Charli XCX: When Noise Becomes Pop Art

 

It all started with a line from her song Rock Music:

"I think the dance floor is dead... So now we're making rock music..."

That, along with her collaboration with John Cale (former Velvet Underground member) for the soundtrack of the film Wuthering Heights. Many believed Charli was going to abandon dance music and start making rock. Even Madonna played along, contradicting Charli on social media and insisting that dance music is in excellent health. What a way to mutually promote both of their records. A true lesson in "anti-marketing", chaos used as a tool to create art.

Several tracks on Music, Fashion, Film use distortion and noise. The production, handled by A.G. Cook and Finn Keane, is abrasive and strident. With a texture obsession. Rock Music is irrefutable proof of this. Music, Fashion, Film sees Charli XCX attacking on three fronts, inhabiting three dimensions, with a cover that aims to be as iconic as Brat’s from two years ago, though abysmally different. Charli has matured and decided not to repeat herself. It’s no longer “Brat Summer”, now it’s “Cronenberg Summer.” In addition to featuring director Martin Scorsese on the cover, part of Charli’s conversation with Canadian director David Cronenberg appears in the album’s closing track, No One Lasts Forever.

Rock Music shows Charli leading a movement of women making genuinely aggressive electronic music today, like Slayyyter, Kim Petras, or Nia Archives, who draw inspiration from the noisy explorations Charli did with SOPHIE years ago. Rock Music is almost two minutes long. That’s how all the tracks are: short, direct, and abrasive.

SS26 is another monumental track. Its lyrics reference the fashion world and its runways losing artistic impact, falling into the clutches of techno feudals like Jeff Bezos, turning into more of a costume party than an artistic statement:

"Spring-Summer '26  

When the world is gonna end, no hope for any of it  

Yeah, we're walking on a runway that goes straight to hell  

Nothing's gonna save us, not music, fashion, or film."

Card Decline once again brings out hyper processed, strident guitars. It reminds me of some Kanye West lyrics. Here, it’s again about using the ugliest possible noise as a very personal statement of reinvention (much like Cale and Lou Reed’s Velvet Underground, another of Charli’s idols), as experimental as the cover on which Charli wanted to see what would happen if she put these three figures in the same place. A cataclysm. And her standing on the sidelines.

Tracks like Camera simply deliver brutal lyrics about leaving youth behind and still trying different things, a real challenge to what’s usually heard on the dance floor:

"It makes me question what I'm doin'  

Do I wanna make music? Am I being fuckin' stupid  

If I try to be a girl on the screen when I'm turnin' thirty-four?"

2007 is an absolute pop gem that reminds me in equal parts of Madonna and Britney Spears. I'm Afraid is another curious experiment that blends dark acoustic sounds with the rawest electronics. Then it turns punk on Yeah, with a sound dominated by garage guitars taken to the extreme. Yes, Charli knows how to make a very personal version of rock music, just as Bowie knew how to make his personal version of soul and funk. Wink Wink could easily pass for a Strokes track with Charli on vocals.

Could Persona be a reference to director Ingmar Bergman and one of his most personal films? Another track of deep emotion and heavy guitars, something that could even fit on a Siouxsie and the Banshees album, a band that, by the way, was once produced by John Cale.

No One Lasts Forever closes this short but powerful album. The collaboration with David Cronenberg appears as a conversation between the singer and the director about mortality and how art ultimately remains long after its creators have left this world.

Music, Fashion, Film is not a rock album. It is a Charli XCX album about stepping out of her comfort zone, hyperpop, sometimes with guitars fiercer than those on Paul McCartney’s or the Rolling Stones’ most recent records. Processed, yes, but Andrew Watt usually processes them too. Could the Stones make a Charli track?

Personally, I think very interesting things happen when noise invades pop music. When an artist’s work draws from other disciplines like literature, cinema, dance, or design, that’s when a work becomes more transcendent and truly stands the test of time. At their peak, David Bowie, Stanley Kubrick, and Alexander McQueen did this brilliantly. Now it’s Charli’s turn with Music, Fashion, Film, and the result is memorable.