Charli XCX: Photos From the Billboard Women In Music Shoot

My big struggle is deciding whether I care more about being the biggest artist I can be commercially or being critically sound,” Charli XCX says. “Then sometimes I land in this place of not caring about either of those things.”

For most of her decade-plus career as both a songwriter for other pop stars (Gwen Stefani, Camila Cabello, Selena Gomez) and a beloved solo performer herself, Charli has managed to strike an enviable balance between the two pop poles she has just described. The 31-year-old British artist has made inescapable hits like her 2014 Iggy Azalea collaboration, “Fancy,” which spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and more sonically experimental pop — including her celebrated pairings with SOPHIE, with whom Charli pioneered hyperpop — while establishing herself as a tastemaker with a track record for working with cutting-edge artists like Yaeji, Rina Sawayama and Caroline Polachek before the industry fully catches on.