!UNFINISHED! !STAY AWAY FOR NOW PLS!

The "Von Dutch" Rollout and Stan Culture

February 29th, 2024

How an unusually long single rollout brought out the worst in the Charli XCX fandom.

The single cover for Von Dutch. Featuring Charli wearing a baby blue dress atop a wooden dresser on her hands and knees.

I asked Charli XCX fans to summarize the rollout for her new single "Von Dutch" in one sentence. Here are some of the responses I received (it's mostly just random snapshots of people venting):

"Excessively long."

"I'm tired of how Charli teases her songs for a whole month."

"This era is inducing psychosis in the minds of angels everywhere."

"Annoying people annoy me while I wait annoyed."

"The fact VD still hasn’t leaked is incredible."

And these were the tamer reactions.

It's abundantly clear: the Angels are fed up with this...extended rollout, which, to the dismay of many, has become the standard formula for a major label single rollout in the TikTok era. Tease the catchiest part of the song relentlessly for two, three, four weeks, cross your fingers that TikTok picks up on it and creates a trend, and make it an instant smash before the song even releases.

It's natural to be frustrated that the enticing new snippet of your future favorite from your favorite artist isn't released yet. What sets the Angels apart, however, is the sense of entitlement that many of us seem to be feeling. What's so bad about Charli (more likely, Charli's team) trying to game TikTok into producing a hit? Isn't that our dream? Charli finally getting mainstream recognition again? Where did the entitlement come from?

The problem is that us Angels are spoiled. Charli is a prolific artist with a discography stretching back as far as 2008. She has hundreds of unreleased "Vault" tracks that the Angels are absolutely obsessed with collecting, not to mention the legendary unreleased XCX World. She's hardworking to a fault, and doesn't seem to give Google Drive security a second thought. When she's not rolling out an album, Angels can rest assured that we'll hear some freshly leaked unreleased song for us to gobble up in the meantime.