Charli XCX is making a rock album.
The existence of Charli’s still-in-the-works eighth studio album was confirmed in an extensive new interview with Vogue, where she discussed the project’s rock-oriented style and musical direction. “I think the dance floor is dead, so now we’re making rock music,” she said. Rather than reprise the same hedonistic, dance-forward tenor of 2024’s massively successful Brat, Charli is opting to swing in a different direction. “If I’d made another album that felt more dance-leaning, it would have felt really hard, really sad,” she noted, saying she chose the genre of rock to “bend the possibilities of what my perspective on that could be.”
According to writer Laura Snapes, who profiled Charli for Vogue and heard several of the new project’s songs, the album features heavily processed guitars, queasy feedback, and “scuffed” melodies; Charli reportedly has moved away from her signature auto-tuned vocals and opted for a “rough demo-like quality” that feels more analogue and “truthful.” And a lot like her new record Wuthering Heights — Charli’s companion album to Emerald Fennell’s 2026 adaptation — the album takes on a more “internal,” “quiet,” and “earnest” direction than Brat.
Thematically, the album will see Charli reflecting on her relationship with art, which she described as the “joint main love of my life” alongside her husband (George Daniel of The 1975). The lyrics explore what would happen if that purpose were taken away; meanwhile, specific songs reference the “obscure feelings” of being married, the temporary nature of fame, the “artificiality of reinvention” and the performance of persona, how her foray into acting made her feel “undiscovered” and “violent,” and one particular evening at the Parisian apartment of a “philosopher girl.”
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Though it remains unfinished — Charli’s schedule remains loaded with film projects and, in the second half of 2026, headlining turns at festivals like Lollapalooza, Outside Lands, and Reading & Leeds — the album will be released via Charli’s longtime label home of Atlantic Records. She wrote and produced the project with regular collaborators A.G. Cook and Finn Keane; significant portions were secretly recorded in Paris (specifically during Fashion Week) and finished in West London.
Charli’s next album (or “xcx8,” as it’s referenced in the article) may not be completed yet, but she’s in the midst of celebrating multiple other projects. Wuthering Heights and Charli’s Brat-parodying mockumentary The Moment arrived in the winter, and she’s credited as a screenwriter and actor in the new film Erupjca, which will hit theaters in North America on April 17th. Charli also stars in the new films I Want Your Sex and The Gallerist (both of which premiered at Sundance this year alongside The Moment), as well as the upcoming horror flick Faces of Death.