I genuinely don’t know what I love most about this video. Is it the little vape that Charli steals from Daniel, balancing it elegantly between her lips while she DJs like a 2024 incarnation of Don Draper puffing on Lucky Strikes? Is it her perfect lingerie outfit? Actually, I think I know: it’s Daniel’s steady, sweet, near-silent presence as he watches his girl work. You know what they say: Behind every strong woman is a man with a drink hyping her up.
As a devoted student of Charli’s lyrics, I appreciate the fact that she doesn’t often center her relationship, though I can’t help feeling a little thrill whenever she does sneak in a reference to her fiancé. “George says I’m just paranoid,” she sings about her feud with an unnamed rival who is, uh, definitely not Taylor Swift on “Sympathy is a knife,” and on the Daniel-produced “Club classics,” she rattles off an ode to going out on the town with her man: “I wanna dance with George, I wanna dance to SOPHIE.” A straight boyf you can actually dance with and not just awkwardly shuffle next to? We all know how rare and beautiful that is, and if we don’t, we should; after all, Chappell Roan warned us about the phenomenon of men being boring at the club on her track “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl” (“So, I take him to this bar, this man wouldn’t dance / He didn’t ask a single question, and he was wearing these fugly jeans.” Lesbianism made some points!)
When my very own boyfriend—who is not cishet and therefore can dance—went to see Charli perform with Troye Sivan on the Los Angeles leg of their Sweat tour recently, he came back with a little souvenir for me in the form of proof of Charli and Daniel’s love. “Hi, George! He’s here!” Charli announced onstage while performing “Sympathy is a knife,” and that little “hi” is so much more romantic to me than any overblown confession of love ever could be. Not to be too much of a parasocial Jewish mother, but: get married already, you crazy kids! Have Troye officiate in his mellifluous Australian accent! Let Rosalía do the cigarette bouquets! Make Molly Gordon and Rachel Sennott read an embarrassing poem at the ceremony like Carrie Bradshaw had to do at that weird couple’s wedding that one time!
