Charli XCX Wants to Feel It on Latest Album ‘Music, Fashion, and Film’
Music, Fashion, and Film featuring John Cale, Marc Jacobs, and Martin Scorsese.
Charli xcx has always been unbounded by the limitations of genre and what music “should” be. From the dance floors of her 2024 breakout album BRAT to this year’s gothic Wuthering Heights, Charli has made one thing clear: you can never expect her to remain the same. Charli xcx’s latest release, Music, Fashion, and Film, is a complete departure from her previous work as she veers into uncharted territory.
This constant zigging and zagging is what makes Charli such a polarizing artist to some and an idol to others. While you might like the sound of 2013’s True Romance or 2020’s how i’m feeling now, Charli has yet to replicate any of her previous albums, never confining herself to one style to keep her music fresh. Her music is an evolution of her personality — Charli has stated that she doesn’t mind if she’s alienated fans who wanted another BRAT; she’s intent on listening to what she wants to explore as an artist.
This shift is apparent in the first song off the album, “Rock Music,” as the listener is greeted with a complete shift in production from her longtime collaborator, A.G. Cook. The song is industrial and features a heavily distorted guitar, something Charli hasn’t prominently utilized in any of her previous work. This industrial, raw production continues throughout the album all the way until the outro of the final song.
Charli’s trademarked tongue-in-cheek and honest lyricism continues on this album: on “SS26” and “Card Declined,” she sings of overconsumption, of the empty way that we invest in fashion, and our obsession with portraying our lives in a glamorized manner — we can buy all the labels and it still won’t save us.
Yet, Charli can’t help the way the titular trifecta of music, fashion, and film makes her feel. On “Camera,” she admits to wanting to enter the world of film. Charli doesn’t invalidate her emotions of wanting more; if anything, she’s saying that despite recognizing the potential evil of this ambition, it nonetheless is what she wants — through the film industry, Charli imagines being able escape to someone who isn’t actually her.
“Camera” is an immediate standout on the album. The quick guitar hits, laced with a simple yet effective drum rhythm, give the song urgency. It seems as though Charli feels she’s nearing the end of her prime, and she has to make this pivot to film before her dance floor is dead.
Perhaps one of the most admirable things about Charli’s work is how she is unafraid to commit to an immediate tonal shift in her track lists. While some might choose to place their sadder songs towards the end of an album, Charli won’t hesitate to place them right between two wildly energetic songs. On Music, Fashion, and Film, she does this by placing “I’m Afraid,” a song about her fear of ruining her marriage, in between “2007” and “Yeah,” two chaotically upbeat songs that explore her desire to “feel it.” This might slow down the tempo for some, but for Charli, it’s a jarring change that necessitates that fans sit and listen to what she’s saying.
At the very beginning of the album, on the first verse of “Rock Music,” Charli sings the widely misinterpreted lyric “I think the dance floor is dead.” She’s not talking about the general concept of the dance floor; she’s not talking about the dance floor in your hometown or the one your favorite artist is performing at; she’s talking about her own personal one. The entire album follows Charli coming to terms with the fact that the party has to end. The DJ is packing up, the models are going home, and the camera is turning off.
Charli brings this idea full-circle on the final song, “No One Lasts Forever featuring David Cronenberg.” Brat summer had to end eventually; the iconic “brat green” has gone rotten. As she ends the song with an interview with director David Cronenberg, Charli wraps the entire thesis of the album up:
“I mean, we can talk about immortal artists of various kinds,” Cronenberg says. “And it — it can turn out that, yes, some artists have created art that has really survived thousands of years. And that's fantastic, but experientially, for them. They are dead, they are gone, they are not experiencing that.”
Charli is coming to terms with the fact that eventually, her work will end. Her dance floor will die. The party may continue on without her, with artists like Underscores, Slayyyter, and PinkPantheress continuing in her image, but she will, eventually, take her final bow.
As the song ends, Charli loops Cronenberg repeating the same sentence 27 times: “They are dead, they are gone, no one lasts forever.”
Is this reminiscent of her coming to the realization of this fact? Or is this her repeating the phrase until it loses all meaning, and she no longer fears the death of her dance floor?
You can stream Music, Fashion, and Film on your preferred streaming platform or purchase a physical copy here, and catch Charli on her North American tour this fall.