Charli XCX Brings Out Tinashe at ACL Festival for Two Songs From *Popstar*

Charli XCX closed out the second weekend of Austin City Limits with a guest spot that had been teased all afternoon. Tinashe joined her onstage Friday for two songs, including the first live performance of “Nobody Wanna Dance Anymore” and “Melatonin,” both from Popstar, Tinashe’s eighth album.

The hint came hours earlier, when Charli was filmed backstage at the Austin festival dancing to Tinashe’s music. It follows a pattern she has established on this run: one weekend earlier, at ACL’s first weekend, she brought out Troye Sivan, her Sweat Tour collaborator, for two songs.

The pairing has a decade behind it. Charli and Tinashe first crossed paths in 2015, when both were still emerging and both appeared on Ty Dolla $ign’s “Drop That Kitty.” They reunited nine years later on the “B2B” remix from Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat.

The overlap is not incidental. Brat, Charli’s sixth album, sealed her shift from behind-the-scenes songwriter to arena-scale pop figure. Popstar has given Tinashe the strongest reviews and highest chart position of a career now in its second decade, a turn she described to Rolling Stone in September as overdue after years of grinding without much visible return. Putting both on the same festival stage makes that parallel visible rather than argued.