<\/p>\n
\n\tIt\u2019s no secret that Charli xcx<\/a> is a cinephile, so it wasn\u2019t a shock when the avant-garde pop star revealed that her latest album would feature iconic horror auteur David Cronenberg<\/a> \u2014 especially considering its title is \u201cMusic, Fashion, Film.\u201d But what is<\/em> surprising is just how impactful his contribution is to the wider meaning of the record.<\/p>\n \n\tThe 83-year-old \u201cCrash\u201d and \u201cThe Fly\u201d director closes out the 11-track, 30-minute album with a spoken-word monologue on the second half of the final song \u201cNo One Lasts Forever.\u201d Up until that point, Charli takes listeners on a ride through her biggest genre leap yet as distorted guitars and sparse production take the place of bright synths and autotune. It\u2019s a far cry from the club-ready bangers of \u201cBrat,\u201d and in many ways a reaction to its massive success \u2014 there\u2019s the tongue-in-cheek \u201cRock Music,\u201d containing a declaration that the dancefloor is dead; the pounding \u201cCamera,\u201d in which she contemplates her burgeoning acting career; the vapid-but-in-an-ironic-way \u201cWink Wink,\u201d where she insists \u201cpeople can change.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBut it\u2019s not just Charli\u2019s sound that has taken a heavier turn. Between seemingly surface-level lyrics about going shopping and wishing she was a pop star in 2007, Charli attempts to answer hard questions about an artist\u2019s purpose. Track six, \u201cI\u2019m Afraid,\u201d gives a taste of this as she laments the pitfalls of public life: \u201cAll this pain makes me believe\/ I\u2019m a better artist now\/ An excuse I tell myself to act selfishly.\u201d Throughout the record, Charli is really contemplating her role as an artist and the motivations behind making art \u2014 and whether it even matters, because the world is probably ending and we\u2019re all going to die anyway.<\/p>\n \n\tNothing captures this existential question more than \u201cNo One Lasts Forever,\u201d which starts off as one of the most upbeat songs on the record but soon ventures into deeper waters. \u201cThat\u2019s why I\u2019m not scared of anyone\/ \u2018Cause nothing\u2019s gonna last forever\/ But you need to discover that feeling\/ Of the crushing highs and lows of ego,\u201d she sings over synths a bit more reminiscent of her \u201cBrat\u201d era.<\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s also the longest track on the album, by far, at five minutes and 42 seconds. Cronenberg doesn\u2019t come in until around the three-minute mark, where he casually speaks \u2014 as if directly to Charli \u2014 seemingly about a near-death experience.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cAs I was laying there on the sidewalk, I did not think about art at all,\u201d Cronenberg begins. \u201cI thought about people, I thought about life, and that\u2019s why I like being close to my house. Somehow, that was comforting even though it makes no sense, you know? But no, I wasn\u2019t thinking about art. And I wasn\u2019t thinking about art as endurance, as immortality. I mean, we could talk about immortal artists of various kinds, and it can turn out that, yes, some artists have created art that has really survived thousands of years, and that\u2019s fantastic. But experientially, for them? They are dead, they are gone, they are not experiencing that.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tCronenberg ends his part by saying, like a mentor giving advice to his student: \u201cHear me assuring you that oblivion is freedom. They are dead, they are gone, no one lasts forever.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe last minute-and-a-half of the track consists of that last line repeated again and again, overlaying on itself. It\u2019s a mantra delivered as an elder who\u2019s been through it, reassuring Charli that whether or not her art survives isn\u2019t the most important thing \u2014 after all, she won\u2019t be around to know. As an extremely successful director, considered the originator of the entire body-horror genre, there are times when Cronenberg must have felt unstoppable. But he\u2019s also experienced immeasurable grief, with his wife of 38 years, the film editor Carolyn Zeifman, dying in 2017 (something he explored in his most recent feature, \u201cThe Shrouds\u201d). Beyond just his art, it\u2019s his life experience that makes him credible to speak these words \u2014 and they bring all of us back down to earth.<\/p>\n \n\tInstead of just being a gimmicky feature to fulfill part of the album\u2019s title, Cronenberg\u2019s words get to the core theme of \u201cMusic, Fashion, Film.\u201d More than a rejection of Charli\u2019s mainstream success disguised as a reinvention, the record is proof that true artists are constantly changing, growing, refusing to fit into a singular box. But as important as the art may seem in the moment, ultimately, it\u2019s not. Because nothing is forever. And, if you let it, knowing that can set you free.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source variety.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s no secret that Charli xcx is a cinephile, so it wasn\u2019t a shock when the avant-garde pop star revealed that her latest album would feature iconic horror auteur David Cronenberg \u2014 especially considering its title is \u201cMusic, Fashion, Film.\u201d But what is surprising is just how impactful his contribution is to the wider meaning […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2516625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[28272,400527,490542],"class_list":["post-2516624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-charli-xcx","tag-david-cronenberg","tag-music-fashion-film"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/David-Cronenbergs-Charli-xcx-Feature-Is-the-Heart-of-Album.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2516624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2516624"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2516624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2516626,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2516624\/revisions\/2516626"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2516625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2516624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2516624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2516624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}