Charli XCX and Troye Sivan catch some waves in the new video for “2099,” their collaboration off the former’s new album, Charli.
The clip, directed by the team Bradley&Pablo from a concept by Charli XCX and Sam Pringle, features Charli and Sivan riding jet skis on a lake in slow motion. About midway through the video, Sivan — or a helmeted stunt double — starts doing gravity-defying flips through the air on his vehicle, before pulling up beside Charli and hopping on her jet ski. The pair then ride off with a small crew floating behind them in V-formation, capping off a fitting visual for a song that pays tribute to Charli’s love of motorsports.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Charli said she met Sivan by happenstance and then decided to collaborate. “When I first moved to LA three years ago and first got my place, I was doing a lot of house parties,” she said. “It’d be open invite and a lot of people came, a lot of people I didn’t know. It was pretty fun actually. Troye came to one of the parties, and that’s where I first met him. We got talking and realized we had a lot of mutual friends. Immediately I thought he was super sweet.”
Charli marks Charli XCX’s third album and features contributions from Christine and the Queens, Haim, Sky Ferreira, Lizzo and more. “1999,” another collaboration with Sivan, also appears on the album. On Monday, Christine and the Queens’ Héloïse Letissier joined Charli XCX on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon to perform their song “Gone.”