{"id":709508,"date":"2026-07-24T21:26:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T21:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/709508\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T21:26:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T21:26:12","slug":"charli-xcx-music-fashion-film-review-slippery-search-into-selfhood-that-hits-just-as-hard-as-brat-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/709508\/","title":{"rendered":"Charli xcx: Music, Fashion, Film review \u2013 slippery search into selfhood that hits just as hard as Brat | Music"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a decade spent trailblazing a unique kind of pop freedom from the genre\u2019s fringes, A-list success seemed like the thing that might finally trap Charli xcx<\/a>. Her 2024 club-rat opus Brat<\/a> spawned memes, embarrassing political bandwagoning, Collins\u2019 word of the year and possibly terminal damage to the bra industry. Its ludicrous cultural impact looked set to pickle her as a caricature of a Parliament-toting bad girl; the question of whether \u201cBrat summer\u201d could last \u2013 whether Charli could sustain the interest \u2013 was so rife she turned it into a mockumentary, The Moment<\/a>. It made success look miserable: your creation turned cringe by execs wanting to milk their prize cow dry of every last acid-green drop.<\/p>\n

Charli xcx: Music, Fashion, Film. Photograph: Aidan Zamiri<\/p>\n

Even for a pop star renowned for reinvention, it put a higher price on her next move. Pivot and risk losing new fans and looking wilfully contrarian. When Charli released the sub-two-minute single Rock Music<\/a>, many heard it as a middle finger. \u201cI think the dancefloor is dead,\u201d she drawls over guitars that buzzed like speakers weathering interference from a Nokia 5110, \u201cso now we\u2019re making rock music.\u201d There were boring thinkpieces about the dancefloor being very much alive, actually (as if Charli had ever ridden culture for clout then binned it off), and about whether she was trying to eject fair-weather new fans. But the key to this cheeky song is surprisingly earnest: \u201cJump off the stage \/ I hope they catch you today \/ But if they don\u2019t it\u2019s OK,\u201d she sings naively, an affirmation to take creative leaps, and to come with Charli \u2013 or not, as you like \u2013 as she takes this one.<\/p>\n

\"CharliCharli xcx: does the new album live up to Brat? – The Latest<\/p>\n

Music, Fashion, Film\u2019s prosaic title references Charli\u2019s recent turn towards acting<\/a> and fashion collaborations. But from the first singles, the bigger picture felt a little murky compared with Brat\u2019s excavation of anxieties around female relationships. She quickly protested that she wasn\u2019t reeeeaally making rock music. The wistful SS26 dealt in slimy celebrity apologia; the addictive Wink Wink hat-tipped to 00s French indie sleazers the Teenagers as Charli pinky-promised that she was respectable now. But I\u2019d bet these releases were intentionally diffuse, preventing Music, Fashion, Film from slipping out of Charli\u2019s control before it was even out.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Charli xcx: Camera \u2013 video<\/p>\n

That slipperiness turns out to be the essence of another gorgeously astute and disarmingly deep album about the instability of identity \u2013 not just as a vanguard songwriter striving for evolution, but how much we can ever know one another, or even ourselves. Rock Music and SS26 explore self-definition: the defiant cultural reset; the celebrity scoundrel who dodges criticism by exploiting certain sympathies (\u201cmy heritage could give me quite the USP\u201d). On Card Declined\u2019s blunt, fuzzed-out chug, she\u2019s shopping for \u201ca personality \/ A whole backstory\u201d via luxury goods. There\u2019s no moralising side-eye: Charli, always a laser-focused cultural observer, understands that self-commodification is just the way we live now, how it might offer an escape from dire times, or helpfully beckon the hellfires faster. Even leaning on guitars and stripping away Charli\u2019s usual AutoTune toys with the idea of authenticity, though it\u2019s far from genre cosplay. Alongside co-producers AG Cook and Easyfun, Charli remakes guitar music at intimate, pocket-sized scale \u2013 though with outsized hookiness.<\/p>\n

There are two telling songs about different best-friendships. Magic Metal Montana, a dreamy blur of Strokes guitars and emo half-time, is a love song to long-term producer AG Cook. \u201cWe don\u2019t talk,\u201d she sings tenderly, \u201cwe make music, we talk that way.\u201d The bolshie, muscular Persona teases a friend who talks endlessly and calls Charli her bestie but never says anything real, a performance Charli understands: \u201cWe\u2019re both under the influence of life imitating art, and we both know it,\u201d she chants. Who do you trust with your true, faltering self?<\/p>\n

For Charli, ever fearless about looking unflattering, it\u2019s her audience. Two shockingly brilliant standouts address her self-actualisation through art. The melancholy, jittering Camera confronts her anxieties about whether she\u2019s stupid for wanting to \u201cthrow my life away\u201d to pursue acting, but the way it softens into a heavenly, firefly-dappled rhapsody makes you understand exactly how liberating it is. Pop star-actors are always labelled dilettantes. Charli reframes the idea: how at any moment, a bolt from the blue might undo your idea of yourself, make you feel terrifyingly reborn.<\/p>\n

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Her actual birth features on I\u2019m Afraid, about how her insecurities may stem from her father not being present at hers. Over spare, bassy dissonance that echoes her fantastically dank John Cale collaboration House, she screams about her fears of failing as a wife (she married 1975 drummer George Daniel last summer) when she\u2019s just a drunk, numb, desperate kid, two more ill-fitting identities. \u201cTake the ring, take the ring,\u201d she yells; then she sounds exhausted as she admits she has to say these \u201ccomplicated\u201d, unsayable things \u201cso my insides don\u2019t turn black\u201d. That\u2019s less of a case for artistic purification than it might seem: \u201cAll this pain makes me believe \/ I\u2019m a better artist now \/ An excuse I tell myself \/ To act selfishly,\u201d she admits. Does she contradict herself? Absolutely. Does that unsparing compulsion to lay it all out for us \u2013 the ego and self-hate; the defensiveness and chagrin \u2013 make Charli our most consistently bracing pop star? God, yes.<\/p>\n

This week Laura listened to<\/p>\n

Heavensouls \u2013 Straight Rawhhhhhhhhh
This week and every week since I discovered it: the 20-year-old Houston musician\u2019s album Westside Trapped<\/a> is a blurry, blown-out love letter to his Nigerian heritage. Among the frisky Fela-worthy moments comes this fantastically bitter, gnarled blues.<\/p>\n

Alexis Petridis is away<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a decade spent trailblazing a unique kind of pop freedom from the genre\u2019s fringes, A-list success seemed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-709508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}