Tinashe performs “Nobody Wanna Dance Anymore” and “Melatonin” from her new LP Popstar during her friend Charli’s headlining set
Charli XCX brought out Tinashe to perform a pair of tracks off her new album Popstar during XCX’s ACL Festival headlining set Friday.
Charli hinted at Tinashe’s guest spot earlier in the day, dancing to that singer’s music backstage at the Austin, Texas festival; a week earlier, during ACL Fest’s first weekend, Charli brought out her Sweat Tour mate Troye Sivan to perform two songs. This time around, Tinashe came out for the live debut of “Nobody Wanna Dance Anymore” as well as the Popstar hit “Melatonin”:
Charli XCX and Tinashe have a decade-long history dating back to 2015, when the two then-emerging singers appeared as guests on Ty Dolla $ign’s “Drop That Kitty.” The pair reunited nine years later for the “B2B” remix that appeared on Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat.
Brat, Charli’s sixth studio album, marked the culmination of her long ascent from hit songwriter to critical darling to arena-filling pop star, and Tinashe seems primed for a similar breakout with Popstar, her eighth studio album that’s so far amassed the best reviews and chart position of her dozen-year career.
“There’s a lot of us girls who have been working and grinding for 10-plus years in the game,” Tinashe told Rolling Stone in September. “I can only speak for myself, but how I’ve felt is that I’ve been perhaps underrated. [We’ve] constantly just been working with our heads down, grinding, grinding, grinding, grinding. You get to a point where you kind of have this breakout moment. It’s so exciting to see. I’m so proud and happy for all my peers and the girls who have been doing it for a decade as well who are getting their moment.”