"I've tried to immerse myself in Japanese culture," says Charli XCX, international hit maker and Britain's next big pop-star-in-waiting. Of course, that's the sort of comment you might expect the 22-year-old to make on the eve of her first headline shows in the country this week, bringing her breakthrough third album, "Sucker," to sold-out gigs in Toyko and Osaka.
But these are no insincere words: After all, there can't be too many girls who idled away their teenage years in the comfortable, middle-class setting of Hertfordshire, England, gorging on J-pop and watching experimental Japanese cinema.
"I just loved how otherworldly Japan seemed," Charli tells me as we squeeze onto a small leather sofa in the dressing room of Brighton's Concorde 2 concert venue a couple of hours before her debut U.K. tour starts. "From all the movies and photographs that I'd seen, it looked so exotic. When I was younger I was really into Perfume, who I still love, and I watched a lot of Japanese films like "Akira" and "Ichi the Killer," crazy movies like that. It was always my ambition to go there as soon as I could."
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