Following much anticipation, Charli XCX is officially back with Music, Fashion, Film, her seventh album overall and her first since her seminal Brat took over the world in 2024.
While she hasn’t technically released a solo album since then, pop’s most trendsetting auteur has been certifiably, emphatically, Not On A Break.
“The second people are getting sick of you, that’s when you have to go even harder,” Kylie Jenner, playing a fictionalized version of herself, told Charli in one of the most-memorable parts of her mockumentary film The Moment, which came out back in January. Whether that was meant to be delivered with sincerity or irony, it certainly carries some level of poignancy of how Charli has operated since Brat summer started.
She released Brat’s deluxe version three days after the original album drop, then the Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat remix album in October. She embarked on two headlining arena tours — the Sweat Tour with Troye Sivan, and her eponymous Brat Tour. She’s had roles in seven different feature films: The Moment, where she starred and produced, as well as 100 Nights of Hero,Sacrifice,Erupcja, I Want Your Sex, The Gallerist and Faces of Death. She also created the soundtrack for Wuthering Heights and co-wrote the soundtrack for the Anne Hathaway-starring Mother Mary with Jack Antonoff.
That exhaustive resume alone certainly puts Charli firmly in contention as one of Hollywood’s hardest working stars, and with Music, Fashion, Film officially here, that’s not stopping any time soon. Charli is ramping up for another extensive tour, with festival headlining dates at Lollapalooza, Outside Lands and Reading and Leeds over the next month, then more arena dates starting in the fall.
“I was really, really ready to peace out and take a break and not make music,” she told Rolling Stone in the magazine’s June cover story. “I felt very creatively drained and not inspired to write anything new. Then suddenly, inspiration came.”
Charli started the Music, Fashion, Film era seeking to distance herself from the dance floors where Brat held court, declaring that “the dance floor is dead” on the more polarizing lead single “Rock Music.” She followed that with the vibey, synth-y “SS26,” the equally summery, cheekier “Wink Wink,” and most-recent single “Camera,” which featured a music video starring Vincent Cassel.
With Music, Fashion, Film firmly in focus, the next few months present an interesting chapter into how Charli enters her most-anticipated era to date. Brat turned Charli XCX from niche iconoclast to mainstream icon. It’d be tempting to milk that well dry — it’s hard to imagine any artist replicating the moment Charli created with Brat anytime soon — but she’s never been one to dwell too long on the past with her work.
As she told Rolling Stone in June: “I knew when I was making it that I was never going to make that record again. It’s not creatively rewarding for me to make the same thing twice.”