Charli xcx‘s next era is here. The British pop star released her Music, Fashion, Film album on Friday (July 24), which follows Charli helming the Wuthering Heights soundtrack in February.
Charli’s new LP boasts 11 songs in total, including her four previously released singles: “Camera,” “SS26,” “Rock Music” and “Wink Wink.”
The album’s closer, “No One Lasts Forever,” features the project’s lone guest, a conversation with director David Cronenberg. Charli told Triple J that she paid him a visit in Toronto.
“We spoke for an hour,” she explained. “We kind of chose the parts that felt most related to the song. The entire conversation is just so interesting. He’s such an interesting person, and smart and kind. I could listen to him talk forever… I think he has a really interesting perspective on legacy and art and artists.”
Charli gave fans an early taste of the album when performing select tracks from the LP during her underplay shows in NYC and London earlier in July.
Following the arrival of Music, Fashion, Film, Charli will hit the road for a North American arena tour. The trek is slated to kick off in Philadelphia on Sept. 11 and will make stops in Brooklyn, Toronto, Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
Charli xcx leveled up in the pop zeitgeist with her Brat album in June 2024, which reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and won three Grammys. The project marks her highest-charting LP to date.
Stream Music, Fashion, Film below.
Charli xcx has spent the last two years staring down one of the most unenviable tasks a pop star can face: following up a universally acclaimed, commercially successful blockbuster album. Her strategy for moving on from the phenomenon that was 2024’s Brat was to get as much of a moment out of the album and its accompanying tour as she possibly could, then to clear the decks a little with a full-length soundtrack to a hit film (Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights adaptation) earlier this year, and then to make a hard turn for her next proper LP: the now-released Music, Fashion, Film.
So is the new set the pivot to rock music seemingly teased by some of her comments leading up to the album, as well as the sound of its lead single (and opening track), literally titled “Rock Music”? As one probably could have expected with Charli xcx, the answer is both yes and no.
The 11 new songs on Music, Fashion, Film are certainly more guitar-forward and less beat-heavy than past Charli sets — Brat in particular — but if you were expecting her to go full ’00s New York indie rock, well, there’s a Strokes album out this week for that. This album has its purely grungy moments, but it still carries the energy, the sonic meticulousness and the attitude of dance and pop as much as rock, and its overall sound will certainly be extremely recognizable to anyone who’s followed the career and work of Charlotte Aitchison up until this point.
Regardless of genre designation — which has never seemed overly important to Charli xcx in the first place — Music, Fashion, Film is another fascinating, addictive, singular catalog entry in a body of work that is quickly becoming one of the 21st century’s most formidable. Here’s how we rank the 11 tracks found on Charli’s latest, from worst to first.
]]>
]]>
]]>
]]>
]]>
]]>
]]>
]]>