{"id":559690,"date":"2026-07-26T01:41:28","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T01:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/559690\/"},"modified":"2026-07-26T01:41:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T01:41:28","slug":"charli-xcx-taps-david-cronenberg-for-a-collab-that-explains-music-fashion-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/559690\/","title":{"rendered":"Charli XCX Taps David Cronenberg For a Collab That Explains \u2018Music, Fashion, Film\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the last few years, Charli XCX has emerged as the music world’s most high-profile Letterboxd power user<\/a>. (That’ll come to no surprise of anyone who has a passing interest in online movie culture, has taken a cursory scan at the genre-bending pop titan’s socials.) Yet still, plenty of eyebrows shot up when David Cronenberg<\/a>, the legendary body-horror auteur behind gnarly hits like Crash\u2014the inspiration for the title of Charli’s fifth studio album\u2014was revealed to feature on the closing track for her new album Music, Fashion, Film.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the last part of that title should’ve provided some clues. The album artwork also features similarly seminal Hollywood titan Martin Scorsese<\/a>, alongside Velvet Underground frontman John Cale and designer Marc Jacobs<\/a>. When revealed, the cover seemed to reflect two things: firstly, Charli<\/a>‘s embrace of film and fashion as new modes of expression, be it through that aforementioned reinvention as an active online cinephile, or her turn towards acting as a side-hustle<\/a>. But they are also all men who cast long shadows over the art forms they represent; cultural icons with god-like reps. Guys who have created, and will leave behind, seismic artistic contributions. Perhaps then, in the shadow of Brat<\/a>\u2014 that all-consuming pop cultural moment that launched Charli XCX into the celebrity stratosphere in the space of a summer\u2014 legacy would be top of her mind, and what hers might be.<\/p>\n

The album itself is chock full of ironic, sometimes self-effacing lyrics about her post-Brat mega-fame. Plenty of the reviews have already made the point of how deliberately un-Brat it feels\u2014not least in how many of the songs carry an atypically rocky sound (though it’s hardly the big rejection of club music that fans had worried it might turn out to be). It’s self-conscious, it’s self-aware, it’s all very self-interested. A wrestle with authenticity in the wake of an identity-breaking event. And then comes that final track, \u201cNo One Lasts Forever,\u201d and the Cronenberg cameo, which might just be the key to unlocking it all.<\/p>\n

The song centers on Charli, seemingly, in the aftermath of a big night in Paris, chatting \u201cphilosophy\u201d with a \u201cFrench girl.\u201d (It’s giving strong 6 a.m. afters vibes, when the drugs are wearing off, the sun is cutting through the window blinds, and the birds start chirping, otherwise known as hell.) Once again, Charli grapples with her public persona amid the highs and lows of Brat: the parties might be more fun, but the scrutiny towards her character\u2014people reading her as \u201cirresponsible and rude,\u201d or constantly off her nut\u2014is less so. She concludes that this is all ephemeral, basically; if \u201cnothing’s gonna last forever,\u201d as goes the chorus, why care?<\/p>\n

Which is where Cronenberg comes in. Sadly, he doesn’t get to flex his singing chops. The feature takes the form of a spoken interlude taken from a hour-long conversation<\/a> he and Charli had last year. (\u201cI went to Toronto to sit down with him, and record him,\u201d she told the music station Triple J<\/a>. \u201cWe chose the parts that felt most related to the song, but the entire conversation itself is so interesting.\u201d) In the excerpt, he seems to chillingly describe a near-death experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I was lying there on the sidewalk, I did not think about art at all,\u201d he says. \u201cI thought about people, I thought about life.\u201d Even as such a legend of the game, confronted with his own mortality, the things that seemed to matter were much smaller and personal: family, friends, loved ones. \u201cYes, some artists have created art that has survived thousands of years\u2026 But experientially, for them, they are dead, they are gone,\u201d he continues. \u201cOblivion is freedom.\u201d And then arrives the haunting end note that closes out Music, Fashion, Film, a refrain that echoes into the darkness: \u201cThey are dead, they are gone, no one lasts forever.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the last few years, Charli XCX has emerged as the music world’s most high-profile Letterboxd power user.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":559691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1503,6613,146,85,46,409,7945],"class_list":["post-559690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-culture","tag-digital_syndication","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music","tag-textbelowcenterfullbleed"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=559690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/559690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/559691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=559690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=559690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=559690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}