Songfacts®:

• Originally conceived with her longtime collaborator A.G. Cook, Charli XCX played "Party 4 U" for the first time during the pair's joint set at the Nylon Japan 13th anniversary party on May 26, 2017. From there it lingered in a kind of musical limbo.
  
  But "Party 4 U" was never really gone; it just hadn't figured out where it belonged yet. When the COVID-19 lockdown arrived in 2020, bringing with it an unprecedented period of collective introspection and banana-bread-making, the song suddenly made perfect sense. Charli and A.G. Cook resurrected the track for her quarantine album How I'm Feeling Now, dusted it off, and gave it a new lease on life. She laid down a freshly recorded verse in her home studio, and Cook crafted a sweeping outro so affecting that Charli burst into tears upon hearing it.
• For an album born in isolation, "Party 4 U" fit like a glove. Its theme - throwing a party for a love interest who doesn't come - felt less like the lament of an unrequited crush and more like the soundtrack to an entire year of canceled plans and eerily empty streets. To drive the point home, Charli sprinkled in live crowd noises from her 2019 Brixton Academy show, as if to remind us that, once upon a time, we could gather en masse without the creeping existential dread of airborne contagion.
• Critics acclaimed When How I'm Feeling Now, which landed on many Best Albums of 2020 lists, including the top spot at Sputnik Music.
• Following on from the heights of Brat Summer, the full-blown phenomenon that followed the release of Charli's 2024 album Brat, fans found a new lease of love for "Party 4 U." One online trend saw TikTok users lip-sync to the track, recreating a moment from RuPaul's Drag Race where a contestant delivered a lip-synched rendition of Paula Abdul's "Cold Hearted."
• The "Party 4 U" resurgence continued into 2025. It climbed both the UK and US charts as users featured the song in videos about one-sided love and vulnerability. Charli amplified this trend by sharing fan content and engaging with the emotional response her song generated.
• Charli XCX released the music video for "Party 4 U" on May 15, 2025, to commemorate the fifth anniversary of How I'm Feeling Now. It arrived after the song's unexpected viral resurgence on TikTok, which helped push it up the charts worldwide.
  
  Directed by Mitch Ryan and based on an original concept from Charli, the cinematic video explores emotional vulnerability and the aftermath of a party.