Photography by Cristina Stolhe, styling by Taylor McNeillDateInMeta
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2025MusicThe Winter 2025 Issue‘We’re like brother and sister’: Yung Lean and Charli xcx in conversationFronting the winter 2025 issue of Dazed, the Swedish sad boy rapper talks to his longtime friend Charli xcx about shadow selves, cinephile tendencies and his desire to bring ‘more insanity’ to all corners of his craft
ShareLink copied ✔️December 1, 2025MusicThe Winter 2025 IssueTextEmma GarlandPhotographyCristina StolheStylingTaylor McNeillYung Lean – The Winter Issue 2025
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This story is taken from the winter 2025 issue of Dazed, which is on sale internationally from December 5. Pre-order a copy of the magazine here.
Yung Lean and Charli xcx are kindred spirits. That might seem like an unlikely thing to say about a Swedish rap sensation who sings of Gatorade and hell, and a British pop star whose club-wrapped confessions have echoed everywhere from warehouse toilet stalls to the highest echelons of American power – but they have a lot in common.
Both started out as hungry outsiders: Charli DJing illegal raves in London in the mid-2000s, Yung Lean (real name Jonatan Leandoer Håstad) pioneering a new strain of melancholic rap on SoundCloud in the early 2010s. In communion with leftfield pop culture past and present, they are masters of juxtaposition, dropping bleeding-heart lyricism next to winking self-mythology, or kicking a simple electronic drum beat behind a weighty meditation on relationships. They have both repeatedly defied 21st-century moulds of simplicity and convenience in favour of enigma and roads less travelled, and, as a result, retooled the lingua franca of youth culture. If you invoke the terms “sad boy” or “brat”, who is it you have in mind?
Since the pair first met in their teens, drinking apple juice at a cafe in Stockholm, their friendship has been a constant through years of ravenous ambition, personal maturation and restless creative impulses. Their shared love of film has dovetailed in 2025 as they both made the jump from stage to screen, coming together in the cast of Romain Gavras’s ego-satire Sacrifice. Charli makes an appearance as “Mother Nature” while Yung Lean makes his feature-film debut, following the release of his fifth studio album Jonatan – a textured navigation of authenticity and celebrity that brings his bamboozling array of interests under one roof. (Of his painting, which you can see him practising in this story, he says, “I usually paint the same things, like a tree, a naked couple, symbols, a moon. It’s like caveman shit.”)
Wool coat Givenchy by Sarah Burton, cotton shirt ERLPhotography Cristina Stolhe, styling Taylor McNeill
When Dazed speaks with the pair, they’re both in LA. Charli is at home the morning after joining Lorde at the Kia Forum for a stadium-rattling remix of “Girl, so confusing”; Yung Lean is tearing into a bunless burger at retro-styled beach house The Bungalow, after concluding the first leg of his Forever Yung tour and a 15-hour night’s sleep.
Charli xcx: Are you enjoying The Bungalow? What did you order?
Yung Lean: The Bungalow is too nice! I ordered a burger with no bread and a burrata.
Charli xcx: You’re in your Chris Evans movie star era.
Yung Lean: Once you get a taste of the skinny life, it’s hard to come back. I was chubby for so long. [laughs]
Charli xcx: So, you are one of the wisest people I know, but you also have a real inner child that is very charming and sweet. Do you think you’ll live for a really long time? And if you do think that, what do you think 90-year-old Yung Lean will be like?
Yung Lean: I think if you have a big inner child then you do have a lot of wisdom. If I were just wise, I’d probably suck as a person, but the balance makes sense. I hope I get really old. 90-year-old Lean, I assume, will be silly. He’d have a lot of grandkids, like 30 of them, running around.
Charli xcx: 30?! That’s a cult.
Yung Lean: Yeah. I’ll have to put in work.
Charli xcx: I’m excited that you’re back in LA. The last time that we were here together you took me to a magic show. The magician asked all of us to pick two halves of a ripped playing card and make a wish, and if the two halves matched then it would come true. My cards didn’t match, so my wish was not supposed to come true. But you asked me what I wished for, and I very sheepishly said, ‘I wish to be more successful and famous’ and you laughed at me and said, ‘You can’t wish for something like that!’ Almost as if I’d wasted a wish.
This was two years ago, before Brat. So actually, my wish sort of did come true. It’s also funny that I was with you, because I feel a spiritual kinship with you in some ways. Good things happen when I’m around you. I wondered if you had ever felt that you have some kind of magical power?
All clothes PradaPhotography Cristina Stolhe, styling Taylor McNeill
All clothes PradaPhotography Cristina Stolhe, styling Taylor McNeill
Yung Lean: I think you’re the one with the magical power and you just don’t know it. Good things happen when I’m around you, too. I guess everyone can kind of manifest stuff, and that magician was pretty powerful. [laughs] But I do believe in magic. In Sweden, before Christianity came, we were pagans. There were a lot of pagan traditions. You can feel it in America too. The Native Americans were really close to nature, and they would do sermons and speak to the spirits. I think that still exists. I think making music is like making magic.
Charli xcx: I love how you sound when you’re singing. Do you feel like you have to get into a different mindset when you’re singing versus when you’re rapping? And when you look back at your catalogue, can you still always find a piece of yourself in some of your older work?
Yung Lean: There’s this song I did when I was 12 called ‘Söder Söder’, and in that song you can hear everything that I’ve become. It’s all there. The first artforms I did were painting, graffiti and rapping. I was always freestyling with people. I would run up to local rappers and freestyle for them. Or I’d be at an afterparty, high and drunk, and freestyle. So that came very naturally for me, and it still is natural.
Singing was the unnatural thing, and singing came out at a time when everything went kind of sideways in my life – my manager died, I had psychosis, yada yada. Then I started singing because I felt so vulnerable. I couldn’t get into the [rap] mind state. I didn’t feel that swaggy. I felt more like an outcast, like some Daniel Johnston mental patient who had to sing. It didn’t come as naturally as rapping. They’re two different things, but I love mixing them. It’s more about where I am at the moment, and I have to stay true to where I am at the moment or else I shouldn’t make music.
Playing a show is like being a gladiator. It’s fuck or fight: you can either fuck the show or fight it and run away
Charli xcx: After Brat, I felt really uninspired by music. I don’t really listen to that much music anyway. I listen to you, Lou Reed, Sophie, AG Cook, Benjamin [Bladee], George [Daniel, Charli’s husband and drummer with The 1975], and that’s kind of it. I’m not listening to a lot of stuff and I’m not particularly hungry to learn about new music. It’s never inspired me, really.
I’ve always been more inspired by film. So I think at that point, when I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired by music, I wanted to delve more into a different creative space. You have always done that. I’m blown away by the amount of work that you’re constantly making, whether it’s sculptures, paintings, clothes, music or, now, film.
Yung Lean: I think the elephant in the room is that we’re kind of like siblings. I understand you. How interested you’ve been in film, in world-building and [putting] little Easter eggs in music videos. I’m interested in that stuff too. I think any artist that’s had a long career – from Kate Bush to Madonna to OutKast – has these little things that become a whole world. You and I have always been film nerds. Pop culture is my one true love.
Charli xcx: I feel like we both have that thing where creating things makes us feel alive and normal. When you say we’re like brother and sister, which we are, I think it’s because we both have that.
Leather and shearling coat ERL, cotton shirt Brooks Brothers, denim jeans Acne Studios, silver bracelet Santangelo, shoes Yung Lean’s ownPhotography Cristina Stolhe, styling Taylor McNeill
Leather and shearling coat ERL, cotton shirt Brooks Brothers, denim jeans Acne Studios, silver bracelet Santangelo, shoes Yung Lean’s ownPhotography Cristina Stolhe, styling Taylor McNeill
All clothes and leather loafers Acne Studios, acetate and silver sunglasses Chrome Hearts,
cashmere scarf Paul Smith, silver and topaz ring MaplePhotography Cristina Stolhe, styling Taylor McNeill
Yung Lean: You have a thing that’s different from me, though. You’re like a machine. I might be at home doing ten paintings and ceramics and getting into myself, but you can find the best scriptwriter, the best DOP [director of photography], and put together a whole TV show in, like, two weeks. There’s something social about your skill that’s just like, boss lady. You have the social genius of picking people who are really good at something and [bringing them together], but it’s still your vision.
Charli xcx: I wanted to ask you specifically about Romain Gavras’s film Sacrifice, which I’m in a tiny bit but you’re really in. I felt genuinely emotional to see you taking on this new lane to such a high level so effortlessly. How did you feel seeing yourself on the screen like that? Were you scared?
Yung Lean: I was emotional too. I was emotional that we were sitting next to each other [at the premiere], and I had flashbacks of you buying beer for me when I was 17 in Stockholm and us being like lost little teenagers in the underground pop or hip hop world, and coming from that world into this one. We’ve both known Romain for ten years, so it feels like we’re doing something with our friend, who happens to be a very good director. But I was nervous, and I didn’t feel the same satisfaction that I feel from playing a show. Playing a show is like being a gladiator. It’s fuck or fight: you can either fuck the show or you fight it and run away. Being on stage, there are all these emotions, and you get it all out. [With a premiere], we were in a cinema. We were sitting in chairs. It’s not the same experience.
All clothes and leather loafers Acne Studios, acetate and silver sunglasses Chrome Hearts,
cashmere scarf Paul Smith, silver and topaz ring MaplePhotography Cristina Stolhe, styling Taylor McNeill
All clothes ERL, cashmere scarf Paul Smith (all worn here and on seventh spread, left).Photography Cristina Stolhe, styling Taylor McNeill
All clothes Tom Ford, leather loafers ERLPhotography Cristina Stolhe, styling Taylor McNeill
Charli xcx: But did you feel that when you were on set? When you were shooting, did you ever feel that sense of cathartic release when you would finish a scene?
Yung Lean: I did. That was very different from seeing the film. Being on set, in some of the scenes that I did with Ambika [Mod], where I could get pushed to be really vulnerable or angry, that felt like making music. That felt like expressing myself. On the day of the premiere [in Toronto], I was more like, ‘All right, let’s just show up and look swaggy.’ Like, this is insane. There’s John Malkovich, there’s Anya [Taylor-Joy], there’s Vincent Cassel, there’s you and me. This is pop culture at a wild moment. So I didn’t take in that much while watching the film, I was just feeling the moment. I really want a role where I can access more darkness, maybe. Or more insanity, or more love. Just more. I felt like I was touching something, but I couldn’t go all the way.
Charli xcx: You mentioned going into the darkness a bit more – I feel like I can get swallowed up by my shadow self sometimes, but I’m working hard on not doing that. I just started doing this dream work stuff with an acting coach, and it’s been really interesting accessing elements of things that I push into my subconscious, and dreams that I try to run from or dismiss as pure fiction.
Yung Lean: I think, with the shadow self, you have to explore it and then incorporate it into yourself.
Charli xcx: What is your dream project in film?
Yung Lean: Have you seen that film with Jack Nicholson, The Witches of Eastwick? We should do a reshoot of that. You can play Cher and I’ll play Jack Nicholson. [laughs] But to be serious about your question, I’d like to do something like the films that I’ve shown you or that we’ve talked about, like Lilya 4-ever, that depressing Swedish film, or Ingmar Bergman’s horror films. I’m also a sucker for 70s gangster films that are kind of poetic. I like Jonathan Glazer. I like surreal stuff, like Leos Carax. When I’m older, I would like to direct, but until then I’d like to dip my feet into acting a little more and have fun with friends. I would like to do something in my mother tongue as well.
All clothes ERL, cashmere scarf Paul Smith (all worn here and on seventh spread, left).Photography Cristina Stolhe, styling Taylor McNeill
All clothes Tom Ford, leather loafers ERLPhotography Cristina Stolhe, styling Taylor McNeill
Charli xcx: I actually have a question that I’ve never asked you before. When we first met, you were 15 or 16, and I was maybe 17 or 18. We met at Drop Coffee in Stockholm, which is still one of my favourite coffee shops there, and we drank apple juice together. I’ve always wondered, what were your first impressions of me?
Yung Lean: I definitely thought you were more pretty in real life.
Charli xcx: Don’t get weird about your sister now.
Yung Lean: No, no. You’re a married woman and I have love for George, I just have to put that out there. But I also felt that you were real. At that point I hadn’t really met anyone who made music outside of my friends, and there was no bullshit, you know? You were curious, you had a real goal, you were hungry. Of course you like the idea of glamour and fame – so do I, we all do – but you were on a quest. You had a vision. I thought you were cool.
Charli xcx: I thought you were cool too. I was very intimidated to meet you. I loved your work so much... But I remember thinking you were unbelievably precocious. You had so much knowledge about so much stuff, and you still do. Your reference points at the age of 16 were fucking crazy. I remember feeling so inspired by you, which I still feel now. You have an encyclopaedic knowledge of art. I also remember thinking you had really thick hair.
Yung Lean: My hair was really thick at the time... When I was a kid and me and my sister would take baths, my mum would put eggs in our hair. It must have been some old Russian home recipe for thicker hair, I guess.
Denim jeans Acne Studios.Photography Cristina Stolhe, styling Taylor McNeill
Denim jeans Acne Studios.Photography Cristina Stolhe, styling Taylor McNeill
Charli xcx: You let me do your hair in Toronto and I made it look insane and then you shaved it all off.
Yung Lean: You made me look like an Essex grandma. But to go back to your question, I think I did recognise this thing in you. It sounds a bit strange, but before [we met] I wasn’t just living in Stockholm. I went to kindergarten in Belarus and one of my first memories in life is someone putting a dummy cone hat on me because I’d hit this teacher. I was living there with my mum and dad, and we were different from everyone. After that, we lived in Vietnam. We became kind of like a little entity that moved around in the world.
Charli xcx: I definitely relate to what you’re saying about outsiderness. I never felt accepted where I went, whether that was in school for being half-Indian and not blonde, or not fully relating to my Indian self because I was half-white. There was this weird, displaced feeling, where I couldn’t quite fit into either place. Then with music, being outside of the mainstream and wanting to be in that world, but also really wanting to reject it. It created this concoction that allowed me to [make Brat]. I feel like I used to be very afraid. Not since 2016, really, but prior to that I was very afraid. I feel like you’ve always been pretty fearless. Or is that naïve of me to say?
I really want a role where I can access more darkness, maybe. More more insanity, or more love. Just more
Yung Lean: No. I have been fearless, but my whole life has been very random. Ever since I was a kid in the dummy hat in Belarus, my personality was always kind of big, and that’s just the way it was. When I was in grade five, there would be all these older kids like, ‘Yo, we want to punch Jonatan, we want to fuck him up.’ And I was like, ‘I’m like ten years younger than you guys. Why? But go on then, do it.’ And they would never do it. I’ve always created some sort of emotion with people. Whether they thought I was cocky or they liked me or they hated me, there was always an emotion. I think if you have that, you say ‘fuck it’. People are either going to hate me or they’re going to love me. I can’t control it, so fuck them. Then you become fearless.
Charli xcx: I feel like you don’t get hate that much now though, and I don’t even mean online, I mean in life. Whenever I’m with you – and it’s actually really annoying, to be honest – everybody’s like, ‘Oh, Jonatan is so cool! He’s the best!’ You were a hit at my wedding. When the wedding was over everybody was like, ‘Jonatan! Jonatan! La la la!’ You have a very effervescent thing that you must [know about]. Of course, you can’t get big-headed about it, because otherwise the charm might go.
All clothes Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello (worn here and on
last spread, right).Photography Cristina Stolhe, styling Taylor McNeill
Cotton shirt ERLPhotography Cristina Stolhe, styling Taylor McNeill
Shirt and scarf as beforePhotography Cristina Stolhe, styling Taylor McNeill
Yung Lean: That’s the thing about magic. If you talk about it, then it’s gone. I guess I try to treat people with respect. I think respect goes a long way. If you’re insecure, then you start becoming mean and pushing people down. I’ve been around too many people who are mean and I’ve seen too much evil. People like me more than my music. I thought my music and my art was the shit and I was just whatever, but actually it’s the other way around. So you’re hitting worldwide with the music. I’m hitting at a wedding.
Charli xcx: I think it’s cool you called this record Jonatan, because people don’t necessarily know your personality through the work that you create. Some of it is very avant-garde. You’re not very online. I think you will inherently always have a mystique to you, because it is just who you are.
But I think it’s nice to see you on Subway Takes, for example, talking about... What were you talking about? Weren’t you saying everyone’s gonna live in a cave or something?
Yung Lean: Yeah. It was right after the LA fires. I’d just got sober, and there was all this stuff with Diddy, and I realised everyone was just doing ketamine at every party... I was just trying to do a counter thing of that, because that’s how I felt.
Charli xcx: I think it’s nice to see your personality because you are a really warm person. You’re kind of a geek, because you’re so passionate about what you do, but you’re also a really nice guy – not just to other people in this world but also, like, my dad.
Yung Lean: Are you still seeing a psychic?
Charli xcx: Yeah! I need to go back soon, actually. We should go see her now that we’re here together.
Yung Lean: I’m down! I took you to the magic show last time, now you take me to the psychic. That seems fair.
All clothes and leather loafers Acne Studios, cashmere scarf Paul Smith, acetate and silver sunglasses Chrome HeartsPhotography Cristina Stolhe, styling Taylor McNeill
All clothes and leather loafers Acne Studios, cashmere scarf Paul Smith, acetate and silver sunglasses Chrome HeartsPhotography Cristina Stolhe, styling Taylor McNeill
This page: all clothes as beforePhotography Cristina Stolhe, styling Taylor McNeill
Hair Nero at MA+ Talent using Oribe Hair Care, make-up Allie Smith at MA+ Talent using Make Up For Ever, Naoko Kitano, set design Nat Hoffman at Silvertooth, lighting assistants Steven Pane Medina, Sarame Sahgal, styling assistants Claire Wiseman, Jackson Prus, set design assistant Lorin Daughton, production Olivia Gouveia at Family Projects, production manager Kim Romero, production coordinator Marlo Rimalovski, production assistants Turner Thompson, Myles Gouveia, casting gk-ld
This story is taken from the winter 2025 issue of Dazed, which is on sale internationally from December 5. Pre-order a copy of the magazine here.
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