…the guessing game
I must confess I’d never heard of Charlie XCX. Not even in the vague way that I used to try and appear cool with new bands that I’d heard mention of on the radio or in gig listings. It was usually accompanied by an indeterminate hand wave and a non-committal nod “yeah yeah…I’ve heard of them”. Literally nothing. Not one bell did ring.
Which rendered the game my wife and I play while walking the dog particularly difficult. It’s a pass-the-time sort of game that we bust out when our well-trodden route becomes too familiar. It neatly combines our love of people watching with knockabout knowledge of popular culture and general fashion trends. In my own mind I have dubbed the game “guess the gig”. In it, participants must, with no prior knowledge of the gig on that evening, predict the band purely by observing the attendees. It is a tough game. Knowing a lot of bands is obviously a help. But also, fashion has become quite nuanced and nowhere near as tribal as I remember it growing up. Sam Fender was a particularly difficult evening, Paul Weller, less so. Charlie XCX was impossible.
The realisation that this was going to be special dawned on me as I neared the pub at the bottom of the hill and a man with a twisted moustache stepped out of the station in a purple shift dress and a parasol. As I walked over the bridge, rubbing shoulders with an army of men in tight tops and tighter shorts and women clothed in everything from bikinis to ballgowns, I began to think that this was an artist that the Spotify algorithm may not have thrown up for me previously. Walking along the path at the bottom of the meadow the crowd thinned to dogwalkers alone, then as I followed my normal route, tramping up the hill and by the palace, I began to swim against the gig crowd again. There seemed to be no discernible look other than “good time”. When I reached the bottom of the hill and saw the artist, I was intrigued enough to listen to the top tracks on my way home. Not my cup of tea but I could see why you’d dress up for the gig. I then spent the rest of the walk thinking that people shouldn’t be so wilfully individualistic, that if they adopted a specific XCX haircut or bottlecaps on their boots or something, it just might make things easier for me in the future.
