Charli XCX's 'Music, Fashion, Film' Breaks From Brat Formula
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- Charli XCX released her seventh album 'Music, Fashion, Film' — 11 short, guitar-based songs written in a matter of weeks, deliberately positioning it as 'not Brat 2.0' after her previous album defined a cultural moment.
- Brat was co-opted into Kamala Harris's 2024 presidential campaign and prompted Collins English Dictionary to add 'brat' as an adjective meaning 'confident, independent, and hedonistic'.
- The album cover features Velvet Underground's John Cale, designer Marc Jacobs, and director Martin Scorsese — photographed in New York this April by Scottish filmmaker Aidan Zamiri to embody the record's themes of art, excellence, and immortality.
- Charli XCX sustained nerve damage in her neck from head-banging during the year-long Brat tour, telling the Pop Pod the pain has 'progressively worsened' and that she 'should probably be taking a different approach' to touring this record.
- Lyrically, Charli grapples with staying subversive amid commercial success and personal happiness — most nakedly on 'I'm Afraid,' where she panics over who she'll become if she says 'yes' to her engagement to 1975 drummer George Daniel.
- The album closes with a David Cronenberg voice clip about art's legacy in which he tells Charli 'oblivion is freedom' — an escape route from post-Brat expectations that, on the evidence of these 11 tracks, she's already walked through.
- Despite the guitars, the record retains manipulated vocals and electronic flourishes — Charli clarified on Instagram that she 'never said I was making a rock album,' with single 'Rock Music' really addressing her pivot away from repeating herself.
Why it matters: For an artist whose previous album literally altered dictionary definitions, deliberately walking away from the Brat template is a high-stakes commercial and creative call. The nerve damage disclosure — and her admission that touring this record requires 'a different approach' — signals a potential shift in how she stages the live show. With Cronenberg literally closing the album with 'oblivion is freedom,' Charli is reframing post-Brat expectation as something to escape rather than replicate.
