Charli XCX: I Got Party-Thrown in the Face

Charli came on at 10:45 p.m. and closed Orange at 11:50 p.m. An hour and a quarter, but it felt both like 20 minutes and like three days. That’s how intense the energy was, how extreme her shifts in pace, staging and volume. She opened with 365, Von Dutch and Club Classics — bang bang bang — without a second of warm-up. Straight in, hard, as if someone had shouted “ACTION!” on a rave-themed porn set.

And then there was Vroom Vroom. A song that, according to Charli herself, is her absolute favorite to perform — and you can feel it. She lights up. She hits the turbo. She turns into a car, a machine, a mechanical brat-head with makeup and boots. There was no dancing here — just floorboards being ripped out of the ground by sheer euphoria.

It’s hyperpop, but not ironic. It’s girl power, but not cheesy. It’s queer, but not battle-ready. It’s the whole package. And she has her shit together — she’s on, she’s in sync with every transition, she looks like someone who arrived straight from a club in hell and intends to party-thrown you in the face.

There wasn’t much in the way of scenery. No dancers. No band. Just Charli, a few light installations and the sound of the internet boiled down to one long TikTok in festival format. And it worked. It was brutally efficient. Not a single empty gesture, not a “how are you, Roskilde,” not one false note — she drove it through like someone who had decided to dominate.

I looked around and saw the crowd in ecstasy — women, men, the young and the not-so-young, dancing in synchronized bliss as if this were the 2025 pop exam and we had all done the reading. There was a sense of community you only get when someone dares to take the reins. No mosh pits, no bro dudes with draft beer and elbows — just dancing.

The only tiny drawback? The set could feel stretched. Some transitions ran a little long. As if someone backstage had said, “Buy us some time, Doechii isn’t ready yet.” And there you stood, wishing for a little more pressure. But Charli is smart — she knows that if you just keep crushing the audience, you lose them. You have to give them a breather. And then smash them again.

It was obvious that Orange Stage was the right frame for her brat universe. Everything dramatic was amplified, not diluted. She looked like the lead in a Netflix series you’d binge, but not quite dare to watch alone. Her wardrobe choices, her movements, her timing — everything pointed to the fact that she isn’t just a good performer. She’s an icon in the making. Someone people will call their generation’s Kylie Minogue in 10 years — just with piercings and ADHD.

And how liberating it was that nobody even tried to hide the theatricality. Everything was exaggerated. The mood, the tempo, the songs. It was both rave and opera, both TikTok and tragedy. And yet it was 100 percent real. It’s rare to stand in front of an artist who is both deeply calculated and completely present. Charli balances it all — and that’s exactly what makes her great.

Roskilde has had its highs and lows, and you could suspect the booking of playing it a little too safe by putting her on two years in a row. But when you’re standing there in the mud, getting flattened by Speed Drive and I Might Say Something Stupid, you forget all about curation and diversity balance. You just think: fuck, this is good.

In truth…

…the most impressive thing about Charli XCX is that she never tries to be anything she isn’t. She wants you to scream, dance and feel sexy. And she succeeds. She seduces without sucking up. She dominates without crushing. And she leaves behind a space where you feel seen — even in the rain, in the dark, in the middle of a field, among 60,000 other people.