Charli XCX and Troye Sivan Conquer Madison Square Garden: Live Review

Photos by Rich Fury/MSG/Getty Images for MSG Entertainment Holdings, LLC

As Charli XCX began her verse in “Girl, so confusing” at Madison Square Garden, you could see the frizzy mane of Lorde in the prop cage below the stage. I fumbled for my phone as I noticed her getting into position maybe all of six seconds before the entire sold-out crowd clocked her presence and erupted into a colossal roar. In all the shows I’ve seen, in all the arenas around the country, this could well have been the loudest audience explosion I’ve ever heard. In professional wrestling, this is called a “pop”—when the crowd deems whatever is happening in the evening’s scripted entertainment to be so extremely good it warrants an above-average ovation, something that registers beyond the normal cheers. Who wouldn’t want to see these two work it out at the live show?

And, also, is Brat wrestling? I was thinking about this as I watched Charli and Troye Sivan’s joint Sweat Tour hit absolute peak time with Lorde’s New York cameo. It had been a couple of years since Lorde appeared on stage in New York—though she was spotted at Clairo’s New York show last week, which made Vegas, or at least pop stans, set favorable odds that she would join Charli at MSG. This is such good writing, I thought while watching Lorde deliver her astoundingly good verse on the “Girl, so confusing” remix. I meant that in both her actual words and the narrative of the evening. Here was Charli XCX, one stiletto perched on top of the zeitgeist, so thoroughly in command of the crowd that she could have played Brat on Spotify with ads and everyone would have said, Yes, thank you. And, yet, here she was bringing out her New Zealand frenemy to sing a duet about their entangled jealousy, insecurity, sorority, and fame. It was so real. It was so fake. It was so Brat.

Before this triumph, the head of the new pop class, Addison Rae, came out to sing a winking simulacrum of pop music, namely “Diet Pepsi,” with Charli and Troye, and her remix of “Von dutch.” It was good, and the crowd popped at her entrance, too, but I nearly feel for Rae, whose appearance was eclipsed by the mere image and memory of Lorde and Charli strutting arm in arm up the catwalk as Lorde spat out, “You walk like a bitch.” In fact, I think the entire show post-Lorde felt like a collective processing of the incident. In the row below me, people were texting, posting, staring at each other in disbelief that they bore witness to Lorde and Charli together on stage. I think I’m still in disbelief, too.

That shouldn't be the takeaway of the whole Sweat Tour, even if it was the takeaway of this one gargantuan night of the Sweat Tour in New York. The goal of Troye and Charli’s austere, loud, lascivious evening is to take the sweet abandon of the club and scale it up to the arena. This mostly works! From Troye’s swaying Balearic pop gem “My My My!” to Charli’s 178-BPM, bolt-rattling “Speed Drive,” the setlist and production design try to overwhelm the senses to make the arena disappear. The crowd—5% of whom wore bug-eyed wraparound glasses, 10% dressed in chartreuse Brat green, 40% in some kind of crop top—was all in. By the time Troye finally uncorked “Rush” and Charli trotted out “I Love It,” the floor beneath me shook and the entire place was crawling with arms thrust skyward and shoulders moving side to side.

At two hours, the Sweat Tour feels like it sort of just gets going before it’s all over. Two hours in the club is nothing, as evidenced by a throng of people on the floor dancing to the house music after the lights came up. To keep the momentum going, Troye and Charli alternate segments, giving the audience about three songs each before tagging in the other one, doing a quick costume change, and coming back out for another mini-suite. Charli’s outfits included, but were not limited to: a kind of Morticia Addams sheer gown, a kinder-gothic thing Marla Singer from Fight Club would wear, a long fur coat, a corset with cutoff shorts, an I <3 NY T-shirt. Troye’s outfits included, but were not limited to: a buckle-heavy leather harness over a sleeveless shirt, basketball shorts so big I wrote down “google large basketball shorts era NCAA,” a lace-up bustier, firefighter pants with hi-vis stripes, assless chaps with a bedazzled codpiece.

While Charli could simply stand on stage to greet her adoring public, Troye had to work a little harder for it. The good thing is that he’s such a consummate pop showman, and his dancers—six or so athletic bodies unfamiliar with sleeves or carbs—are actually the underrated highlight of the show. Their choreography is magnetic, hyper-athletic, even funny: At one point, one guy rolls under a line of jumping men like a moving hurdle; I do not know how he did that so quickly and smoothly. Charli mostly sticks to her normal stage blocking—running to and fro hyping up the crowd, thrusting and pumping—though she once did spit on the plexiglass floor and the in-house camera filmed her licking it up from underneath like one of those shots from Breaking Bad. That felt most like the club, the kind of thing you see that gives you permission to be a little abnormal, prurient, and secretive. It’s admittedly hard to do when you can see Billy Joel’s name hanging in the rafters.

Outside of the throbbing club-pop, two songs really stood out, both by Charli. The first was “Track 10,” the climax of 2017’s Pop 2, here repurposed as a reprieve and a swaying sing-along. Before the show, a friend and I were discussing whether or not you could dance to “Track 10,” but the point was that you don’t dance, you just lean back, smile, and sing the chorus: “I blame it on your… looooooove.” The other surprising moment was “Sympathy is a knife,” a secret weapon that I think took the entire arena by surprise when the chorus hit. The aggression of it walloped the arena. The place was vibrating. “Crowd at PEAK” I wrote down—and this was all before Lorde came out. You can’t turn an arena into a club, but, right now, Charli XCX can fill any room. She is a Brat for all seasons.

Notebook Dump

• Charli played two versions of “Von dutch,” and neither of them had the cool wubby bassline, so actually ignore everything I just wrote.

• Lots of people attempted to wear Charli’s wraparound shades indoors, in whatever manner they could; one was like an oversized “Macho Man” Randy Savage situation.

• Troye replicated the keg stand and a lot of the choreography from the “Rush” music video on stage, which got another huge pop from the crowd. Most recognizable choreography in a music video since… you tell me.

• Cocktail line incredibly long; beer line literally zero people.

• “Men’s room line is a thousand miles long; it’s honestly kind of beautiful,” said guy walking briskly past me on the phone.

Originally Appeared on Pitchfork