"A thrilling hostile takeover by a pop star at the peak of her powers" was the headline of the Guardian's pathetically fawning, desperately eager-to-please five-star review of Charli XCX's tedious, mediocre, plasticky, conceptual jerk-off of a Glastonbury set.
A thrilling hostile takeover by a pop star at the peak of her powers. Yeah, alright mate 👍 A hostile takeover thrilling a pop star at the peak of her powers. A thrilling peek at the powers of a pop star taking over; hostile. Peak hostile star pop takes over, thrillingly. Thrilling! Peak powers! Her take over! Pop star! Hostile! Pop takes over her thrill peak star. Hostile pop stars of the world unite and takeover.
Those are all words. All meaningless words, like the Guardian review. Every one of the 538 words prematurely ejaculated onto the page by the simp chosen by the Guardian to write its metaphorical hand relief of a review is meaningless, pathetic, fawning, desparate and just plain wrong.
This is the reason we started UNCUNT in the first place. Not simply because the pop stars of our time are cunts but because those employed to critique them are fundamentally incapable of doing their job. You will note I have called the Guardian simp neither a critic nor a writer. There is no music writing anymore. There are no music critics. There are just fawning simps. It's pretty much the same with film. How one pines for the days when Peter Bradshaw would give scathing one-out-of-five reviews to shit film after shit film.
Because that's the thing isn't it: if something is shit and you write about it in a national newspaper, it's your duty to call it shit. Anything else would be a dereliction of duty.
We started UNCUNT to make a point about the disappearance of a critical faculty in music journalism. Idiots such as Charli XCX et al are just the collateral damage of us critiquing people who should be doing the critiquing themselves. Cunts like this Guardian simp, who apparently felt that Charli XCX's set was so good that he spent the first paragraph writing instead about Kanye West (one of the biggest cunts the 21st century has produced thus far). A simp who should, in any just world, have his retainer contract terminated with immediate effect.
Before we go any further, I should clarify that I'm not using "simp" in the incel/manosphere/misogynist sense. I despise those people. I'm using it to call the bloke a cunt.
When we went away – UNCUNT, I mean – we didn't really expect it would go this far. Mainstream popular culture, I mean. D'you know what I mean? Like, seriously? When we left off, we were just joking really. Things weren't great, yeah, culturally, were they? They were a bit dire, we know. We get it. It was a bleak time. Kings of Leon and all that. It was bad. But look where we've got to now. Fuck.
It's not okay is it. I mean, jesus god. It's really not okay. Like, Glastonbury has just happened and a huge chunk of the audience decided to mark the occasion by going to watch a sort of AI presence headlining the not-mainstage. No one's quite sure what those stages are called at Glastonbury are they. The M&S Food stage? The Rumbelows Cup stage? The illegal rave stage? The Currys-PC World stage? You know?
It's bad these days, culture, isn't it though? It's not good, is it? Like, I don't bother actually consuming it but that's because, at a glance, it's utterly disheartening. Sabrina Carpenter etc. Is she an AI? It's hard to tell these days isn't it? Is she a spin-off? A remake? D'you know what I mean?
Charli XCX, or Cunti XuntCXunt as I like to call her. Wait, that came out wrong. I don't like to call her that. It just tripped off the tongue, you know. It's probably not cool, is it? Calling a successful young woman a cunt, I mean. It's really in bad taste. Especially in this day and age, where women are now marketable in so many different ways compared to the past where it was more important to marketeers that they simply got their tits out.
I mean, Cunti XuntCXunt does get her tits out too, don't get me wrong. Of course she does. I mean, why wouldn't she? That's a big part of her act. At least I think it is; I've not really had time to nail down what is and isn't a big part of her act to be fair. It is all an act, right? Or is it real?
It's so confusing these days isn't it? Where's Ariana Grande gone? She was in that film with the green woman wasn't she. Was that all part of the brat campaign too or was she a different shade of green?
It's weird isn't it, this brat thing. What is it and why have we been forced to hear about it for over a year? Won't it fuck off? That's what everyone's a bit confused about. Some people are like "oh right, yeah great, I get it, this is a banger" and others are like "please bring the assisted dying bill into law because if this is modern culture I'd rather be dead."
brat is excretory waste-pipe bowel-felch isn't it? It's fucking shit, isn't it? It's the opposite of banger. It's diarrhoea shat into an ALDI bag then passed around and wanked into.
There's my review, you simp cunt.
Yet in response we've got people in the music press telling everyone it's good. I say "music press". There is no music press anymore is there. That's part of the problem. In the good old days of the NME circa 1970 to 1995, that magazine was never scared to slag people off – even good people!
Today, with no NME to speak of, no Melody Maker, no anything, the mainstream publications are too scared to offend or simply critique artists, lest their labels or conglomerate-associated brand sponsors decide to pull advertising. It's pathetic.
During Charli XUNTcXUNT's Glasto set (I hate when people say "Glasto", I'm doing it ironically here but if you say it in real life, you're a cunt) everyone I know was watching either Neil Young or Doechii. You know, artists who were playing actual music, and quite well as it happens. But we all at one point or another, having noticed that the Pyramid stage crowd was thinned out, flicked over to see what all the Charli XCX hype was.
I messaged people, saying, "This isn't even music, it's just marketing and PR." To which, the replies from mates included:
"It felt more like a gym instructor running a session."
"I think it's what they call TikTok music."
"It's a terrible noise and she isn't even making it – it's all a backing track."
"Music specifically designed to pop off on social media trends but otherwise unlistenable."
"Was she miming the whole set?"
"A pleather bra and pants must be really hot in this weather"
"Charli XCX is one of the shittest things I've ever seen."
"Add this to the list of things in the world that are rubbish now."
All of the above throwaway reviews are better than that written by the Guardian simp. It wasn't just Charli CuntXCunt getting rave reviews at Glasto(nbury). All three of the main headliners on the Saturday night got 5/5 in the Guardian. Pathetic. Fawning. Every headliner was flawless? Perfect? Yeah, alright mate 👍
Thankfully, The 1975, the worst band to have ever headlined the Pyramid stage, did not get 5/5 for their Friday night crime against humanity, and rightly so. They did however get 4/5 and were inexplicably described as a "world-class band". The drummer is of course the soon-to-be-husband of Charli X-cunt-X, so maybe there's some fawn overspill going on here.
My mate Suzanne messaged me during the 1975's assault on common decency, saying, "Not enjoying the 1975. The singer – if he isn't abusive and/or fascist – seems like an absolute prick." Thanks for that, Suzanne, I'll nick that. I won't publish your surname in case you get fired from your job.
To clarify, the above 'reviews' were not written solely by grumpy old Gen Xers like me. There were grumpy millennials in there too. Which begs the question: who is Charli XCUNTX making this drivel for? She's a millennial herself but is this mind-numbing trash aimed at Gen Z and younger?
It wasn't just the Grauniad. The Evening Standard review said: "good camera work, neggy crowd work that everyone loved, twerking in artificial rain." Neggy crowd work? Really?
"Slower moments of the set were less saggy and more cathartic, like a breath of fresh air during a come up," the bukkake-style piece went on. Saggy? Neggy? Can you fit in any other words including the letters "ggy"? Eggy? Foggy? Doggy? Boggy? Joggy onny?
Of course, if one googles the meaning of the adjective "saggy", one finds it defined as "tending to sink or bulge downwards under weight or pressure," e.g. "the saggy mattress groaned under my weight."
Although I'd rather cut off my own cock and balls with a Stanley knife than endorse the Daily Telegraph, I found myself nodding to the bit in its review, no doubt written by a neo-Nazi, which described the show in the style of a middle-aged dad trying not to wank over pictures of his mid-20's kids' mates on Instagram. "Charli, whose real name is Charlotte Emma Aitchison, gyrated and crawled around on all fours in a black bikini and shades, wiggling her bum at the camera and, at one point, snogging her own arm."
Look at me nodding along to the Telegraph. Maybe I've become more right wing as I've got older. I haven't by the way, that was a joke. I despise right-wing people and would have some of them shot. I did however find myself wondering about the health and safety regulations when the stage appeared to set on fire at one point.
On the Pyramid stage, Neil Young, a few weeks shy of 80 years' old, wasn't twerking in the rain or using shit visuals. He was playing music. On the Simod Cup stage, meanwhile, Doechii did twerk a bit but, similarly, also performed music.
UNCUNT started out as an attack on music journalism and the music industry. Yes, we slagged of musicians too – we're doing that right now as you've probably noticed – but that's just because they got in the way of us calling the music journos cunts. I hate when people say "journo". I'm doing it ironically here but if you say "journo" in real lfe, you're a cunt.
Charli XCX wasn't always shit. She basically sold out. And I do mean basically. When she started off, making demo tapes in her bedroom for hipsters on MySpace as a sort of one-woman teenage electro art project, she probably didn't even want to get signed to a major label. At some point, someone in the research and customer insight department must have suggested she start taking her clothes off and going for the pop market. Even then, when she first began to crossover, she released a fantastic dance-pop song.
If she had stayed doing this sort of thing one could get behind it. But instead she is now making 'rise of the idiots' anti-music and getting universal plaudits, awards and headline slots.
She wasn't always a cunt, Charli XCX, and she probably isn't really a cunt in real life. But she is a cunt. There, I said it. That's what you came here for isn't it? Sue me. Cancel me. Bend me over and peg me if you will. She's a cunt.
How's that for a hostile fucking takeover?
