Charli XCX Brings Tinashe Onstage at ACL Festival Headlining Set

By Marcus Bennett

Charli XCX brought out Tinashe on Friday night at ACL Festival, debuting two tracks from Tinashe's album Popstar during her headlining set in Austin, Texas.

The collaboration marked the live debut of "Nobody Wanna Dance Anymore." The pair also performed the Popstar single "Melatonin." Earlier that day, Charli danced to Tinashe's music backstage, foreshadowing the guest appearance before the festival's second weekend headlining slot.

How did the two first connect?

Charli and Tinashe share a collaboration history that stretches back a full decade. Both singers appeared as guests on Ty Dolla $ign's 2015 single "Drop That Kitty" when each was an emerging solo artist. Nine years later, the pair reunited on the "B2B" remix included on Charli's Brat and It's Completely Different but Also Still Brat.

The Austin appearance extended a run of guest spots at the festival. A week earlier, during ACL Fest's first weekend, Charli had brought out Troye Sivan, her Sweat Tour partner, for two songs from their joint catalog.

Where does Tinashe stand in her own arc?

Brat, Charli's sixth studio album, traced her ascent from hit songwriter to critical favorite to arena-filling headliner. Tinashe's eighth studio album, Popstar, has so far earned the strongest reviews and chart placement of her twelve-year recording 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."

What does the ACL stage change for Tinashe?

The booking places Tinashe directly before the audience Charli assembled through 2024, a year in which Brat moved her from critic's darling to festival closer. For an artist on the threshold of her own breakthrough moment, sharing a stage with a peer who has just completed that arc delivers both validation and exposure at scale. The two Friday performances confirm rather than introduce the moment, a visible marker of an arc Popstar's chart position had so far only hinted at in the press.