Charli xcx’s ‘Music, Fashion, Film’: Tracks Ranked

The slightest song on Music, Fashion, Film also feels like its least essential, as the repeated hook (“I can take you to heaven like it’s 2007/ Pop star in my bedroom like it’s 2007”) and propulsive beat seem beamed in from a past Charli era. It’s a fun exercise — and its TikTok-themed visual almost feels like a dare for audiences to make this the inappropriate breakout hit from this era to really go viral — but it’s the only song on the album that doesn’t feel like it totally belongs there.

“George likes it,” Charli insists of her now-husband George Daniel in the lead-in video to “I’m Afraid” in the accompanying Music, Fashion, Film movie. You believe it, even if the album’s song with the most seemingly direct lyrics about her life partner don’t exactly for an old-fashioned love song, focusing more on Charli’s insecurities in the face of this life-changing relationship: “I’m afraid, I’m afraid/ I’m nothing without him/ What if I ruin it?/ Take the ring, take the ring.” The music is as stormy as Charli’s lryical spiraling, all distortion and haze and jarring dynamic shifts — making for a less alluring listening experience than much of the rest of the album, but certainly still a highly resonant one.

Another one of the less-weighty songs on Music, Fashion, Film, “Yeah” hits a little harder than “2007 by sounding like a more natural garage-rock update to her traditional electro-pop sound. She spends the verses declining some abstract request of her over a tension-mounting guitar groove, before insisting, “Wait… now I wanna feel it,” triggering a synth-fuzz instrumental refrain that’s undoubtedly going to sound absolutely massive on her upcoming tour. A stealth fan-favorite-to-be, no doubt.

The purest love song on Music, Fashion, Film is not sung to George Daniel, but to Charli’s longtime collaborator, writer/producer A.G. Cook. Which isn’t to say that “Magic Metal Montana” is sappy exactly — “I’d cry if you died” is probably the most emotional lyric, delivered so bluntly it almost feels more like a tease than a testimony. But like all of Charli’s songs about her loved ones, it’s most meaningful in its honesty, with lyrics like “You’re my best friend but we don’t talk/ We make music, we talk that way” capturing the specialness of their relationship in ways more gushing offerings never could. And considering its obvious Brat predecessor was penned for an artistic soulmate of Charli’s who sadly was no longer around to hear it, it’s extra powerful to know that Cook actually gets to appreciate this one — while being actively involved in its creation, even.

It probably says something about Charli’s artistry that she saves perhaps the grungiest, most discordant groove on Music, Fashion, Film for a song about shopping. Of course, as Charli herself points out in the album’s accompanying movie, it’s not strictly about shopping, but more about trying to locate a newer, better version of yourself through such purchases. “I’ll buy some jewelry/ A personality/ A whole backstory,” she plans, before learning she might not quite have the credit line for all that: “Card declined.” Simple, but effective.

The final of Charli’s advance-release tracks from Music, Fashion, Film is the one most directly focused on the third of the three titular disciplines, where she explores her tempestuous relationship with the lens she so often finds herself in front of. It’s a revealing and honest look at one of the artist’s least-illicit (but perhaps most self-indulgent) vices — “Am I being f–king stupid if I try to be a girl on the screen/ When I’m turning 34?” she wonders — wrapped around one of her most unshakeable grooves and instantly unforgettable choruses. It could’ve been a centerpiece single for the whole era, but it’s held back a little by disappointingly fizzling at the end of its breakdown section, when it feels like it still had a new gear (new F-stop?) still to reach.

“Rock Music” might’ve been too abbreviated and purposeful a (faux?) manifesto to really function as a lead single the way pop era kick-offs are traditionally supposed to — it debuted at No. 86 on the Billboard Hot 100 and fell off the next week, yet to return — but it’s hard to imagine a more effective opener to Music, Fashion, Film. “I think the dancefloor is dead,” she proclaims over guitars that alternately stab like punk riffs and chirp like house synths, “so now we’re making rock music.” The excitement seems purposefully cut short, as her final head-banging insistence about her new genre venture gets seemingly caught in a CD skip, never to resume. It’s OK if you don’t believe her, she seems to be shrugging, because she’s not sure exactly how much she even believes it herself.

Reading anything about Charli xcx purely at face value has always been a fairly risky gambit, and “Wink Wink” seems to really be more of an eye-roll at anyone who’s ever tried. In the song’s first stanza alone, she sends listeners on a rollercoaster of provocation and misdirection — “I used to lick cream off strawberries in the summer/ And maybe I f–ked your Dad/ Just kidding, I’m only saying that for effect” — before saving the most shocking moment for its vulnerable closing twist: “But my point is I think people can change.” It all comes together in the album’s most undeniable chorus: “It’s the truth, and I gotta be honest/ I’m not a bad girl anymore, I promise… / Wink, wink.” The last part’s been implied for so long, it feels like a revelation to actually have her say it for the record. Unless, of course, it isn’t.

While household-name director Martin Scorsese gets to represent the “Film” portion of Music, Fashion, Film‘s album cover, it’s the cultier — and arguably Charli xcx-ier — sci-fi auteur David Cronenberg who boasts the album’s lone feature appearance, seeing out the album on its epic closer. The song manages the near-impossible of finding fresh perspective in the cliché of embracing the here-and-now in the face of death’s inevitability, with Charli using the freedom of it to get out of her own head a little, as she essentially recognizes that nothing she could do at her stardom’s peak will change the ultimate facts of her existence. A sampled Cronenberg writes large the message of artistic immortality and human immortality being far from synonymous with the mobius-strip loop of his haunting-yet-comforting final words: “They are dead. They are gone. No one lasts forever.”

Get ready for the “Girl, So Confusing” comparisons, and not unfairly so: Like that Brat highlight, “Persona” foregrounds a complex relationship with an unnamed public figure in Charli’s orbit, alternately expressing judgment and understanding, envy and disdain, taunting “Don’t f–king choke on your ego when you see me coming” at the start of the chorus, but acknowledging at the end, “You think you’re so clever, I think you are too/ You know I see you when you see me.” It’s the kind of celeb-to-celeb song Charli seems uniquely equipped to offer, one that could be confused for a diss track at first, but which uses its insight into its subject less to annihilate than to empathize with them. And the song’s woozy swagger mirrors its lyrics perfectly, chest-puffed but ultimately unsure of itself, and ultimately just as seductive as it is confrontational.

“We’re walking on a runway that goes straight to hell/ Nothing’s gonna save us, not music, fashion or film.” You’d think Charli xcx having a brief existential crisis over her general impotence in the face of apocalyptic times would feel like a grander statement than the lithe strut of “SS26.” But that’s a big part of the song’s irresistible charm, where the possible end of the world feels just like another item on a busy pop star’s list of things to deal with that day — and probably not the most pressing. Few moments ever feel like they’ve captured Charli’s singularly self-aware brilliance as a modern artist like her gently moaning over a sweetly bass-driven beat, “I was hacked/ It got taken out of context, obviously/ But I didn’t do it/ Even if I did/ Wrote a really good notes app apology.” Wink wink, as always.