In December 2024, in the midst of the frenzy over Brat, the multi-award-winning sixth album by Charli XCX, the British star made some strange statements. Because of the level of detail and the subject praised. It happened at the Hitmaker of the Year awards gala, hosted by the publication Variety, where she received the Breakthrough Artist of the Year award. After admitting she had drunk a lot of champagne during the ceremony and thanking producers and collaborators, she said: “The first album by The Velvet Underground is the pinnacle of art,” and spent a minute explaining it, with statements like: “It’s a mix of the sublime and the vulgar, of poetry and drugs, of sincerity and arrogance.” She was referring to The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967) and it seemed like an out-of-context praise because the album for which she was being awarded, Brat, encourages a neon-lit club night far removed from the murky psychedelic atmosphere that the Velvet’s debut exudes with the famous banana cover designed by Andy Warhol. Now we know, a year and a half later, that during that speech, and despite the ethyl aromas caused by the cava (or perhaps because of them), Charli XCX was laying the foundations for her next move: a rock album.
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Not by chance on the cover of Music, Fashion, Film, the new album by Charlotte Emma Aitchison (Charli’s real name, an artist born in Cambridge, England, 34 years ago) appears John Cale, the musician who formed The Velvet Underground in the mid-sixties alongside Lou Reed. The two already collaborated on the soundtrack of the film Wuthering Heights (Emerald Fennell, 2026). Cale is not alone: he is accompanied by filmmaker Martin Scorsese and fashion designer Marc Jacobs. Three men portrayed together for the cover of a woman’s work, who wanted to represent with the trio the three words of the title: Music, fashion, and film. Or in other words: the artistic expressions she is most passionate about.
So far the background and the wrapping; now it would be appropriate to determine whether Charli’s seventh album can really be classified as rock, and what motivates the artist to flirt with a genre with so little presence on the most listened-to song charts on digital platforms, the thermometer (there is no other) to know today what the masses listen to. The break with Brat, that cultural phenomenon that even dyed the last U.S. presidential election campaign lime green (Kamala Harris used the bright color), is evident: from pop rave to guitars.
In the review of Music, Fashion, Film by the average music critic Pitchfork, which rates it highly with an 8.2 out of 10, influences referenced include Garbage, the flashy Blur of Song 2 and even, in an exaggerated exercise of optimism, the Pixies. The outlet also mentions The Strokes. Charli XCX actually took the stage at a The Strokes concert on August 8 in San Francisco to perform Take It or Leave It, the closing track of the influential New Yorkers’ debut back in 2001 (Charli was nine years old), perhaps the last revolutionary rock album. “We have a guest who is a superstar,” announced Julian Casablancas, perhaps acknowledging that he had already lost the status that now defines the Englishwoman. The Strokes’ vocalist even knelt to emphasize something that was obvious: that Charli’s album would sell more in the first hours than his group’s, titled Reality Awaits, which was released the same day (July 24). “We had a great battle, and you defeated us,” Casablancas said.
Music, Fashion, Film, which lasts only 30 minutes, opens with Rock Music, to make the intentions clear. The lyrics say: “I think the dance floor is dead, so now we’re making rock music.” As soon as it was released, Madonna couldn’t hold back and posted on her social media: “If your dance floor looks dead maybe you’re playing the wrong music.” Some saw in this digital jab a generational clash: the veteran, whose recent album, Confessions II, is devoted to dance, defending her territory against the brazen rise of the young star.
The album’s lyrics are not notable for their depth. “Yes, maybe you jump off the stage. / I hope they catch you today, but if they don’t, it’s okay,” continues Rock Music in a humorous dynamic that at times seems like a kind of Spinal Tap of the TikTok era. In the video accompanying the song, Charli smokes a castle of cigarettes and throws a TV out the window, which some interpret as a parody of classic rock clichés. In other lyrics, she gets serious when dealing with the ups and downs of artistic creation, but then the party star returns: “Maybe I slept with your dad. / Just kidding, I’m only saying it to make an impact,” she sings in Wink Wink. The guitar sound, the main instrument of rock, crafted by AG Cook and Finn Keane, trusted producers of the English star, is inspired by riffs from important rock bands like Nirvana, but distorted by digitalization and using the loop effect.
Reviews offer a positive balance, but the exceptions are loud. The specialist from Far Out Magazine fires a bazooka: “Instead of pushing pop forward, the album rummages through yesterday’s costume trunk. While there are catchy moments and the occasional exciting one, like at all Monday morning costume parties, it lacks the necessary conviction and everything becomes grossly tedious.” The critic from The Atlantic is also not enthusiastic, ironically titling, “Is she the new Britney Spears or the new Lou Reed?” and concluding: “For a contemporary figure like Charli, present concerns do deserve to be taken into account. And the big current concern is the excess of mediocrity.”
A more moderate view might say that those looking for a rock album like Foo Fighters or Jack White won’t find it, but the intention to season the genre with current tools works. At the core of this movement is a desire to break with the past and make a radical turn in her career (similar script to Rosalía’s) and in the perennial aspiration of massive pop stars to convey authenticity, that unfathomable quality always associated with rock.
The protagonist herself commented in an interview with Rolling Stone: “Obviously, I know there has been a lot of talk about me making a rock album, something I have never said.” And the interesting part came next: “But honestly, I’ve never thought about genre in a binary way. It seems like a very outdated idea to me. I don’t even know what genre it is.” This is the recognizable Charli, one of the biggest musical stars of the internet era who uses contemporary concepts to express the classic “I don’t want to be pigeonholed.”
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