{"id":659268,"date":"2026-05-09T06:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T06:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/659268\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T06:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T06:08:10","slug":"charli-xcx-rock-music-track-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/659268\/","title":{"rendered":"Charli XCX: \u201cRock Music\u201d Track Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s see if I can get through this without referencing Julia Cameron\u2019s 1992 book The Artist\u2019s Way. \u201cRock Music\u201d presents a simple, compelling argument: Art is daily bread. Charli XCX<\/a> has always used arch presentation and extreme sounds to conceal a fundamentally earnest, romantic point of view, and beneath \u201cRock Music\u201d\u2019s shroud of heavily processed guitars, she advocates for creativity as a form of essential lifeblood. She suggests it\u2019s something that can be as spontaneous and lighthearted as taking pictures with your friends at Jean\u2019s, and something you should put your body on the line for: \u201cThe nerve damage is real\/But it\u2019s the only way to feel,\u201d she sings, referencing the physical trauma she\u2019s suffered as a result of years of battering herself around onstage.<\/p>\n

You can also take \u201cRock Music\u201d as an elite troll and slightly stupid provocation, and it\u2019s successful on that level too: The lyric \u201cI think the dancefloor is dead\u201d had a borderline Chalamet-on-opera<\/a> response online when it was teased in Charli\u2019s recent Vogue profile<\/a>. But I think the song\u2019s trollish posture is a feint. The track\u2019s overdriven power chords, the fodder of so many uninspired wannabe anthems, are both funny ha-ha and totally earned on a song that\u2019s so self-consciously Inspirational; I\u2019m struck by how poignant it is to hear Charli, who approaches creative risk-taking with a borderline spiritual fervor, to pass down this piece of advice to her listener: \u201cHurt yourself\/Maybe jump off the stage\/I hope they catch you today\/But if they don\u2019t, it\u2019s OK.\u201d Maybe I\u2019m a rube for taking a 115-second song so seriously, or maybe all that matters is that I took the leap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s see if I can get through this without referencing Julia Cameron\u2019s 1992 book The Artist\u2019s Way. \u201cRock…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136,39746,1672],"class_list":["post-659268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-tracks","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659268","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=659268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}