Charli xcx drops 'party 4 u' music video 5 years after the song was released — thanks to a melancholic TikTok trend.
Directed by Mitch Ryan, who most recently brought Addison Rae's 'Headphones' vision to life, the 'party 4 u' music video, released on May 15, sees Charli in a polka dot dress, walking through an empty house, presumably the morning after throwing a party. Intercut with close-up camcorder footage of the singer, the video shows Charli walking along an empty path outside, before eventually tearing up and burning down a billboard of herself.
'We turned this video round in 4 days just 4 u <3,' Charli wrote on Instagram. 'I love this song and i can't believe this is happening so many years later. thank you <3'
Charli's fans, affectionately referred to by the singer as her 'Angels,' have already started to share their initial reactions to the music video online.
'This music video captures the isolation and desperation so well girl ur my modern day Jay Gatsby,' one fan commented on Charli's TikTok video.
X user Juanpa, wrote, 'At work took a bathroom break to watch the party 4 u music video and i cried watching it @charli_xcx girl i love you.'
Aym, another user on X, said of first watching the music video, 'Guys I can't stop crying bc of the party 4 u mv, this song is so important for me.'
Reflecting on the song's renaissance and accompanying video, an X user with the handle @wordsandfevers wrote, 'The mainstream success of party 4 u feels like an old friend u were once close with but drifted from as life got in the way and years later they became who they always dreamed of being and despite the silence between u there's still this. Deep respect and lingering closeness.'
The music video comes less than a week after the 'Apple' hitmaker first teased the video on her private Instagram account. On Wednesday, Charli shared a clip of herself running down an empty street while holding a cluster of pink balloons — a direct reference to one of the song's lyrics.
The 10th track off her 2020 album, How I'm Feeling Now, 'party 4 u' puts a melancholic spin on Charli's signature dance-pop dispositions. Produced by A.G. Cook, the track hears an emotionally dejected Charli dancing through the pain, as she stomachs the fact that the one person she wanted to see didn't show up to the party.
Also featured in the 2023 romantic comedy Bottoms, which Charli helped compose the score for, 'party 4 u' initially inspired a lip-syncing trend in February. In the style of Drag Race icon Coco Montrese, fans shared videos of themselves enunciating the track's fast-paced second verse. Charli herself got in on the trend too.
But the song's emotional bridge, during which Charli repeatedly sings 'party on you, party on you' over layers of auto-tuned harmonies, spawned an even more resonant trend — as fans have taken to the platform to dissect the meaning of the breakdown, and even suggest theories surrounding its lyrics. In the music video, this moment culminates in a slow motion shot of Charli lying on the floor in an empty room, as lights flash and confetti flies around her.
Fans have shared a range of interpretations, believing the bridge captures the feeling of 'seeing the person you like kiss someone else,' the realization that 'they'll never again be the person you first met,' or the belief that you've 'been delusional this whole time.'
Fans have also created gut-wrenching edits of fictional couples from films and television shows whose relationships they feel encapsulate the song's underlying meaning. Films like La La Land and Someone Great, along with television shows like Normal People and Girls have all been referenced in relation to 'party 4 u.'
Charli has since clarified the actual meaning of the song's bridge in a TikTok video of her own.
'This is actually the moment you realize that that one person isn't ever coming to your party so you stand in the middle of the room, tears briefly fill your eyes but then you wipe them away, pretend you're OK and proceed to get unbelievably f***ed up and then spend the next weekend feeling completely ashamed of yourself,' she writes.
Aware of the song's renaissance, she also added it to the Weekend 2 set list for her Coachella performance in April.
The 'fact that you guys love this song makes me seriously emotional,' Charli wrote in a TikTok caption.
Thanks to its online virality, 'party 4 u' made its Billboard Hot 100 debut in early May and reached a new peak at No. 55 on the chart dated May 17, 2025, Billboard reports. The song, according to a TikTok spokesperson, has also spawned over 2.9 million creator posts and more than 6.6 million video views.
'How I'm Feeling Now turns 5 years old tomorrow,' Charli wrote in a handwritten note ahead of the music video's Thursday release. 'It honestly just feels like yesterday. So much has changed since then: Me, my life, elements of my music and most definitely the world. I made the album in just 5 weeks, from conception to release, entirely publicly in collaboration with all of you.'
The '360' singer added, 'It was all of us at our most raw, our most stripped, our most vulnerable. I will never forget it, and I really can't believe that five years later one of the Angel favorites is having its own special moment. So obviously I wanted to do something to celebrate. … This one's for you Angels.'
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