{"id":918103,"date":"2026-10-02T17:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T17:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/918103\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T17:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T17:44:10","slug":"charli-xcx-on-music-fashion-film-tour-why-oblivion-is-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/918103\/","title":{"rendered":"Charli xcx on Music, Fashion, Film Tour & Why ‘Oblivion Is Freedom’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAfter spending over a decade pushing pop forward from its periphery, Charli xcx<\/a> seized the zeitgeist in 2024 with Brat. The Grammy-\u00adwinning album propelled her to arena headliner for the first time \u2014 and now the 34-year-old is filling those same rooms and topping festival bills in support of her July rock-infused album, Music, Fashion, Film.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor the tour, which wraps its North America leg in October and heads to Europe in February, she\u2019s still doing things her way, with an uncompromising, high-concept show that leans heavily on Brat and Music. \u201cI\u2019m not really performing to please anyone other than myself,\u201d she says, \u201cwhich is maybe not the attitude that everybody takes, but that\u2019s the attitude that I take.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYou debuted this show while headlining Chicago\u2019s Lollapalooza for the first time. How intimidating was that?<\/p>\n

\n\tThat was so wild, to be honest, and really exciting. I think there\u2019s that sort of inner battle to fight this voice of what people might want from you versus the kind of artistic vision of what\u2019s true to the album, and luckily that voice never got too loud. There was a world where I could have played songs from my catalog that everybody definitely knows \u2014 but I am not really that interested in doing that anymore. Especially a festival headline set, I like to use that as an opportunity to really put forward my most pure vision as an artist. Maybe that is something that not everybody will like. Maybe that\u2019s something that new people will discover. But I [wanted] to use it as an opportunity to challenge an audience and the idea of what a festival set can be.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow does touring<\/a> allow you to express a side of your creativity that you can\u2019t in the studio?<\/p>\n

\n\tFor this show in particular, we really wanted to make things feel as cinematic as we possibly could, whilst obviously understanding the parameters of being in an arena. Being in an arena, you can make things feel really maximalist. You can throw all of the toys [at an audience] right away. But I think what we\u2019ve done with the show is we\u2019ve practiced some restraint, so that when you do feel that moment of pyro, it stands out.<\/p>\n

\n\tWas there something with this show that you had always wanted to do but hadn\u2019t previously been able to pull off?<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, like, the whole thing. [Laughs.] As an artist, I\u2019ve really climbed my way up from nothing \u2014 I used to perform with an iPod on a makeshift stage, and that was my production. The thing that\u2019s interesting is every time you get closer to doing your dream show, you realize that, actually, it\u2019s worth putting the money back in rather than like taking the money and running, because I want to do a show that feels artistically challenging. I feel challenged. I hope people who watch it feel challenged at points too.<\/p>\n

\n\tPutting on a show of this scale takes a village. How did your creative team support you?<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019ve worked closely with [creative director] Imogene Strauss, who is essentially one of my best friends, on building numerous tours of mine. She knows what I mean, I know what she means. We have a linguistic shorthand where we can just get to the core of an idea really fast. I have a similar language with [producer] A. G. Cook in the studio. Working on the musical direction of the show is really important too, and that\u2019s something that I start months and months in advance with Mitchell Snyder, who is someone who I\u2019ve worked on my shows with for a long time. It\u2019s almost like making a remix album, using all of the stems, deciding where we\u2019re putting \u201coblivion is freedom,\u201d deciding that we\u2019re even doing that, starting from nothing. The choreo on this show was really, really important, too. I worked with Eric Christensen, who has done a lot of runway-related work in the past, he works a lot with Mugler, I\u2019ve worked with him before with Saint Laurent when he was doing movement direction on a photo shoot. I really wanted to work with someone who had an extensive fashion background and was doing shows and was understanding the variety of different walks.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Music, Fashion, Film artwork features the luminaries John Cale, Marc Jacobs and Martin Scorsese. Were there any tours or musicians who inspired this tour\u2019s creative direction?<\/p>\n

\n\tIt wasn\u2019t really tours. It was more, like, different tableaux, different paintings. Like, Caravaggio paintings have always been quite important to me. There\u2019s like a real rawness to them. The way that he\u2019s using kind of untraditional models to paint real people. Then just like the energy of the performance, I was thinking a lot about people like [actress] B\u00e9atrice Dalle, and how she\u2019s so strong. I don\u2019t actually go to that many live shows to be honest.<\/p>\n

\n\tA David Cronenberg monologue ends \u00adMusic, Fashion, Film, and one line \u2014 \u00ad\u201coblivion is freedom\u201d \u2014 recurs throughout the show. Why that specific line?<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s the part that\u2019s most related to how I feel about performance, for better and worse. For me, performing live is very physical, sometimes very painful. I just have to throw myself into it and lose my inhibitions and almost enter another state \u2014 which might sound pretentious to some people, but whatever. I have to lose myself to be able to feel free onstage, and so \u201coblivion is freedom\u201d was the perfect thing to pepper across the live show, because it\u2019s genuinely how I feel when I perform and it\u2019s the mission statement of the album, in a way. Destroying what is comfortable and what you know can sometimes lead to this new creative freedom.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow do you view the totality of the show?<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s my perspective on being an artist, yes, but also being human. Not to get too deep \u2014 I know that, for some people, it\u2019s just a pop show, and I\u2019m happy for people to enjoy it like that \u2014 but I think there is a chaos and a freedom and a sadness and a beauty to existence, and I suppose I\u2019m trying to put all that into this one show. I think I have been a walking contradiction throughout my life as an artist, but I think that that is what it is to be human. It can be about whatever it can be to other people. But for me, it\u2019s kind of about that.<\/p>\n

\n\tA version of this story originally appeared in the Oct. 3, 2026, issue of Billboard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After spending over a decade pushing pop forward from its periphery, Charli xcx seized the zeitgeist in 2024…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":918104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,23827,4419,341,15111,16021],"class_list":["post-918103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-genre-pop","tag-magazine","tag-music","tag-music-news","tag-touring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=918103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/918104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}