Throw out your wraparound sunglasses and break out your leather jacket: Charli XCX‘s next album is ditching dance music in favor of rock & roll, according to a new cover story with British Vogue. The British pop provocateur revealed sparse details about her eighth album, and it’s being labeled by the magazine as a “rock reinvention.”
“For me, it’s fun to flip the form,” Charli remarked. “We know there’s gonna be people who are bothered by it, but that’s fine.”
She later expressed that if she followed expectations and made another club record, it would have been very challenging. “If I’d made another album that felt more dance-leaning, it would have felt really hard, really sad,” she said. “We were doing our version of analogue, which is so silly and funny, but putting it through our lens, and making sure that nothing felt too macho, was important.”
“It made me crave something opposite. Getting back to something more internal is really nice,” she noted, “and really sort of quiet.”
Not much else is known about Charli XCX’s eighth album, but according to British Vogue, it’s still a work in progress and it will be released via Atlantic Records. She stated that the album was produced with her longtime confidants A.G. Cook and Finn Keane (a.k.a. Easyfun) and wiped her social media so that it’s chartreuse green-free. All that remains are a few posts, a link to a new Instagram account, and a charcoal gray profile picture.
Even though it’s been almost two years since Brat dropped, the train hasn’t stopped for Charli XCX. Along with a massive world tour and winning her first-ever Grammys, Charli XCX starred in and produced The Moment, a mockumentary surrounding a fictionalized version of the making of the Brat tour and the Brat Summer phenomenon. The film premiered at Sundance Film Festival and featured performances from Kylie Jenner, Alexander Skarsgård, Rachel Sennott, and more.
She also provided the soundtrack to Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, plus music for the psychological pop star thriller Mother Mary, starring Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel. Erupcja, a new film which hits theaters this Friday (April 17), stars Charli as she visits a Polish friend during a volcano eruption. This summer, Charli XCX will headline Lollapalooza in Chicago and Outside Lands in San Francisco.
