Charli XCX‘s new album Music, Fashion, Film has arrived, and unlike the lyrics of “SS26” suggest, it might save us after all.
Music, Fashion, Film spans 11 tracks, clocking in at just over 30 minutes. It features her previously released singles “Rock Music” (b side: “I Keep On Thinking Bout You Every Single Day and Night“), “SS26” (b side: “Playboy Bunny“), “Wink Wink,” and “Camera” (b side: “If You Take Away the Music Then What Has She Got”). The final track, “No One Lasts Forever,” features director David Cronenberg.
In her recent Rolling Stone cover story, Charli spoke about the new album, following up the massive success of Brat, and her burgeoning acting career (she also toured Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles). “All of my albums work in opposites,” she said. “They repel against each other, and that’s the connective tissue. I knew when I was making it that I was never going to make that record again. It’s not creatively rewarding for me to make the same thing twice.”
The cover of Music, Fashion, Film features three icons from each category, sitting together in a kitchen: John Cale for music, Marc Jacobs for fashion, and Martin Scorsese for film. “She said she had an idea to run by me,” Cale told us in an exclusive interview. “There was talk of a video, an ode to an imprint of time and place. Next thing, I was on a flight. Ended up in a random kitchen.”
Charli will tour behind Music, Fashion, Film, hitting the festival circuit (Lollapalooza, Outside Lands, Reading, Leeds, and others) before making stops at arenas like Barclays in Brooklyn, New York, and the Kia Forum in Los Angeles. She premiered several tracks at an intimate Brooklyn show earlier this month, and brought out Clairo for a duet of “Sofia,” plus Underscores and Kim Petras.
“I’m of this mindset at the moment that my life will end, as will all of our lives,” Charli said. “I want to live my life exactly the way that I want to live it, because I don’t get a redo.”
