On Music, Fashion, Film, Charli xcx stands equal to her idols

I hope you’re not sick of Charli xcx yet.

After a fictional biopic (The Moment) and a soundtrack album (Wuthering Heights) earlier this year, Music, Fashion, Film is the pop darling’s newest offering and the record she formally considers her follow up to 2024’s era-defining album Brat.

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No one else matches her work ethic in the pop world. B-sides, remix albums, tours, movies, the works. She’s a loyal collaborator and friend who seems to be relishing her newfound celebrity. It’s not that she was ever an underground artist — “Fancy” and “I Love It” catapulted her to the top of the charts — but her output often eschewed chasing trends. She preferred working with PC Music and releasing EPs. She hates the kinds of albums like Crash that her label pressured her into making. She enjoys pushing back against her image, using each new album to erase and remix her previous sonic palette. It’s a relief that even as she reinvents herself, she still crafts fun, intelligent pop music with a razor-sharp edge.

Charli xcx tries on deadpan indie sleaze for her seventh studio album, Music, Fashion, Film, which doles out grim zingers, sincere reflections on mortality, and trollish comebacks with equal relish. It’s a powerful take on creative freedom, a way to shake off the boxy expectations laid on pop stars after a big moment. She hates being boxed in or predictable; after a line from “Rock Music” went viral in critic Laura Snapes’s profile in British Vogue, she posted on Instagram that she had not, in fact, made a rock record. The jangly, catchy second single “SS26” channels apocalyptic vibes into the song of the summer. Perhaps it’s not a traditional rock record but guitars are all over the album — even the most poppy tracks feature power chords. “Wink Wink” is one of Charli’s best songs in years and its tongue-in-cheek, horny music video is a sumptuous triumph of tits and ass in suburban England. I only wish she’d included the infectious and witty b-side “Playboy Bunny” on the final tracklist.

Recorded primarily in Paris last fall after a period of post-Brat exhaustion, Charli’s new album meditates on the nature of becoming a renowned artist and icon who dabbles in a variety of media. Whether considering her recent foray into acting (“Camera”) or her YSL brand ambassadorship (“SS26,” “Card Declined”), Charli’s trying to figure out her next career move. “Am I being fuckin' stupid / If I try to be a girl on the screen when I'm turning thirty-four?” she asks on “Camera.” She’s always been an underdog, but now she’s a bona fide hit gracing the cover of Vogue, throwing a highly-publicized wedding, and starring in movies like Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex and Pete Oh’s Erupjca. What else can she be?

In a strange way, while Music, Fashion, Film considers the nature of being a creator and having a public career, it’s far less vulnerable than Brat. Only a few songs dig into the pop star’s psyche, like the anxiety-riddled “I’m Afraid” and the existential “No One Lasts Forever,” the final track on the record that features a monologue by Charli’s idol and infamous horror director David Cronenberg. Can our art outlive us? Charli ponders in a Parisian girl’s apartment as the two discuss philosophy and immortality. “I know deep down that it’s here and now cause nothing’s gonna last forever,” she sings. “Everyone thinks I’ve got a problem/since everyone knows my name.”

The act of creation — our personas, our projections, our output — is at the core of Music, Fashion, Film. The music video for “Camera” finds the pop star calling the shots. She wants us to see her as a true artist, someone isn’t just a muse but an auteur. Someone who’s an equal to Martin Scorsese, John Cale, and Marc Jacobs on the cover. In the accompanying visual film, Charli argues that her song “Yeah” is about the feeling that comes when a piece of music clicks into place. Lyrically, it’s one of the least dense songs, but sonically it packs a punch—glitchy, crunchy, wild, and free. It’s far more carefree and off the cuff than Brat’s recursive and jealous hits like “Mean Girls” and “Sympathy is a Knife.” It’s the work of someone with enough confidence and power not to care.

Across the record, Charli’s in a celebratory — if occasionally contemplative — mood, singing paeans to collaborators like A. G. Cook (“Magic Metal Montana”) and flipping the bird at those who want her to be a good girl and stop doing coke and partying (“Wink Wink”). Of course she still has anxieties, but Charli also has a clear vision for her future. It’s one where she can align her aesthetic with the arthouse world while still remaining mainstream. (She’s penned manifestos about anti-marketing and posted on Substack that she has “always rejected the idea that art, film, persona or music becoming commercial means it cannot also be considered cool.”)

While the new record rarely shows Charli looking backwards, nostalgia is still an archetypal motif. “2007” is a fun riff on her previous hit “1999,” “I can take you to heaven like it’s 2007,” a mantra for the behind-the-scenes work a pop star is now required to give her audience. Distorted vocals over a blip-heavy beat leads directly into the strumming guitars of her terrified love song dedicated to now-husband George Daniel of the 1975. “I’m a wife/I’m a kid/I’m destroyed/I’m a bitch/I’m too drunk” is one of the rare moments of doubt on the record. What if the party girl wasn’t meant to be married? What if she fucks it up? “Take the ring,” she sings over a heavy bass.

If this record is Charli xcx trolling the fans who only recently caught onto her charm, it’s a smart left turn for her to continue to carve out her own lane. Revisiting and twisting the early, more-rock, Sky Ferreria-esque sound she developed on early albums like True Romance and Sucker, she delivers a devilish, catchy new album. By the end of Music, Fashion, Film’s short run time, Charli xcx is confidently seated in the director’s chair.