BlackoutZone shared this huge info post on ATRL:
"The amount of misinformation that is being spread lately from clueless users, wish someone else came to clarify, but I guess everyone gets tired at some point...
This is not an actual album campaign. In early album stages AG Cook was asked to come up with a visual plan for the era, he called it XCX Manifesto and wrote it all by himself and presented as his art direction for XCX3. It was never 100% finalized although they based some of the visuals on it, cause it was cool. That leaked picture is just a small part of whole thing AG Cook wrote originally. The album was not called XCX either, it was an idea and a placeholder name they used just like XCX World, but XCX World absolutely felt like an actual contender to me.
The "draft tracklist from June 2016" is not really an actual tracklist either, the album was still heavily worked on, but Charli's manager asked her, just to have an idea, IF an album was to be released now what would be the tracklist, so she pieced it together to have something as for that day. Also at that time Bounce was solo :ryan2:
Things started taking real shape when in late 2016 when Spike Stent, popular mixing engineer got requested and paid to mix Charli's album or more exactly 12 songs. Shortly after 12 got narrowed to 9 for unknown reasons and that's exactly what happened. Spike mixed and mastered the following songs by november 2016:
After The Afterparty - which was ready earlier and already released
Can You Hear Me?
Die 4
Down Like Wow
Girls Night Out
Good Girls
I Wanna Be With You
Queen Lizzy
Waterfall
And this is literally why and how they leaked. Spike got hacked and the songs got spread (along with the stems which somehow still stay unleaked to this day). They would not pay him for mastering the songs if they weren't meant to be released. The mystery remains in 3 remaining tracks and why would they get pulled just shortly after Spike got booked for mixing of 12 songs. Since it's unlikely that Charli would cut the album to length of 9 songs it's more probable that she decided to do some last minute changes or adjustments. One of the 3 songs would for sure be Bounce and HERE is where Kyary probably steps in and the song was possibly not ready for mastering yet, cause maybe Kyary hasn't provided all the vocals yet? Maybe they were simply still working on it, on figuring out the bridge or ad libs or God knows what. That's why the Bounce she performed on Kimmel isn't necessarily final final, it's simply the last version she managed to get ready FOR the performance. The remaining 2 songs are unknown to me, most probably want to accept that it's Taxi and Come to My Party, but that seems unlikely, Taxi was never a ready song during that time and they had some issues with releasing it, I honestly don't remember what was it exactly. I hope we will find out one day. The 3 songs and "issues" with them must have been crucial and time consuming, maybe that's why we got N1A to feed us while we wait :matty: Maybe one of the songs to be in was actually No Angel since at some point she tried to get multiple different features to jump on it, but it didn't work out with any, no idea.
Some other things that I saw being mixed up here and there:
Paint the Town is a 2018 song by EasyFun
HBHG was never meant to be released or even finished
The recently leaked Sticky is not a 2020 rework but 2020 rework still exists
Real Friend was still being work on last year, but more recently rewritten by Raye and re-recorded with different lyrics
Problematic Song is just called Pop It
Both 100 by Jack & Coke and Real Love are from 2017
That's on my side, do what you want with that, I wish everything was released and we would have more clarity from the START. "
