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Charli XCX teases Rina Sawayama collaboration on Instagram

The singer shared a 2022 sneak peek with fans

By Joe Goggins

Charli XCX is working on new music
Charli XCX (Photo: Terrence O'Connor)

Charli XCX has teased a new collaboration with Rina Sawayama on Instagram.

In a multi-slide post on Sunday (December 19) captioned “2022 sneak peak [sic]”, Charli shared a video in which she’s flanked by two dancers, performing to what appears to be unreleased material from her fifth album, ‘CRASH’, which is due out in March.

Another slide shows a text message exchange from October between herself and Sawayama, discussing their highly anticipated track. “Our voices work so well together,” said Sawayama. “U sound AMAZING,” was the reply, with XCX adding that Sawayama “seriously crushed it”.

She had previously played a snippet of the track last month, during a livestream with fans. The new tease comes after XCX was forced to cancel a collaborative performance on Saturday Night Live last Saturday (December 18), after stricter COVID restrictions forced her to scale back her live crew. She had been due to play her latest single, ‘New Shapes’, with Caroline Polachek and Christine and the Queens. 

“Due to the limited crew at tonight’s taping of SNL my musical performances will no longer be able to go ahead. I am devastated and heartbroken,” she said in another Instagram post. “It can’t happen this time but I’ll be back! I am currently safe and healthy but of course very sad. Please look after yourselves out there and make sure you get vaccinated if you haven’t already.”

The SNL performance was not the weekend’s only musical cancellation in New York linked to the tightening grip of COVID-19’s Omicron variant; LCD Soundsystem pulled the final three shows of their twenty-night stand at Brooklyn Steel, reversing an earlier decision to soldier on with the gigs, citing a flurry of requests for refunds as well as the worsening situation in hospitals. 

“You good people who want to return your tickets and try again another time have spoken, but so has the new info, the hospital capacity, and those of us in the band, crew, and venue,” said James Murphy’s group in a statement on Instagram. In the UK, artists including Jessie Ware, Coldplay, The Charlatans, Paul Weller and Supergrass have cancelled shows over Omicron concerns in recent weeks. 

Last week, XCX unveiled the first trailer for her upcoming documentary, ‘Alone Together’, which chronicles the making of her Mercury Prize-nominated 2020 lockdown album, ‘How I’m Feeling Now’.