Charli XCX and Troye Sivan: The appeal behind collaborations

When you scroll through your playlist, how many of the songs on there are collabs?

Charli XCX has been in the charts with Talk Talk – her team-up with Troye Sivan – and she’s been all over our feeds with Billie Eilish and Guess.

Or maybe Chase & Status and Stormzy’s Backbone is the one for you.

Four of the top 10 songs in the current UK Singles Chart are collaborations, and it doesn’t seem to be a fad.

Since 2020, almost half of the 100 biggest tracks have featured two artists, according to the Official Charts company.

That’s more than twice the number of collabs in the charts towards the end of the noughties, and over the past 30 years the people in charge of the charts say they’ve seen a rise.

Since the beginning of their career, pop-punk legends Fall Out Boy have linked up with some of the biggest stars in the industry, including Taylor Swift, Demi Lovato and Jay-Z.

Front man Patrick Stump tells BBC Newsbeat the way most of these collabs happen is “pretty simple” and sometimes it’s worth taking a chance.

“People just ask,” he says. “Whether we ask them or they ask us.”

A couple of years ago, he says he was planning on holding off when it came to working with other artists for a while.

That was until Taylor Swift emailed.

“[My manager’s] like ‘maybe you should do this one, huh?'” laughs Patrick.

Fall Out Boy were featured on Taylor’s Electric Touch when her number one album Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) was released last year.

Patrick says “every instance is different” when it comes to recording a track with an artist.

“There have been a lot where we’ve been in the room together,” says Patrick. “But there’s also times where we weren’t.”

Back when CDs were popular, he says he didn’t want people to buy their albums just because of the featured artist sticker.

“I don’t ever want to do it for marketing.”

Patrick says he prefers authentic collabs, referencing when Brendon Urie from Panic! at the Disco featured on Fall Out Boy’s 20 Dollar Nose Bleed on their 2008 album Folie à Deux.

“Brendon ended up on that song [because] he was there that day… hanging out with us,” he says.

“That’s when collaboration feels really good.

“It makes the whole experience more normal, more than the ‘have your manager call my manager’ kind of thing,” he adds.

Frequent collaborator Ella Henderson tells Newsbeat she loves linking up with different musicians because of how artists can “learn our craft” from others.

She shot to fame after competing in the 2012 series of The X Factor, alongside James Arthur and released debut single, Ghost, two years later.

Ella’s worked with the likes of David Guetta, Tom Grennan and Becky Hill, describing it as an “amazing process”.

“Not only do you get to open your horizons a little bit to a different genre of music,” she says.

“But you also get to learn about their heritage in music.

“From any collaboration, I’ve always learned so many things, good or bad.”

Ella believes that her music collabs have allowed her to grow as an artist.

“When you’re doing your own projects all the time, it can get a bit stale.”

She says sometimes it takes a different opinion for her to have faith in a song.

“The amount of times I might write songs and discard them,” she says.

“For instance, Crazy What Love Can Do. David Guetta has picked that up, and look what it’s become.”

“Not everything is to never be heard. It actually could be something really magical.”

Music producer Seb Barlow says he’s “noticed an increase” in collaborations.

Seb, who also plays bass guitar in the pop-punk band Neck Deep feels social media has played a role of late.

“And technology, how easy and convenient remote recording tools have become [since the pandemic].

“Everyone started looking for ways to ways to collaborate that didn’t mean getting in a room with each other.”

Neck Deep have released songs with Mark Hoppus from Blink-182 as well as Sam Carter from The Architects.

He says he likes to show the fans that although Neck Deep are a pop-punk band, the members listen to a variety of different music.

“It’s just another way to meet new fans,” he says. “Fans like their favourite artists teaming up with each other.

“It’s fulfilling to push yourself creatively, think outside the box and go outside of your usual processes,” he says.

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