry Styles thanked her and her contemporaries during his artist of the year acceptance speech at last month’s Brit Awards, she was nowhere to be found — and now she’s revealing why.
The “Crash” singer appeared on the Thursday (March 2) episode of The Project and shared that her appearance at the Brits was meant to be spicy from the start. “I was just gonna go and cause trouble because I feel like if they’re not going to take female artists seriously, then why should I take them seriously? So I just went to stir the pot, basically,” she recalled on the program.
Ahead of the awards show on Feb. 11, Charli went viral for calling the awards show out for a lack of female representation in the artist of the year category. “I’ve heard a lot of chat about the fact there weren’t enough females in album cycle and that’s why no one was nominated. But I was in album cycle and I had a [U.K.] No. 1 album [with Crash],” she told a reporter on the red carpet.
When Styles accepted the artist of the year award, he used his speech to highlight the women left out of the category. “I’m really, really grateful for this and I’m very aware of my privilege up here tonight,” the “As It Was” singer said during his acceptance. “So this award is for Rina [Sawayama], Charli [XCX], Florence [Welch], Mabel and Becky [Hill].”
According to Charli, she was not mentally present for Styles’ show of admiration during his acceptance speech. “I have such a confession — I was actually under the table at that point…with my friends, we just had too many bottles of champagne and we were doing bad things, so I actually missed that,” she told The Project. “And then Rina, who Harry also mentioned in that speech, was kicking me: ‘Get up, get up! Harry Styles is saying your name!’ and then I was like, ‘Oh that’s so lovely,’ but I missed it. That’s very sweet of him. It’s cool of him to use his platform to acknowledge my point.”
Up next for Charli is a new two-album contract, though she has yet to share what record label she has signed to. Watch Charli talk about her time at the BRITs in the video above.
