With ‘Brat’, Charli XCX got her flowers. ‘Music, Fashion, Film’ captures their wilting

Last summer, TikTok and Reels alike were flooded with people raising their index fingers to their mouths and lip-syncing for their lives to the Charli XCX sleeper hit ‘Party 4 U’. Within that trend lived a test: are you new to this or are you true to this?

With the success of her 2024 album Brat, Charli ushered in a new generation of fans, the Brats—not to be mistaken for the Angels, who loved her long before. As vindicating as it may have been to watch Charli’s music finally appreciated en masse, those of us who swore by her music even when it lived in pop purgatory were weary of this influx of new love and its updated terms and conditions.

It is the kind of love that has uniquely tasked Charli with delivering a sophomore album that adequately follows up Brat.

Her eighth studio album isn’t the first piece of work she’s put out since Brat. This isn’t even her first album this year. But the collective consensus hasn’t considered Wuthering Heights, The Moment, or even the remix album (Brat and It's Completely Different but Also Still Brat) the official successor. That would be Music, Fashion, Film, which came out on Friday.

The fact of the matter is, Brat is probably the piece of work Charli will be known and most remembered for. The irony, of course, is that Brat was the album made with the intention of letting go of commercial validation; she decided that this one would be for her. As luck would have it, that’s when she finally got her flowers.

But with the flowers came wilting, best reflected in the single ‘Everything is Romantic’ from Brat. The remix, set in a post-Brat world, begs the question: “Everything’s still romantic, right?”

Once the girl that “only threw this party for you”, Charli XCX liberated herself of your attendance. On her new record, the 365 party girl admits, “Since everybody knows my name all the parties got better.” Music, Fashion, Film places her at the fag end of a night out, presumably at the party she’s always dreamed of, and yet, a sadness follows.

I had my first listen bright and early on Friday morning, but a first listen can only tell you so much. It feels akin to how people look at a newborn and say which parent they most resemble even through their amorphous features—it’s more about what you want to see than what’s actually there. Somehow, over repeatedly hearing the 11 tracks that make up this 30 minutes album, Music, Fashion, Film proved different.

Granted, Charli rarely cloaks her meaning in too much lyricism, but this music felt particularly blunt and raw in its expression. This treatment carries into the soundscape, where hyperpop synths have been set aside for a disobedient soft rock sound. Brat was her first lyrics-first album—in the past she has created the music first, then found the words to fit. This method continues into the new album, affording the tracks a degree of intimacy. If you don’t understand what she means, I think she’s okay with that. In fact, I think she might prefer it.

The rollout began with a British Vogue interview where the quote “I think the dancefloor is dead, so now we’re making rock music” sounded like a complete betrayal of what she had unknowingly promised to continue delivering post Brat. This turned out to be a lyric in quote’s clothing, from the first track, ‘Rock Music’. (Whether it was, in fact, rock music generated a lot of online debate.) Charli’s approach to it seemed less like a faithful request to be included in the canon of rock music and more of a disobedient entry, predicated on its tenants of a flirtation with danger, challenging and reinterpreting the genre. Her complicated feelings towards the Brat moment and a reminder that she never made any such promises set the tone for the new album. Even if ceci n’est pas rock music.

While ‘Rock Music’ has her performing a caricature of a rockstar, with 50 cigarettes in her mouth in a black and white video, ‘Wink Wink’ plays on a similar promised identity, with Charli doing bad-girl things in good-girl attire. This sentiment deepens in ‘SS26’ and ‘Camera’, which speak to the expansion of her public identity and the opportunities that have come with it. While ‘SS26’ features cameos from Carine Rotfield and Debra Shaw alongside references to a Sex and the City catwalk stumble, the latter stars Vincent Cassel with a nod to his cult film La Haine. Through the fashion and film opportunities that have come with her post-Brat fame, Charli reveals a desire to escape herself through costume and character. As the album unfolds, so does Charli’s flirtation with her own ego-death.

‘Card Declined’ confesses a similar desire, where she rattles off all the things she can have now, each list ending with items she can’t buy: a smile, a personality, a whole new life, each met with the refrain “card declined”. It then trails into a B-side track—a key feature of this album—where Charli has released additional tracks only to be accessed via a dedicated Instagram account, vinyl, and as of this week, for purchase on iTunes.

‘2007’ and ‘Yeah’ might appear simplistic at first. During her 2025 Ivors Academy Songwriter of the Year acceptance speech, Charli made a crack about “examples of [her] own lyrical genius such as ‘I wanna dance to me me me me’... ‘When I go to the club club club club,’” continuing, “Some people might describe it as vapid and nonsensical, but I would unpretentiously describe it as Warholian and reflective of the cultural brain rot of our times.”

When I hear “I can take you to heaven like it’s 2007/ Popstar in my bedroom like it’s 2007” I think of how she started her career, aged 15, accompanied by her parents to underground raves and warehouse parties in the year 2007. Could Charli be nostalgic for a time before all this?

‘Persona’ is the album’s ‘Girl So Confusing’ equivalent, although I’d argue it also has roots in one of my all-time Charli XCX tracks, ‘Forever’ from her fourth album, How I’m Feeling Now (2020). The song addresses someone who you may not like or have in your life but who sees you and knows you. Charli’s heightened experience of being perceived but perhaps not known lends nuance to the intimacy of this feeling. Oddly enough, it reminded me of a Taylor Swift lyric turned sour, “Please don’t ever become a stranger whose laugh I can recognise anywhere.”

The confessional style of tracks like ‘I Think About It All the Time’ and ‘I Might Say Something Stupid’ find a successor in ‘I’m Afraid’, where she divulges her fear of pushing her husband, George, away. ‘So, I’ finds its own successor in ‘Magic Metal Montana’—where the former was a posthumous ode to her cherished collaborator Sophie, the latter is a celebratory ode of a similar kind to her longest collaborator, AG Cook.

Then there’s the final track. I enjoyed it from the first listen, but I think I understood it in the late hours of my Saturday night.

‘No One Lasts Forever’ featuring David Cronenberg is a rare catharsis on a Charli XCX album. Cronenberg’s 1996 film famously inspired her 2022 album, Crash, her last album before Brat. It is a portrait of the party girl who doesn’t know how to go home. The first half of the song camouflages unhappy lyrics in deeply merry music. The second half is a monologue by Cronenberg ending with “they are dead, they are gone, no one lasts forever” on a loop.

If this album is the comedown from Brat, by the time this last song hits, the sun has risen and everyone else has decided that they need to go home, and you must too. Charli gets home and puts on her favourite movie (I suspect a Cronenberg picture) and allows its familiar, violent allure to put her to sleep.