Music, Fashion, Film — Charli xcx
Music, Fashion, Film — Charli xcx
The only constant great artists share is change.
Charli XCX, once-unsung pop heroine turned megastar, wastes no time before declaring her own evolution on new album Music Fashion Film. “The dance floor is dead,” she sings. “Now we’re making rock music.”
This is a very different statement than “The Brat era is dead,” which many fans likely expected from the follow-up to her 2024 club-classic smash-hit. Rather than signalling a mere genre shift, it’s a statement on the nature of inspiration itself. What’s truly “dead” is the piece of Charli herself who found inspiration in Brat’s style of creation – a death which makes way for new life.
“Rock Music,” the agenda-setting leadoff track, does indeed have guitar riffs. But the song is still closer to Charli’s usual dancepop than Steely Dan. Music Fashion Film’s sound is fresh, but maintains shades of the “hyperpop” movement she spearheaded for a decade – heavy Autotune, distorted beats, offbeat lyrics over catchy melodies. It’s the sound of transition – an old world meeting a new one that neither we, nor Charli, can fully articulate, as we don’t yet know where it’s headed.
Charli’s choice of “rock music” as her newest muse is significant. If what’s dead is hyperpop’s dance floor, what’s alive is in many ways its antithesis. Where hyperpop was futuristic, rock is vintage. Hyperpop was based in nostalgia for early-Aughts Gen Z-ers, an audience likely to dismiss the ‘70s shredders as “dad rock.” Its spur-of-the-moment playfulness is a revolt against rock’s melodrama (“Stairway to Heaven,” anyone?).
Thus, defining her work as “rock music” is a firm stake in the ground. This album is different. This album is change.
Change, though, is rarely a straight path. Charli alternates between accepting & resisting it across Music Fashion Film. “I’m Afraid” explores the pressures a 34-year-old, newly-married international party symbol faces when confronted with settling down. On “Wink Wink,” she promises “I’m not a bad girl anymore,” but with a half-in-cheek verbal “wink.”
Furthermore, it’s unclear what is driving a change in Charli. Many pop stars would feel reinvigorated by finally reaching the pop pantheon after a decade. Such success may inspire artists to double-down, taking the style even further – especially where commercial interests are at play.
In “Camera”, a lens of clarity begins to focus. We hear an internal dialogue over Charli’s growing interest in film – one she’s experimented with earlier this year by soundtracking Wuthering Heights and starring in the semi-autobiographical The Moment. She considers the apparent recklessness of this newfound passion, given her scarce experience & its inherent financial risk. At first, we’re inclined to agree.
But the debate fades away to the simplest of truths: “All I know is how it makes me feel.”
This is the catharsis we’ve craved – the driver of Charli’s compulsion for change. Charli is professing her desire to follow her inspiration over all else, even if it leads to the exact opposite of what she’d done before. Film, or “rock music,” now provides the feeling which hyperpop albums filled for years, and she can’t help but follow it down its new path. Her thesis is articulated splendidly at the track’s end:
“I don't feel embarrassed even if I suck /
I'm always craving an experience that feels dangerous /
And maybe this is it, maybe it's what I need /
'Cause it's the only way to feel like I'm not actually me”
The lyrically-sparse “Yeah” is a live-action-role-play of this feeling at the moment of inspiration. Negativity & ennui pervade most of the song in an endless loop of “I don’t wanna”s. Until…”Wait,” she perks up. Something stirs. “Now I want to feel it.” Guitars erupt, blasting us with euphoria. The feeling has come, and it commands us to embrace it.
Yet before we know it, the drums slow down, the vocals grind to a halt. If we didn’t follow the feeling, we missed our chance. This is the moment Charli fears – where a seed of inspiration is lost, when as her idol David Lynch often (melodramatically) says, “you want to blow your brains out” (...).
In many ways, this theme is itself an extension of the hyperpop philosophy. The sub-genre saw Charli & her peers throw ideas at the wall, some refined but many off-the-cuff. This unfiltered creativity drove many acclaimed albums. To stop the same mentality from driving other works entirely would be a self-betrayal.
“Magic Metal Montana” acts as both an ode & eulogy to the hyperpop years. A heartfelt tribute to partner-in-crime A.G. Cook, the track is a “thank you” to the producer who made that now-ending era possible. But its gratitude goes deeper – Cook’s importance is not in his ability to create digitized beats, but that, as Charli says, “you make it easy for me.” Cook prioritizes channeling Charli’s inspirations, and the impact of this is clearly profound.
While never quite resolved, the throughline of Music Fashion Film is that while inspiration cannot be controlled, induced or explained, it must be followed. Doing so may not be the most convenient, socially acceptable or financially lucrative choice. But there may not be a choice to be made. The kid singing pop songs in their bedroom in “2007” does so because they’re compelled to – and if that compulsion evolves to rock music, filmmaking or even dairy farming, they must not tune it out.
The final track, “No One Lasts Forever,” is intriguingly the most hyperpop-y of the album – its lyrical & melodic resemblance to “Forever” on How I’m Feeling Now cannot be coincidence. Charli concludes her statement with that age-old caution against the vain quest for immortality. But Charli’s concept of immortality extends beyond life to our states of mind, our pursuits. To pretend these will last forever is to be the ingenuine antagonist of “Persona,” the album’s cautionary tale against letting external forces win out over internal expression.
We all will change, whether we decide to or not. The decision we do have is whether we absorb the change as part of ourselves, continuing to follow our elusive light.