‘We’re like brother and sister’: Yung Lean and Charli xcx in dialog

This story is taken from the winter 2025 difficulty of Dazed, which is on sale internationally from December 5. Pre-order a replica of the journal here.

Yung Lean and Charli xcx are kindred spirits. That may look like an unlikely factor to say a couple of Swedish rap sensation who sings of Gatorade and hell, and a British pop star whose club-wrapped confessions have echoed in all places from warehouse rest room stalls to the best echelons of American energy – however they’ve quite a bit in frequent.

Both began out as hungry outsiders: Charli DJing unlawful raves in London within the mid-2000s, Yung Lean (actual title Jonatan Leandoer Håstad) pioneering a brand new pressure of melancholic rap on SoundCloud within the early 2010s. In communion with leftfield popular culture previous and current, they’re masters of juxtaposition, dropping bleeding-heart lyricism subsequent to winking self-mythology, or kicking a easy digital drum beat behind a weighty meditation on relationships. They have each repeatedly defied Twenty first-century moulds of simplicity and comfort in favour of enigma and roads much less travelled, and, because of this, retooled the lingua franca of youth tradition. If you invoke the phrases “sad boy” or “brat”, who’s it you take note of?

Since the pair first met of their teenagers, consuming apple juice at a restaurant in Stockholm, their friendship has been a continuing via years of ravenous ambition, private maturation and stressed inventive impulses. Their shared love of movie has dovetailed in 2025 as they each made the bounce from stage to display screen, coming collectively within the solid of Romain Gavras’s ego-satire Sacrifice. Charli makes an look as “Mother Nature” whereas Yung Lean makes his feature-film debut, following the discharge of his fifth studio album Jonatan – a textured navigation of authenticity and movie star that brings his bamboozling array of pursuits underneath one roof. (Of his portray, which you’ll be able to see him practising on this story, he says, “I usually paint the same things, like a tree, a naked couple, symbols, a moon. It’s like caveman shit.”)

When Dazed speaks with the pair, they’re each in LA. Charli is at dwelling the morning after becoming a member of Lorde on the Kia Forum for a stadium-rattling remix of “Girl, so confusing”; Yung Lean is tearing right into a bunless burger at retro-styled seaside home The Bungalow, after concluding the primary leg of his Forever Yung tour and a 15-hour evening’s sleep.

Charli xcx: Are you having fun with The Bungalow? What did you order?

Yung Lean: The Bungalow is just too good! I ordered a burger with no bread and a burrata.

Charli xcx: You’re in your Chris Evans film star period.

Yung Lean: Once you get a style of the thin life, it’s arduous to return again. I used to be chubby for thus lengthy. [laughs]

Charli xcx: So, you’re one of many wisest folks I do know, however you even have an actual internal baby that could be very charming and candy. Do you assume you’ll dwell for a extremely very long time? And for those who do assume that, what do you assume 90-year-old Yung Lean can be like?

Yung Lean: I believe in case you have an enormous internal baby you then do have lots of knowledge. If I had been simply clever, I’d in all probability suck as an individual, however the steadiness is sensible. I hope I get actually outdated. 90-year-old Lean, I assume, can be foolish. He’d have lots of grandkids, like 30 of them, working round.

Charli xcx: 30?! That’s a cult.

Yung Lean: Yeah. I’ll must put in work.

Charli xcx: I’m excited that you just’re again in LA. The final time that we had been right here collectively you took me to a magic present. The magician requested all of us to select two halves of a ripped taking part in card and make a want, and if the 2 halves matched then it might come true. My playing cards didn’t match, so my want was not supposed to return true. But you requested me what I wanted for, and I very sheepishly mentioned, ‘I wish to be more successful and famous’ and also you laughed at me and mentioned, ‘You can’t want for one thing like that!’ Almost as if I’d wasted a want.

This was two years in the past, earlier than Brat. So truly, my want type of did come true. It’s additionally humorous that I used to be with you, as a result of I really feel a religious kinship with you in some methods. Good issues occur after I’m round you. I questioned for those who had ever felt that you’ve got some sort of magical energy?

Yung Lean: I believe you’re the one with the magical energy and also you simply don’t understand it. Good issues occur after I’m round you, too. I assume everybody can sort of manifest stuff, and that magician was fairly highly effective. [laughs] But I do consider in magic. In Sweden, earlier than Christianity got here, we had been pagans. There had been lots of pagan traditions. You can really feel it in America too. The Native Americans had been actually near nature, and they might do sermons and communicate to the spirits. I believe that also exists. I believe making music is like making magic.

Charli xcx: I like the way you sound while you’re singing. Do you’re feeling like you must get into a special mindset while you’re singing versus while you’re rapping? And while you look again at your catalogue, can you continue to at all times discover a piece of your self in a few of your older work?

Yung Lean: There’s this music I did after I was 12 referred to as ‘Söder Söder’, and in that music you may hear the whole lot that I’ve change into. It’s all there. The first artforms I did had been portray, graffiti and rapping. I used to be at all times freestyling with folks. I might run as much as native rappers and freestyle for them. Or I’d be at an afterparty, excessive and drunk, and freestyle. So that got here very naturally for me, and it nonetheless is pure.

Singing was the unnatural factor, and singing got here out at a time when the whole lot went sort of sideways in my life – my supervisor died, I had psychosis, yada yada. Then I began singing as a result of I felt so weak. I couldn’t get into the [rap] thoughts state. I didn’t really feel that swaggy. I felt extra like an outcast, like some Daniel Johnston psychological affected person who needed to sing. It didn’t come as naturally as rapping. They’re two various things, however I like mixing them. It’s extra about the place I’m in the mean time, and I’ve to remain true to the place I’m in the mean time or else I shouldn’t make music.

Playing a present is like being a gladiator. It’s fuck or battle: you may both fuck the present or battle it and run away

Charli xcx: After Brat, I felt actually uninspired by music. I don’t actually take heed to that a lot music anyway. I take heed to you, Lou Reed, Sophie, AG Cook, Benjamin [Bladee], George [Daniel, Charli’s husband and drummer with The 1975], and that’s sort of it. I’m not listening to lots of stuff and I’m not notably hungry to find out about new music. It’s by no means impressed me, actually.

I’ve at all times been extra impressed by movie. So I believe at that time, after I wasn’t feeling notably impressed by music, I wished to delve extra into a special inventive area. You have at all times carried out that. I’m blown away by the quantity of labor that you just’re consistently making, whether or not it’s sculptures, work, garments, music or, now, movie.

Yung Lean: I believe the elephant within the room is that we’re sort of like siblings. I perceive you. How you’ve been in movie, in world-building and [putting] little Easter eggs in music movies. I’m involved in that stuff too. I believe any artist that’s had an extended profession – from Kate Bush to Madonna to OutKast – has these little issues that change into a complete world. You and I’ve at all times been movie nerds. Pop tradition is my one real love.

Charli xcx: I really feel like we each have that factor the place creating issues makes us really feel alive and regular. When you say we’re like brother and sister, which we’re, I believe it’s as a result of we each have that.

Yung Lean: You have a factor that’s totally different from me, although. You’re like a machine. I is perhaps at dwelling doing ten work and ceramics and stepping into myself, however you could find the most effective scriptwriter, the most effective DOP [director of photography], and put collectively a complete TV present in, like, two weeks. There’s one thing social about your talent that’s similar to, boss woman. You have the social genius of selecting people who find themselves actually good at one thing and [bringing them together], but it surely’s nonetheless your imaginative and prescient.

Charli xcx: I wished to ask you particularly about Romain Gavras’s movie Sacrifice, which I’m in a tiny bit however you’re actually in. I felt genuinely emotional to see you taking up this new lane to such a excessive stage so effortlessly. How did you’re feeling seeing your self on the display screen like that? Were you scared?

Yung Lean: I used to be emotional too. I used to be emotional that we had been sitting subsequent to one another [at the premiere], and I had flashbacks of you shopping for beer for me after I was 17 in Stockholm and us being like misplaced little youngsters within the underground pop or hip hop world, and coming from that world into this one. We’ve each recognized Romain for ten years, so it looks like we’re doing one thing with our good friend, who occurs to be an excellent director. But I used to be nervous, and I didn’t really feel the identical satisfaction that I really feel from taking part in a present. Playing a present is like being a gladiator. It’s fuck or battle: you may both fuck the present otherwise you battle it and run away. Being on stage, there are all these feelings, and also you get all of it out. [With a premiere], we had been in a cinema. We had been sitting in chairs. It’s not the identical expertise.

Charli xcx: But did you’re feeling that while you had been on set? When you had been taking pictures, did you ever really feel that sense of cathartic launch while you would end a scene?

Yung Lean: I did. That was very totally different from seeing the movie. Being on set, in a number of the scenes that I did with Ambika [Mod], the place I might get pushed to be actually weak or indignant, that felt like making music. That felt like expressing myself. On the day of the premiere [in Toronto], I used to be extra like, ‘All right, let’s simply present up and look swaggy.’ Like, that is insane. There’s John Malkovich, there’s Anya [Taylor-Joy], there’s Vincent Cassel, there’s you and me. This is popular culture at a wild second. So I didn’t absorb that a lot whereas watching the movie, I used to be simply feeling the second. I actually desire a function the place I can entry extra darkness, perhaps. Or extra madness, or extra love. Just extra. I felt like I used to be touching one thing, however I couldn’t go all the way in which.

Charli xcx: You talked about going into the darkness a bit extra – I really feel like I can get swallowed up by my shadow self typically, however I’m working arduous on not doing that. I simply began doing this dream work stuff with an appearing coach, and it’s been actually attention-grabbing accessing components of issues that I push into my unconscious, and desires that I attempt to run from or dismiss as pure fiction.

Yung Lean: I believe, with the shadow self, you must discover it after which incorporate it into your self.

Charli xcx: What is your dream undertaking in movie?

Yung Lean: Have you seen that movie with Jack Nicholson, The Witches of Eastwick? We ought to do a reshoot of that. You can play Cher and I’ll play Jack Nicholson. [laughs] But to be critical about your query, I’d love to do one thing just like the movies that I’ve proven you or that we’ve talked about, like Lilya 4-ever, that miserable Swedish movie, or Ingmar Bergman’s horror movies. I’m additionally a sucker for 70s gangster movies which might be sort of poetic. I like Jonathan Glazer. I like surreal stuff, like Leos Carax. When I’m older, I wish to direct, however till then I’d wish to dip my ft into appearing a bit of extra and have enjoyable with pals. I wish to do one thing in my mom tongue as properly.

Charli xcx: I even have a query that I’ve by no means requested you earlier than. When we first met, you had been 15 or 16, and I used to be perhaps 17 or 18. We met at Drop Coffee in Stockholm, which remains to be considered one of my favorite espresso retailers there, and we drank apple juice collectively. I’ve at all times questioned, what had been your first impressions of me?

Yung Lean: I undoubtedly thought you had been extra fairly in actual life.

Charli xcx: Don’t get bizarre about your sister now.

Yung Lean: No, no. You’re a married lady and I’ve love for George, I simply must put that on the market. But I additionally felt that you just had been actual. At that time I hadn’t actually met anybody who made music outdoors of my pals, and there was no bullshit, you already know? You had been curious, you had an actual purpose, you had been hungry. Of course you want the thought of glamour and fame – so do I, all of us do – however you had been on a quest. You had a imaginative and prescient. I assumed you had been cool.

Charli xcx: I assumed you had been cool too. I used to be very intimidated to satisfy you. I liked your work a lot… But I keep in mind pondering you had been unbelievably precocious. You had a lot information about a lot stuff, and you continue to do. Your reference factors on the age of 16 had been fucking loopy. I keep in mind feeling so impressed by you, which I nonetheless really feel now. You have an encyclopaedic information of artwork. I additionally keep in mind pondering you had actually thick hair.

Yung Lean: My hair was actually thick on the time… When I used to be a child and me and my sister would take baths, my mum would put eggs in our hair. It should have been some outdated Russian dwelling recipe for thicker hair, I assume.

Charli xcx: You let me do your hair in Toronto and I made it look insane and you then shaved all of it off.

Yung Lean: You made me appear to be an Essex grandma. But to return to your query, I believe I did recognise this factor in you. It sounds a bit unusual, however earlier than [we met] I wasn’t simply residing in Stockholm. I went to kindergarten in Belarus and considered one of my first recollections in life is somebody placing a dummy cone hat on me as a result of I’d hit this trainer. I used to be residing there with my mum and pop, and we had been totally different from everybody. After that, we lived in Vietnam. We turned sort of like a bit of entity that moved round on the planet.

Charli xcx: I undoubtedly relate to what you’re saying about outsiderness. I by no means felt accepted the place I went, whether or not that was in class for being half-Indian and never blonde, or not totally referring to my Indian self as a result of I used to be half-white. There was this bizarre, displaced feeling, the place I couldn’t fairly match into both place. Then with music, being outdoors of the mainstream and eager to be in that world, but additionally actually eager to reject it. It created this concoction that allowed me to [make Brat]. I really feel like I was very afraid. Not since 2016, actually, however previous to that I used to be very afraid. I really feel such as you’ve at all times been fairly fearless. Or is that naïve of me to say?

I actually desire a function the place I can entry extra darkness, perhaps. More extra madness, or extra love. Just extra

Yung Lean: No. I’ve been fearless, however my entire life has been very random. Ever since I used to be a child within the dummy hat in Belarus, my persona was at all times sort of large, and that’s simply the way in which it was. When I used to be in grade 5, there could be all these older children like, ‘Yo, we want to punch Jonatan, we want to fuck him up.’ And I used to be like, ‘I’m like ten years youthful than you guys. Why? But go on then, do it.’ And they might by no means do it. I’ve at all times created some type of emotion with folks. Whether they thought I used to be cocky or they preferred me or they hated me, there was at all times an emotion. I believe in case you have that, you say ‘fuck it’. People are both going to hate me or they’re going to like me. I can’t management it, so fuck them. Then you change into fearless.

Charli xcx: I really feel such as you don’t get hate that a lot now although, and I don’t even imply on-line, I imply in life. Whenever I’m with you – and it’s truly actually annoying, to be trustworthy – everyone’s like, ‘Oh, Jonatan is so cool! He’s the most effective!’ You had been a success at my marriage ceremony. When the marriage was over everyone was like, ‘Jonatan! Jonatan! La la la!’ You have a really effervescent factor that you could [know about]. Of course, you may’t get big-headed about it, as a result of in any other case the attraction may go.

Yung Lean: That’s the factor about magic. If you speak about it, then it’s gone. I assume I attempt to deal with folks with respect. I believe respect goes a great distance. If you’re insecure, you then begin turning into imply and pushing folks down. I’ve been round too many people who find themselves imply and I’ve seen an excessive amount of evil. People like me greater than my music. I assumed my music and my artwork was the shit and I used to be simply no matter, however truly it’s the opposite method round. So you’re hitting worldwide with the music. I’m hitting at a marriage.

Charli xcx: I believe it’s cool you referred to as this report Jonatan, as a result of folks don’t essentially know your persona via the work that you just create. Some of it is extremely avant-garde. You’re not very on-line. I believe you’ll inherently at all times have a mystique to you, as a result of it’s simply who you’re.

But I believe it’s good to see you on Subway Takes, for instance, speaking about… What had been you speaking about? Weren’t you saying everybody’s gonna dwell in a cave or one thing?

Yung Lean: Yeah. It was proper after the LA fires. I’d simply bought sober, and there was all these items with Diddy, and I realised everybody was simply doing ketamine at each celebration… I used to be simply making an attempt to do a counter factor of that, as a result of that’s how I felt.

Charli xcx: I believe it’s good to see your persona as a result of you’re a actually heat individual. You’re sort of a geek, since you’re so keen about what you do, however you’re additionally a very nice man – not simply to different folks on this world but additionally, like, my dad.

Yung Lean: Are you continue to seeing a psychic?

Charli xcx: Yeah! I would like to return quickly, truly. We ought to go see her now that we’re right here collectively.

Yung Lean: I’m down! I took you to the magic present final time, now you’re taking me to the psychic. That appears honest.

Hair Nero at MA+ Talent utilizing Oribe Hair Care, make-up Allie Smith at MA+ Talent utilizing Make Up For Ever, Naoko Kitano, set design Nat Hoffman at Silvertooth, lighting assistants Steven Pane Medina, Sarame Sahgal, styling assistants Claire Wiseman, Jackson Prus, set design assistant Lorin Daughton, manufacturing Olivia Gouveia at Family Projects, manufacturing supervisor Kim Romero, manufacturing coordinator Marlo Rimalovski, manufacturing assistants Turner Thompson, Myles Gouveia, casting gk-ld

This story is taken from the winter 2025 difficulty of Dazed, which is on sale internationally from December 5. Pre-order a replica of the journal here.