Charli XCX says she has come up with an “entirely new staging” for her return to Saturday Night Live after she was forced to pull out of appearing in December.
The English electro-pop star, 29, was due to perform alongside Christine And The Queens and Caroline Polachek, but a surge in US Omicron cases meant the show went ahead with a reduced cast and crew, and without a live audience.
Ahead of her performance this weekend, the singer-songwriter revealed she would be performing her new single Beg For You, which features Rina Sawayama, although she would not confirm whether her collaborator would also be appearing.
She told the PA news agency: “It was at the peak of the beginning of Omicron. It all fell through at the last minute which was really unfortunate and actually quite emotional.
“But I am really happy that I was able to go back and do it again. I am praying that no other forces intervene essentially. It is all looking good at the moment.”
Discussing the performance she had planned for December, she said: “We had been rehearsing together and Caroline was flying from the west coast to the east coast because she was on tour over there.
“It was a whole thing and unfortunately we weren’t able to do that performance this time because of schedules and things like that. So I have come up with an entirely new staging.
“I will be doing two new songs. I can’t really reveal much but I am excited.
“One of the songs I have never performed before so I thought why not make it easy for myself and do it for the first time on SNL.”
Her forthcoming album Crash will be last under her current record contract with Atlantic, which she signed when she was a teenager.
However, she said she still had not decided how she will be releasing music in the future.
She told PA: “Obviously I am still in it right now and I am not quite sure how I am going to feel.
“I wish I could give you some kind of scoop but I also really actually don’t know what I am going to do.
“But obviously the industry has changed so much since I signed my deal over 10 years ago and there are so many options out there for artists, more so than there were back then.
“But there are also people who I would count as family who I have worked with since I was 16 years old. So I can’t really tell you when I am going to do.
“But it is definitely a very interesting time from a negotiation standpoint. So I will just say watch this space.”
XCX stars in a conceptual film styled by Scottish designer Charles Jeffrey, a former GQ breakthrough designer of the year, in which she is surrounded by nature, including a large flock of sheep, at night.
The singer said it was “very much an interesting, once-in-a-lifetime experience to be doing all of that in the dead of night”.
She added: “I have always been very inspired by club kids and the multiple different waves of nightlife fashion culture that has happened…and generally the night time is always something that has been very inspiring to me.”
The film was created to celebrate the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S22’s Nightography feature.