Charli XCX’s Pop Genius Was in Sharp Focus in San Francisco

In a white dress, Charli XCX lightly swayed on the small stage while performing “Stay Away.” The crowd of 500 had come, curious to see the new British sensation who had broken through as a songwriter on Icona Pop’s “I Love It.” Her original ’80s-tinged, gothy pop showed individuality and — importantly for a 21-year-old on her first U.S. tour — potential.

Obviously, this wasn’t the Sweat tour with Charli XCX and Troye Sivan at the Chase Center, but rather Charli XCX’s first-ever Bay Area show at the San Francisco club Slim’s in 2013. I’d gone to it enamored with her debut album True Romance; she joked with the crowd, gave it her all, and in lieu of a deep catalog, covered Bow Wow Wow’s “I Want Candy.” The whole thing was charming, unpolished and promising.

Eleven years and seven albums later, that promise reached its apex Sunday night as Charli dominated a very, very sold-out crowd of 20,000 in San Francisco, still riding high on this year’s dominant brat. She’s also graciously chosen to lend her clout to Sivan, a tour co-headliner on paper but a junior-league colleague in spirit, whose songs are fine but pale in close comparison to his tour partner.

Ask any one of the #8ACE00 green-bedecked fans last night in “Gay Son” or “Thot Daughter” shirts to explain brat summer, and they’ll riff on a rotation of themes: living each night like it’s your last, looking extremely hot, going out and getting high with friends and strangers and being young and in love with the world. Which is to say, every teenage summer since modern times, except this year, like those before her, Charli’s been able to soundtrack — and siphon — the horniest season.

That soundtrack sounded downright celestial Sunday night in a high-energy performance drawing heavily from brat. “Club Classics,” “Von Dutch” and highlight “Sympathy Is a Knife” boomed with authority as Charli danced like a glitching Street Fighter character on molly around the stage’s bare-scaffolding aesthetics of a warehouse rave. Whether playing to the camera beneath the stage’s transparent catwalk or reaching to fans over the furthest corners of its railings, Charli painted a canvas of the album that I’d always pictured when listening to it, minus any big gimmicks, pyrotechnics or backup dancers.

“Apple” got its viral dance moment with a group of fans on the jumbotron, “Vroom Vroom” and “I Love It” got the crowd pumped and deluxe edition track “Spring Breakers” was a nice surprise. But it was during “Girl, So Confusing” that I noticed the crowd singing along to the verses louder and more passionately than the chorus, a testament to Charli’s focus as a songwriter, and her ability to connect.

Sivan’s appeal is a little more inexplicable, juxtaposed as it is on the Sweat tour with Charli’s pop genius. All of the edges that Charli leaves jagged and honest, he sands off. With undulating choreography and undeniable sexiness, his performances of hits like “Youth” and “One of Your Girls” drove the crowd into a frenzy. Writhing on the satin sheets of an onstage bed, making out with his backup dancers, country two-stepping in chaps and a Stetson: Sivan knew the playbook for connecting with a very gay crowd.

But take away the early YouTube fame, the gyrations of his backup dancers and the brilliance of his music videos, and what you’ve got is playlist music that might make for a decent 3 p.m. slot on the Twin Peaks stage at Outside Lands.

Sivan’s singing is limited (“Rager teenager!” came off like a monotone Drake melody; other songs’ higher notes were handled by a backing track), and his stage patter consisted mostly of saying the words “San Francisco” as many times as possible. Checking my notebook from last night, I found myself writing “He has the range of a fencepost and the stage presence of a wet receipt on the sidewalk.”

That’s harsh, I admit. (You might have gotten an opposing view if Charli and Troye’s tour publicists didn’t ridiculously deny press requests from Bay Area queer journalists.) But Charli wasn’t always such a hypnotizing artist either. After that first San Francisco show at Slim’s, it took years and no small amount of risk-taking, of experimenting and sometimes failing, to refine her singular voice as a writer, singer and performer. Sivan is a perfectly fine avatar, but I don’t know if he’ll be adventurous enough to try similar risks, and that’s what it will take for him to fully come into his own as an artist.

Summertime is over, anyway, but you’d never guess it from the rapt crowd last night, screaming and dancing and on their feet for the entire 90 minutes, even during the ballad “Track 10” or during set-change lulls. After performing “1999” together, and a closing duet of the “Talk Talk” remix, Charli and Sivan bid farewell to the sea of green, and it spilled out into the street flush with rapture and, yes, sweat.