3 Interesting Facts About Charli XCX’s New Rock Album, ‘Music, Fashion, Film’

The opening track on Charli XCX’s new album, Music, Fashion, Film, features the following lyric: “I think the dance floor is dead / So now we’re making rock music.” Now, purists will likely debate whether Charli is indeed rocking here. But the dripping irony in “Rock Music” is nonetheless a kind of transformation for the singer. This is an album on which Charli looks inward, considers her past, and even ponders mortality.

I love this album, and in the spirit of pondering, I want to share three facts about Music, Fashion, Film that may intrigue you.

An Album Made With Friends

Though Charli XCX is one of the world’s most visible pop solo artists, her albums and mixtapes are works of close collaboration with her friends. A. G. Cook and Finn Keane co-produced Charli’s latest LP, Music, Fashion, Film. Together with Charli, they’ve expanded the sound of modern pop music with maximalist sensibilities, bringing experimental electronic and dance music to mainstream audiences. And now, on Music, Fashion, Film, they kind of rock.

Me and my friends, we go out,
We take pictures and make stuff together.

‘Brat’ Could Have Been the Last Album… for a While

Speaking with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Charli said Brat might have been her last album, at least for a while. Instead, Music, Fashion, Film arrived as a reaction to what came before. And what came before, Brat, had utterly consumed pop culture. The new album feels immediate, in-the-moment, and direct, though it happened sooner than she thought. Charli imagined having a “long pause” after Brat. “And then you know, inspiration struck,” she said.

A Profound Conversation

A conversation with body-horror filmmaker David Cronenberg shifted Charli’s attention toward mortality, which she documents in “No One Lasts Forever”. Cronenberg told her about a near-death experience he had after collapsing on a sidewalk near his Toronto home. Charli asked whether, in that moment, he thought about his work. “As I was lying there on the sidewalk, I did not think about art at all,” he says in the song’s outro. It’s questioning the relationship between the work and the artist. And what’s the point of creative endurance if the artist is no longer alive to experience it?

Photo by Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for Spotify