Charli XCX admitted she was “really affected” by negative comments online because she has been feeling “a bit low, insecure and quite frankly unstable”.
The British award-winning popstar, 29, announced she was stepping back from Twitter last month after receiving backlash from fans over her forthcoming album Crash.
In an exclusive chat, The Beg For You singer revealed it was “one of the first times” she has been really affected by trolling online.
Speaking from New York, she told The Standard: “Normally I’m quite good at compartmentalising and understanding that the internet isn’t a real place and people are clout-chasing and trying to be heard.”
But the songstress said the comments got to her more than usual because her “general mindset has been a little bit volatile throughout 2022 so far”.
She continued: “When I did engage in some negative commentary online it affected me more than it normally would just because I was feeling a little bit low and insecure and quite frankly unstable.
“It’s important to treat others the way you want to be treated and that’s how I would like to go forward with my online presence.”
— Charli (@charli_xcx) February 10, 2022
But the singer has now returned to social media since the trolling and she vowed to continue to be herself.
She said: “I’m kind of a bit like, f*** it, I don’t really feel like I have ever been anything other than me.”
Her hotly anticipated album Crash is out on March 1 and Charli XCX teased its release as “probably the most pop album that I’ve made for quite a long time”.
It will be the last under her current record contract with Atlantic which she signed when she was a teenager.
She said she wanted to “explore what it would be like to play the role of a major label artist in 2022”and “how sexualised we can be perceived”.
Having been in the music industry since she was 16, Charli XCX has a longstanding reputation for championing gender equality and she was recently named as Spotify’s Equal ambassador.
But the singer admitted having a ‘women in music’ category can feel like both “a blessing and a curse”.
“It’s really important to talk about the female experience, but I’m just as relevant and important and influential as my male counterparts,” she said.
“I don’t need to be in my own category because I’m a woman. I am just as impressive and iconic.
“It’s hard to discuss it without putting yourself in a box. It’s a real problem that I think needs to be fixed from the roots up.”
In her latest campaign, Charli XCX has teamed up with Scottish fashion designer Charles Jeffrey and Samsung to celebrate the launch of the new Samsung Galaxy S22 range.
The film was styled by Jeffrey, a former GQ breakthrough designer of the year, in which she is surrounded by nature including a large flock of sheep in the dead of night.
The singer said it was “very much an interesting, once-in-a-lifetime experience to be doing all of that in the dead of night”.
She added: “I have always been very inspired by club kids and the multiple different waves of nightlife fashion culture that has happened… And generally the night time is always something that has been very inspiring to me.”
