Charli XCX’s latest album, Music, Fashion, Film is more than just a collection of songs; it’s a manifestation of her artistic journey and a deep dive into the forces that inspire her. The album, accompanied by a visual documentary, offers a raw and intimate look into Charli’s creative process and the themes that drive her work.
The album’s second track reveals a poignant truth: the art forms and life forces that inspire Charli may not be her salvation, but they are undeniably central to her existence. In the accompanying visual album/documentary, Charli explains, “It’s more just that they’re so intrinsically what my life is about, you know?” This sentiment sets the stage for an exploration of devotion, surrender, and the cyclical nature of creation.
Charli XCX’s Artistic Surrender
Charli XCX’s work has always been a commentary on itself a trait that can be traced back to the self-titled follow-up to her 2017 album Pop 2. This album was a tug-of-war between experimentalism and commercial sheen. During the pandemic, Charli liveblogged the process of making an album about being a party girl in partyless times. When the world reopened, she created her “if I went mainstream” album, which ironically failed to bring her into the mainstream. It was the “I guess I’ll never be mainstream” album that succeeded.
In Music, Fashion, Film Charli embraces the paradoxes of her artistry. She claims she was lying when she said she was making a rock record, all as part of the rollout for an album that spans a wide range of styles, from Auto-Tuned pop punk to horror movie soundtrack strings. The album even includes a track made with a guitar pedal “made specifically to piss off Kurt Cobain,” as described by A.G. Cook, Charli’s friend and collaborator.
The Ouroboros of Self-Referentiality
The album is a turducken of Charli’s own musical history. “2007,” which Charli calls “a song about making TikToks,” encapsulates her evolution from a teenage popstar uploading scratchy synth pop songs to MySpace to the quarantined party girl hosting a Grindr-sponsored Instagram Live DJ set. The fictional sellout Charli from The Moment stars in an Amazon-exclusive concert film with the tagline “Be a 365 party girl from the comfort of your own home.”
“Persona” is another standout track, which Charli compares to “You’re So Vain” in its “your words, not mine” attitude. The song says more about the person singing it than whoever they’re singing to, making it a deeply personal piece. The avatars in Charli’s triptych of artistic identity are all men, including John Cale, Marc Jacobs, and Martin Scorsese, who grace the album cover. The album closes with a monologue on artistic philosophy from David Cronenberg, and French actor Vincent Cassel stars in the “Camera” music video.
The Blurry Boundaries of Art and Product
At what point does the project become a product, and vice versa? Does Charli know? Through “SS26″‘s warped, psych-gaze basslines, the pop star who recently “predicted” the rise of “anti-marketing” sounds as if she’s addressing a boardroom, delivering her next big marketing pitch through a distortion pedal. “Card Declined” is a trudging piece of post-punk whose critique of commodity fetishism is delivered somewhere between current-day Kim Gordon and Fear Of Music-era David Byrne.
Listening to these songs and watching these visuals, you can envision their primordial state as moodboards—that’s kind of the point. None of it is real; it’s not supposed to be. Or it’s as real as the light that gets caught in the optical cavity between two mirrors facing each other. “Authenticity” is passé currency in an era of press releases that run down stars’ DSM diagnoses and astrological charts, pop therapy talk show interviews, and celebrities announcing major life events with Instagram-caption alternate-universe fanfiction about themselves.
It’s up to the listener to feel something about the story an artist is telling, whether that story is true or not. This is why the alleged, now-squashed beef between Charli and Lorde that inspired “Girl, So Confusing” and its remix didn’t matter—same goes for the rumored beef between Charli and Taylor Swift. Either way, it all made for a great story and great songs.
