{"id":657930,"date":"2026-05-08T14:57:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T14:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/657930\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T14:57:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T14:57:09","slug":"charli-xcx-rock-music-review-is-she-really-pivoting-from-pop-dont-be-so-sure-charli-xcx","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/657930\/","title":{"rendered":"Charli xcx: Rock Music review \u2013 is she really pivoting from pop? Don\u2019t be so sure \u2026 | Charli xcx"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month, Charli xcx began the media campaign for her seventh studio album by giving an interview to Vogue magazine. The ensuing feature<\/a> caused an impressive degree of online consternation, not because the 33-year-old star had said anything particularly controversial, but because she had suggested that the follow-up to 2024\u2019s Brat<\/a> would sound markedly different to its predecessor. \u201cIf I\u2019d made another album that felt more dance-leaning, it would have felt really hard, really sad,\u201d she said, not unreasonably declining to chase Brat\u2019s vast success by attempting to replicate it. (Although, in fairness, you could have probably worked that out from House, the noisy, experimental collaboration with John Cale she released at the end of last year as the first single from her soundtrack to Wuthering Heights.)<\/p>\n

She also played the interviewer a track that contained both \u201cheavily processed guitars\u201d and the lyrics \u201cI think the dancefloor is dead, so now we\u2019re making rock music\u201d: Vogue duly ran with the idea, trumpeting Charli xcx\u2019s \u201crock reinvention\u201d in both the headline and on its cover and other news outlets picked up on the story \u2013 \u201cCHARLI XCX CONFIRMS ROCK ALBUM\u201d. What one journalist tactfully called \u201cheated discourse online from some fans and artists within the music industry\u201d followed, eventually prompting the singer to respond, posting \u201ca video of me making a song called Rock Music that is not actually rock music which is funny because I never said I was making a rock album\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The fact an artist can cause controversy by saying her new album is going to sound different to her last album says something depressing about the era in which we live, dominated by streaming services and their algorithms designed to serve listeners more and more and more of the same. Equally, if Charli xcx was executing a pivot towards rock, it would be a remarkably bold move.<\/p>\n

In recent years, we\u2019ve become more used to rock artists taking on the trappings of pop \u2013 a move that\u2019s encompassed everything from the Auto-Tuned vocals on the late Ozzy Osbourne\u2019s final albums to hardcore punk band Turnstile\u2019s work with Brat producer AG Cook<\/a> to Sleep Token\u2019s vastly successful stew of progressive metal, electronics, pop and R&B \u2013 rather than vice versa. That seems symbolic of the fact that it\u2019s a long time since rock, either of the hard or alt variety, has felt particularly central to the musical conversation. There\u2019s plenty of it still around, some of it is fascinating, but there\u2019s no getting around the fact that the biggest-selling rock albums of recent years have largely contained music that\u2019s decades old, whether by Arctic Monkeys, Linkin Park, Queen or Oasis. A huge pop star proclaiming the dancefloor dead and announcing they\u2019re now making rock music would thus seem ballsy and far-sighted.<\/p>\n

But actually listening to the track in question \u2013 the first single from the as-yet-untitled new album \u2013 it\u2019s pretty clear that isn\u2019t what Charli xcx is saying at all. There are definitely distorted electric guitars here \u2013 playing a riff vaguely reminiscent of the one on Hole\u2019s Celebrity Skin \u2013 and what seem to be live drums, but Rock Music is unequivocally a pop track. It\u2019s a wilfully plasticky-sounding studio creation \u2013 after less than two minutes, it suddenly ends, an electronically manipulated vocal cutting off as if someone has pressed pause \u2013 that feels remarkably like someone thumbing their nose at the \u201cauthenticity\u201d held dear by the kind of rock fan who might get upset at the news a pop star is dabbling in the genre. No one is likely to get the lyrics confused with those of an earnest paean: they seem to have a lot in common with the wry, arched-eyebrow wit of LCD Soundsystem\u2019s Losing My Edge or the Killers\u2019 Glamorous Indie Rock & Roll than they do with, say, AC\/DC\u2019s For Those About to Rock (We Salute You) or Kiss\u2019s Rock and Roll All Nite. \u201cWow, I\u2019m really banging my head, I\u2019m really hurting my neck,\u201d she deadpans at one point. \u201cYeah, maybe jump off the stage, I hope they catch you today, but if they don\u2019t it\u2019s OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is very funny, infernally catchy and chaotic in a way that sets it apart from the perfectly turned and written-by-committee approach of 21st-century mainstream pop. It\u2019s far enough removed from the contents of Brat to count as a new direction while maintaining that album\u2019s hugely appealing up-yours attitude. It also makes you very eager to learn what the rest of her new album might sound like, rock or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last month, Charli xcx began the media campaign for her seventh studio album by giving an interview to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":657931,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":["post-657930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/657931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}