Charli XCX review, Village Underground, London: Pop dynamite

★★★★★

When Cardi B teased her "Girls" collaboration with Rita Ora, Bebe Rexha, and Charli XCX she tweeted: “After I finish my album I’m collabing with 3 artist that I’m cool with .They not big but they soo talented."

Being a "nobody" is a strange accusation to level at a somebody like Charli XCX - she has 3 million devoted followers, and has been responsible for some of the most recognisable tracks of the last five years, including "Fancy", "Boom Clap" and "Break The Rules", not to mention a cluster of songwriting credits for other pop stars such as Selena Gomez, Blondie, ALMA and Camila Cabello.

Perhaps a victim of her own penchant for collaborations with big US names and time spent touring America where she is less recognisable, Charli seems to have developed a complex about it. At her show in London tonight, she announces: “I might not be the biggest, but I am the best”. If she’s internalised some strange US-inherited anxiety about being unknown. It’s a shame - because she has nothing to worry about.

You don’t need to know a single Charli XCX song when you roll up to a Pop 2 show - by the time the set finishes, you won’t be able to forget them. A litany of bangers awaits you, wave after wave of club-shaking, bass-laced ecstasy. One whiff of a chorus and you find yourself carried along in the fray, melody after melody crashing together into a blur of sweat and booming speakers. As the tide of each song washes out and back in, only the hooks are left behind, catching in the mesh and chains of the club kids in the audience.

Charli is fresh from supporting Taylor Swift on her worldwide tour, and watching her tonight, the pairing makes sense. Much like Swift and her girl squad, Charli is queen of collaborations. She churns out the special guests relentlessly - Rina Sawayama joins her to blast through Backseat, SOPHIE DJs the second half of the set, and Tommy Cash pops up to rap a new track - "Mona Lisa" - with A. G. Cook.

But beyond that similarity, Charli and Swift are both expert craftswomen. Swift is a scientist in the way she composes meticulous pop magic, every rhyme and melody honed with precision, delicately touching the aural sweet spot. If Swift is a scientist, Charli is a nuclear technician. If Swift touches that sweet spot, Charli slams it with a baseball bat.

If she’s worried about those bigger US names, she needn’t be. She’s inimitable. Hers is weapons-grade pop. It’s filthy, latex- and neon-clad, London underground, banging bubblegum magic. The exposed brick basement of tonight’s venue is her home, the club kids and drag queens on stage and in the audience are her family.

On "Vroom Vroom", Charli claims everyone in the room as her brethren, singing “all my friends are princesses”. She appropriately finishes the set with an unreleased track, "Girls’ Night Out". That’s exactly what it was: her language is the secret one of girls and gays.

As they spill out onto the streets of Shoreditch and make their way home, their platform shoes pound out a reminiscent beat on the pavement and Charli’s unique brand of pop heroin replays in the brain: “I'm a dreamer, step, step out the Beemer, 'bout to do it big, stretch, stretch limousine, uhhhh”. They’ll be humming along to every chorus she killed, every bridge she blew up - because she’s pop dynamite.