Charli XCX: ‘I wrote my new single for Hilary Duff’
By Nick Levine
Charli XCX has revealed that she wrote her new hit single for Hilary Duff – but the former Disney star turned it down.
Charli, 21, from Hertfordshire, co-wrote Icona Pop’s massive smash I Love It, and appears on Iggy Azalea’s US Number One hit Fancy, and now finds herself in demand as a pop songwriter.
Earlier this month (June) she cracked the US Top 40 with her new solo single Boom Clap, which appears on the soundtrack to hit teen film The Fault in the Stars.
“I’ve had that song for about a year, I wrote it with [Swedish hitmaker] Patrick Berger,” Charli recalled in an interview with MTV. “My number one project as a songwriter is to write for Hilary Duff, so when I heard about this, I was like, ‘F**k! Are you serious?! This is my ‘in’! I’m going to make a Hilary Duff album!’”
However, Duff’s team didn’t react to Boom Clap with quite as much enthusiasm as Charli had expected.
“We sent over Boom Clap, but they came back and were like, ‘This isn’t cool enough for Hilary’. I thought I was a cool writer, but maybe I’m not. Hilary didn’t want my song. What a life-ruiner,” Charli explained.
Charli then decided to record the song herself, and at the time of writing, Boom Clap has climbed as high as number 29 on the US Billboard Hot 100 singles chart. It will be released in the UK on July 20 and you can watch the video below.