Earlier this year, still tinged by the slime-green afterglow of Brat, Charli xcx posted “See you next time,” on her Instagram burner account as she wiped her grid clean. While many expected the popstar who had spent the past two years running on overdrive to retreat from the spotlight for a while, Charli never really went away: since 2024, she’s soundtracked Wuthering Heights, appeared in four feature films (including her own A24-backed project The Moment), and today returns with her eighth studio album, Music, Fashion, Film.
Slowing down has never been Charli’s game, and in a sense her new record is about what happens when she finally stops trying to outrun herself. Rather than chasing the impossible task of outdoing Brat, she has described the album as simply “making things with my friends” – a turn inwards driven by the need to create at all costs.
At its core, then, MFF is concerned with the same questions of longevity that Charli has returned to throughout her career: “the tension of staying too long”, the tricky complexities of stardom, and the “crashing highs and lows of ego”, as she puts it in stunning closer “No One Lasts Forever”. As the title of “Camera”’s vinyl-exclusive B-side asks: “If you take away the music, what has she got?” Well, her recent forays into fashion and film seem to be her answer, but neither are enough to quell the self-doubt and existential anxieties which run through the album.
While the new wave of fans that came with Brat may be expecting another set of party-girl anthems to fuel their summers, this album sees Charli dialled into more enduring themes. MFF is moody, drawing heavily on the warped guitars and blown-out textures that underpinned producer-collaborators A.G. Cook and Finn Keane’s 2023 album Soft Rock. Charli herself has pushed back on the idea that MFF is a quote-unquote rock album and, while there’s no denying the rougher, guitar-led sonics here, its true appeal lies in twinning these elements with the glitchy, PC Music-infused magic that longtime fans love her for.
So, if it’s a glossy pop record you’re after – one that, we should add, Brat never set out to be in the first place – we’d refer you to Crash, Charli’s 2022 album which wrapped up her deal with Atlantic Records and saw her play with the most heightened versions of herself that come with pop stardom. Instead, MFF feels closer to 2020’s How I’m Feeling Now, recorded in the pandemic, with lyrics penned on live streams with fans and music videos super-imposed on green-screens. Understated, intimate and rough, MFF is one for her friends – and her Angels.
Below, we rank all 11 tracks on Charli xcx’s latest album, Music, Fashion, Film.
Focused on the fashion side of the project, “Card Declined” muses on how we try to construct our identities through consumerism – an effort which, the lyrics suggest, will likely prove futile and unfulfilling. It’s a fitting addition for a project conceived during Paris Fashion Week, but while the grungy production is compelling, it’s not the track you’ll find yourself returning to most.
Charli channels Yung Lean on this one (as she says herself), with heavy, brooding production and lyrics. We’re sure there’s going to be a moment when this fully clicks, but for now, we’re drawn to the project’s more immediate highs.
A pensive, languid pop song contrasting high fashion and fame with a sense of impending apocalyptic doom, SS26 is one of the most polished – and least abrasive – tracks on the album. Maybe it’s overshadowed by the more emotionally revealing or sonically urgent moments, but it doesn’t feel like so much of a standout in context.
Sonically, “Persona” is one of the album’s more abrasive moments, fogged with distorted textures and scuzzy guitars. While there has been fan speculation around who the track’s lyrics may be aimed at (Sky Ferreira? Taylor Swift? Herself?), its place within the album makes it feel less like a direct call-out and more like another exploration of ego – maybe a nod to Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 psychological thriller of the same name?
Despite its upbeat production, “Camera” sees Charli at one of her most confessional moments across the project, as she questions what it means to keep making music at all – and suggests that acting has become a richer source of creative fulfilment (“And maybe this is it, maybe it’s what I need ‘Cause it’s the only way to feel like I’m not actually me.”) It’s a strong thematic foil to the more ambitious and confronting moments to come.
A softer moment on the project comes with “Magic Metal Montana”, a heartfelt ode to Charli’s creative partnership with longtime collaborator and friend AG Cook. AG himself has called the track an anomaly within the project, perhaps pointing to its brighter and more whimsical textures, but it somehow works.
“Something horny is coming,” Charli tweeted in the lead-up to the single drop, and while accidentally summoning a fleet of sexbots in the process, she wasn’t lying. Channelling the Femcels on its deadpan spoken-word intro, this is one of the hookier singles to drop.
The project’s most exhilarating track, and where its indie-rock and PC Music worlds feel most at home together. Through her deadpan, see-sawing refrain “I don’t wanna […] I wanna”, Charli rides a transition from sepia-toned guitar riffs into an explosive, all-consuming digital distortion that feels closer to her usual sonic palette. It’s a powerful bridging of the two worlds on the album, and one of its standout moments.
“Rock Music” set us up for this project, and it was the right track to do so. Stripped bare, the lines “Me and my friends, we go out / We take pictures and make stuff together” feel like the thesis of the entire record. And we can confirm: she’s like a rockstar when she performs it live.
In her discography so far, Charli has taken us to “1999”, “2099”, “February 2017”, and now, in her latest time jump, back to “2007”. The most PC Music-infused track on the album, its lyrics are simple and sing-songy before eventually fracturing through the familiar hyper-digital processing that has defined the genre as a whole and many of Charli’s best tracks – this one is certainly up there.
Spinning off a conversation with David Cronenberg, the album’s closing track is the one that ties it all together. There are parallels to 2020’s “Forever”, both in the production and, of course, the lyrics. Cronenberg’s echoing spoken-word refrain, “they are dead, they are gone. No one lasts forever”, grapples with the question of what remains of an artist after they die and whether it really matters. For an artist so fascinated by longevity, Charli has made an album that ends in acknowledging its impossibility.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.dazeddigital.com ’
