Charli XCX Joins The Strokes Onstage at Outside Lands
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- Charli XCX joined The Strokes mid-set at Outside Lands 2026 in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, trading verses with Julian Casablancas on "Take It or Leave It," the closing track from the band's 2001 album Is This It
- Julian Casablancas introduced her as "Charli motherfucking XCX" and publicly conceded that her new album Music, Fashion, Film had defeated The Strokes' Reality Awaits on the Billboard 200, bowing down and calling her "your new queen of everything"
- Charli XCX had played her own set at the festival the night before and is touring in support of Music, Fashion, Film, a project Casablancas previously contributed to via "Mean Girls" on her 2024 remix album Brat and It's Completely Different but Also Still Brat
- Music, Fashion, Film drew critical comparisons to The Strokes through raw guitar riffs, glitchy synths, and spoken-word segments, with the track "Magic Metal Montana" (an ode to collaborator A.G. Cook) likened to The Strokes' "Soma," and "Wink Wink" compared to "Dine N'Dash"
- Charli XCX told Rolling Stone she dislikes being categorized by genre, calling it "a very old-school notion," and pushed back on the idea that her lead single "Rock Music" was trolling, saying "things can be earnest and funny at the same time"
- When pressed directly on the Strokes comparison between "Magic Metal Montana" and "Soma," Charli XCX gave a one-word answer: "Cool"
Why it matters: Casablancas's onstage concession that Charli's album outsold his on the Billboard 200 is a rare public passing-of-the-torch moment from an established rock band to a pop artist who has spent her new album cycle insisting she doesn't belong to any genre — making the collaboration read as both a genuine musical kinship and a wry acknowledgment of shifting commercial gravity.
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