Fresh off the Wuthering Heights soundtrack in February, Charli XCX released her album Music, Fashion, Film on July 24. The album is short, with a modest 30–minute run time and 11 tracks in total. If fans are in need of more content, the album also has a companion film available on Youtube. Charli officially announced her album via an Instagram post with the cover featuring a black–and–white photo of John Cale, Marc Jacobs, and Martin Scorsese photographed by collaborator on The Moment, Aidan Zamiri. Guitar–heavy in nature, Charli’s newest project ventures into a rock–adjacent realm while still keeping that signature electronic feel.
The album answers the pressing question on audiences’ minds–how does one follow a phenomenon quite distinct and universal as Brat? Charli’s response? You don’t. Music, Fashion, Film wasn’t made with the intention to replicate Brat. In an interview with Rolling Stone’s Angie Martoccio, Charli elaborates on the interaction between her albums as “repelling” each other.
With “Rock Music”—Charli’s lead single released in May—the album shows this departure from previous projects immediately. Declaring the dance floor “dead,” the single marries glitchy vocals with heavy guitar. Opening with her smoking out the window, the “Rock Music” music video directed by Aidan Zimiri heavily uses imagery of cigarettes and the electric atmosphere of a mosh–pit–like scene amid glitchy shots to accompany the vocals. The music video also features cameos from A.G. Cook and Finn Keane—both collaborators on her previous and present album along with her spouse George Daniel of The 1975.
Although titled “Rock Music,” the track feels like it transcends genres. And that’s because it does–as Charli elaborates her thought process on the entire album in her Rolling Stone interview, she does not think of genre in a “binary way.”
The rest of Music, Fashion, Film is equally as experimental, but lends itself to more emotional depth. “SS26”—another single from the album—comments on the inauthenticity of art in a doomsday–like tone. Charli’s pre–chorus is brimming with references to past experiences being utilized as a way to commodify her art. “Think my politics could work as a press strategy / And my heritage could give me quite the USP,” she sings over the hum of the guitar.
The music video for “SS26” directed by Torso, speaks to the fashion part of Music, Fashion, Film—taking the viewer behind the scenes of a fashion show. “SS26” is not short on representing the fashion industry, with appearances from Creative Director of Yves Saint Laurent Anthony Vaccarello to famed editor Carine Roitfeld. Among the disarray of the show, her lyric about “walking on a runway that goes straight to Hell” is taken literally, as at the end of the runway models fall endlessly into a bottomless hole.
Throughout the album, the act of pretending and the pressure that accompanies it is woven in lyrics. “Card Declined” is the most prominent example, done through the lens of materialism. In it she sings in monotone about buying a “personality” over slowed guitar in a cycle of emptiness. The track is closely tied to how material things can change you, and though it can “unlock a new side of your personality,” it can feel “very, very fake,” Charli said while on the TapeNotes Podcast.
“Card Declined” is dark yet complex, as collaborator Finn Keane says on the podcast when the chorus comes back, it’s higher and takes on “a more sort of hopeful” tone. Charli adds on to this, saying that it’s like “put[ting] the jacket on and becom[ing] who you’re supposed to be.”
“Magic Metal Montana” is a clear standout, bringing a unique joy to the album as a tribute to Charli’s friendship with longtime collaborator A.G. Cook. It keeps a balance between vulnerable and playful, from its indie rock instrumentals and overlaying lively synth on top. The song feels bright in comparison to the rest of the album as she speaks to what their friendship means to her. “You’re my best friend, but we don’t talk / We make music, we talk that way.” Charli sings as she shares her admiration of their friendship. In this part, her tone shifts; there’s a sense of gratitude that at first feels out of place on an album with so much anxiousness. But then the next track plays.
“No One Lasts Forever”—by far the longest song on the album—acts as the catharsis for the angst of previous tracks. The last track also features film director David Cronenberg, who Charli named one of her dream collaborators on a film in her interview with Martoccio, citing his movie Maps to the Stars as one of her favorites.
As Charli sings about impermanence, Cronenberg comes in the second half of the song through a recording of a conversation between him and her. Cronenberg’s dialogue begins as he details a near–death experience where he collapsed on a sidewalk. “As I was lying there on the sidewalk / I did not think about art at all / I thought about people, I thought about life,” he says.
Charli and her collaborators loop a line of conversation that encapsulates the focus on mortality, with Cronenberg saying “They are dead, they are gone / No one lasts forever.” As the lines overlap again and again, it’s as if it’s purging all of the unease from previous tracks.
“No One Lasts Forever” solidifies the feeling of this album: sobering up to the fleeting reality of life.
Music, Fashion, Film is in some ways antithetical to Brat. It progresses and grows like a line of thought: from worries about art and putting on a front to the realization of how short life is and the role that art plays in comparison to the people and life you’ve built. In this way, Charli asks the listener to reflect on what matters most: the present or the legacy that you’ll never see?
