Charli xcx puts her art at the center of a sonic conversation about persona, perception, and legacy on her existentially charged seventh album, ‘Music, Fashion, Film’ – a record that turns jagged guitars, runway spectacle, and cinematic ambition into a reckoning with who she is, how she is seen, and what remains when the artist is gone.

Stream: ‘Music, Fashion, Film’ – Charli xcx

BRAT turned Charli xcx into a cultural force so immense that the persona began to feel larger than the artist herself.

On Music, Fashion, Film, she steps into the glare and studies the image staring back – through power chords, camera flashes, and the unsettling question of what any artist leaves behind.

Released July 24 via Atlantic Records, Charli xcx’s seventh studio album explores the links between three art forms. The record’s cover art, photographed by Aidan Zamiri, features fashion designer Marc Jacobs, musician John Cale, and film director Martin Scorsese, visually representing each discipline while leaving Charli herself off the cover. This black-and-white portrait draws attention to its subjects and establishes the album’s themes. Across the eleven-track album, the British artist and actress shows how rock textures can preserve memory and persona within art, documenting an artist’s life while shaping the legacy that remains after they are gone.

Charli xcx made a bold statement with her sixth studio album, 2024’s global smash BRAT. Her shows have always carried high energy, and this was especially true of the BRAT era, as electronic elements and Auto-Tune built excitement and evoked an underground party scene. She created a carefree dance environment where her audience could join in the chaos and experience the feeling of being young and free among a new generation of partygoers. At Coachella in 2025, she brought those UK underground roots to the festival’s main stage in a performance that felt expressive and complete. Now, Charli xcx shifts into a more guitar-led sound on Music, Fashion, Film, with support from producers A.G. Cook and Finn Keane. Together, they move beyond BRAT’s club-oriented sound, pairing power chords with her signature hyperpop elements.

Music, Fashion, Film moves away from dance elements while emphasizing distortion and lead guitars. Before its release, Charli xcx issued “House featuring John Cale,” a song from her soundtrack for Wuthering Heights. The soundtrack serves as a bridge into Music, Fashion, Film. In interviews, Charli xcx has also spoken about her admiration for cinema and her embrace of escapism through art.

Music, Fashion, Film opens with “Rock Music,” which sparked discussion about whether the album would shift her sound. Distorted guitar riffs and repeated vocal loops give listeners a preview of the album’s sound as the song fades like an analog glitch into “SS26.” The track layers soft hi-hats, processed guitar, and power chords that evoke the present season already slipping into memory.

Spring, Summer ’26
When the world is gonna end,
no hope for any of it
Yeah, we’re walking on a runway
that goes straight to hell
Nothing’s gonna save us,
not music, fashion, or film

The concept of fashion appears in “Card Declined,” which opens with jolting power chords and addresses the cost of expression in the fashion industry. The track features sustained notes and stripped-back production. “Card Declined” evokes the urge to surrender to fashion, even when faced with the financial limits of a declined card and the unpredictability of fashion-industry standards.

Toward the end of the track, the guitar distortion lessens. It blends into an uplifting melody with an indie riff that loops into “Camera.” The fourth track relates to the film aspect of the album, showing how a camera can document reality, an alternate reality, or self-perception. The lyrics also address age: “If I try to be a girl on the screen when I’m turnin’ thirty-four? / But all I know is how it makes me feel.” The music video for “Camera” features actor Vincent Cassel and was shot in one take. The video connects her admiration for film with her anxieties about age, ambition, and navigating relationships within the industry.

“I’m Afraid” opens with raw nylon-string guitar and an internal conversation in the lyrics: “What if I ruin it? Take the ring, take the ring.” Charli xcx mentions marriage while facing relationship dilemmas alongside questions of artistic identity. The song captures competing versions of the self, while “Persona” loops distortion and sweeping riffs around the divide between internal dialogue, outward communication, and self-image.

Don’t choke on your ego when you see me coming
I know you’re performing, I know that you’re hurting
So you try to hide it when you see me coming
Don’t wanna confront it, I’m scared I’m annoying

– “Persona,” Charli xcx

Toward the end of the album, “Magic Metal Montana” offers softer tones, slight distortion, and a lyric about collaboration and industry relationships, referencing A.G. Cook: “Call you A.G. in my phonebook / Feels so special just to know you.” The song presents trust and collaboration as sources of relief within a fast-moving industry: “Yeah, you make it easier for me.”

The album’s strongest conceptual statement, “No One Lasts Forever,” closes Music, Fashion, Film with a spoken-word contribution from David Cronenberg, a Canadian film director and screenwriter best known for The Fly (1986). With less distortion and sustained keys, the track builds as he reflects on how art is consumed during an artist’s lifetime and well after the artist is gone.

Have created art that has really survived thousands of years, and that’s fantastic
But experientially, for them, they are dead, they are gone
You hear me assuring you that oblivion is freedom
They are dead, they are gone, no one lasts forever

Charli xcx facilitates a contemporary conversation across Music, Fashion, Film, crafting an immersive and compelling experience in the process.

Across the album, she uses songwriting and production to examine how artists see themselves, how audiences perceive them, and what remains after they are gone. Through its deluxe box set, she extends the album into a physical archive, turning the release itself into another meditation on image, work, and artistic identity. By the time Cronenberg assures her that “oblivion is freedom,” Music, Fashion, Film has transformed its three disciplines into a personal reflection on persona and legacy.

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:: stream/purchase Music, Fashion, Film here ::

:: connect with Charli xcx here ::

:: read more about Charli xcx here ::

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 © Aidan Zamiri

Music, Fashion, Film

an album by Charli xcx