Album Review: Charli XCX – Music, Fashion, Film
3 min read
Charlotte Aitchison, aka Charli XCX, is well enough known at this point to skip major introductions. Breaking out in 2016 with single Boom Clap, she spent the following years working underground with PC Music, defining ‘Hyper Pop’ as a genre, and collaborating simultaneously with some of the decades biggest artists and the hottest up-and-comers. Despite putting out excellent material and maintaining an extensive, devoted fanbase, it was the explosion of Brat in 2024 that finally gave Charli her mass critical and commercial success. Since then, she has starred in films, created one of the best pop movie soundtracks of this generation, and completely turned the tables on latest album Music, Fashion, Film.
Rock Music kicks off the record with stuttering guitar lines which drone around a heavy yet familiar central riff. It introduces the listener perfectly to this new musical landscape that Charli and her long-time collaborators A.G. Cook and Finn Keane have created, and it retrospect it is far less jarring that when it was initially released as the first teaser. It, as well as following track SS26, highlight the albums two musically extremes, the latter being a more withdrawn, bass driven indie rock tune. Keeping listeners on their toes, Card Declined launches into a grungy riff, slowed down electronically to give it a nasty grit. The song transitions with immediacy between the beginning heaviness, the glitchy, soaring middle, and the completely different song that appears at the end, if only to disorientate. It’s an experimental song that cuts to the ethos of the album.
2007 and Yeah act as bridges at the mid-point of the album separating two of the best tracks, Camera and Wink Wink. Of the two, Yeah has a late-Brit-Pop aesthetic that, despite its sparse lyrics, bubbles with the care-free attitude that the song is trying to convey. Camera is a wonderful song about the conflicting feelings that come from being filmed for, in Charli’s case, movies, and her punchy delivery and intricate lyrics invite you in to consider her views. The same can be said for Persona and No One Lasts Forever, the former diving into both her own ego and those of her friends, while the latter goes existential. The digital versions of the song also feature an amazing monologue from writer-director David Cronenberg, taken from an interview Charli herself conducted.
Music, Fashion, Film will be a divisive listen for some fans, melding what Charli and co. have created in the past into something that is total separate sonically. Some of the tunes, with their short runtimes and sparse lyrics, feel, at worst, like filler, and on such a short album that could be disappointing for some. However, every song here has merit, and some like Wink Wink, Magic Metal Montana and Camera can arguably be called some of the best songs of Charli’s career to date. It’s a fascinating insight into the mind of a creative who never stops moving forward.
Writer and Musician, Ryan Bulbeck has been published with a number of online publications, and has worked with a myriad of great artists, both as a performer, and as a producer. His most recent band The 295 are still active, playing shows around the UK.
