One of the great things about being a musician in the internet age is that you don’t need to have a record deal to release your music – you can simply upload it and try and get people to listen to it.
The internet never forgets, though, so if you eventually go on to become a famous pop star who, say, creates the defining cultural moment of summer 2024, you’re going to have to live with the fact that your ‘early stuff’ is still going to be out there.
Yes, it turns out that – perhaps unsurprisingly – Charli XCX is no great fan of 14, the mixtape that she self-released when she was, you guessed it, just 14.
“God, I hate that album so much,” Charli says in a new interview with Variety. “I haven’t listened to it for a decade, at least. It was sort of transitional – …