When Toronto-bred singer Chxrry22 started working on her second EP in December 2022, she could never have predicted that nearly a year later, she’d be introducing its songs to audiences at stadiums in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. After all, as her 2022 debut project The Other Side demonstrated, the deeply atmospheric music of Chxrry22 is more conducive to 3 am pillow talk than sports venue spectacle. “I really, really love dark R&B—I always have,” she tells Apple Music. “I need something very moody and cool to help me envision the story that I want to write.” That said, when you’re the first-ever female solo artist signed to XO Records, it’s probably only a matter of time before label boss The Weeknd taps you to be his opening act. But long before she ever got the invite to join the fall 2023 leg of his After Hours Til Dawn tour Down Under, Chxrry22 had already planned to make Siren a more energetic, in-your-face affair than her debut. The frank conversations at the core of her songwriting remain, but this time they’re delivered with punchier club-hopping beats and all-star features—from the likes of Offset and Vory—that heighten the she-said/he-said dramas playing out in the lyrics. In other words, these are the sort of bold, brash R&B jams that are tailor-made to fill the world’s enormodomes, however unintentionally. “This time around, I forced myself to experiment with other types of drums and faster tempos, so it was kind of like I manifested [the stadium tour] in a way,” Chxrry22 says. “When I got the call [from The Weeknd] saying, ‘I really want you to open up for me in Australia,’ I was like, 'Thank god I stuck to what was in my heart, because there were a lot of people telling me, like, ‘Oh, you don't want to do that too much.’ And I was like, ‘No, I want to make bigger records. I want bigger drums, bigger sounds. I want to tell more stories.’” Here, she provides a track-by-track breakdown of the stories behind the stories. “Ride 4 Me” “My boyfriend lives in Atlanta, so I've been flying a lot. I feel like I'm on planes more than I am in actual homes. So I just wanted to paint a picture of my life: I get off the plane, he picks me up, and this song is me saying, ‘This is how I want my trip to go,’ or ‘This is how I want my day to go.’ I just wanted to make a song about a long-distance love but also be like, ‘This is how I plan on being treated forever.’” “Never Had This” (feat. Vory) “I've had this song for two years now—I made it while I was making The Other Side and it just never made the cut, because I felt like it was too dramatic. So when I figured out the direction of this project, I was like, ‘Let me go back and bring out “Never”,’ because this felt like the perfect time. When I posted a snippet on Instagram, my cousin randomly DMed it to Vory. He and I had already been talking—we'd send each other songs back and forth and it just never felt right. But when he saw that DM, he texted me and was like, ‘This is the one I want to get on!’ He completed the story, because my original second verse didn't do that—it was just kind of like a continuation of the first verse. Vory wrapped it all together. It was really eye-opening for me, seeing how he interpreted the song.” “More” “I feel like I have a very low tolerance for bullshit and people wasting my time—especially men. I feel like men waste a lot of time, and I think that's the tone of this project, but especially on 'More'. I came in like, ‘I want to make a song with a “leave me alone/I'm doing what I want”-type vibe.’ But I wanted it to be fun. I imagined it as a song that you drive around and listen to. I just wanted a fun girly song.” “Favorite Girl” (feat. Offset) “When I wrote this, I had heard the loop and immediately the whole song came out. Sometimes it's hit or miss with music—you don't know what you're going to talk about. So I know it's usually a really good song when I have a full story that I just spit out—and that was what it was like with 'Favorite Girl'. I always wanted to sing a line like 'favourite girl in the room' or 'favourite girl in the world'—it's my more vulnerable song, like my version of a love song. If I was ever to be a stripper, 'Cherry' would have been my name, so it all kind of tied itself together and I made a song about being a dancer in a club. I knew I wanted a rapper to be on this, and I knew I wanted Offset specifically because he is from Atlanta, and I just think everything he's doing right now is amazing. Offset was so accommodating and so kind—he sent me back his verse and I was like, 'This is perfect.'” “Around” “This is a freestyle, and I actually used my demo vocals for it—I was literally holding a handheld mic with basic settings on it. I just felt like the essence of the song was perfect the first time, and every time I tried to re-record it, it just sounded too clean and too perfected, and it wasn't messy enough. 'Around' is like a drunk voicemail that I've definitely left before. I've had so many situations where I'm wasted in the middle of nowhere and I'm like, 'Can you come pick me up? I know we haven't talked in two years...but can you come pick me up?' It's a voicemail of all the things you shouldn’t send to anyone, ever.” “Do It” “I write a lot of my music, and I'm not big on cutting other people's records. But I was in Italy and one of my dear friends, Trey Campbell, sent me this song, because he's always trying to push me out of my comfort zone. The cadence was so fast, and it mirrored a lot of the music I was hearing in Italy, like on boats and yachts. And I was like, 'I love the way this song feels when we have it on a playlist.' That's how I knew I really wanted to cut this record. And then [producers] Jacob [Olofsson] and Matt [Cohn] gave it that dark, synthy vibe, because I was like, 'I don't want a regular pop song. If it's not Chxrryfied, then it's not gonna make the cut!' It's a song that you don't expect to hear from me.” “Granted” “I can grow in so many other ways in so many other types of relationships in my life, but in actual romantic ones, I don't necessarily learn from my mistakes. I feel like I'm living the same story over and over again. Sometimes I'll make a song about a relationship from three years ago, but it'll kind of fit my current life and perspective as well. 'Granted' was a freestyle that I made in LA with my producer Bueno, and when I heard the loop, I started with 'I know that you got hoes, I got hoes too.' And I was just going crazy [with that concept], like, 'You have me so fucked up—I don't know what you think this is, but you're not just gonna waste my time and take me for granted.' It was almost like a message to my younger self. I wish I had this energy back then, because my current self is like, 'I don't tolerate anything.' It was like the anger from my past—like, ‘Why the fuck would you put up with that?’—combined with my current self thinking, 'I would never be in the house sitting around waiting on somebody. I have too much to do!'”