Charli XCX has released her seventh studio album, Music, Fashion, Film, marking her first full-length follow-up to 2024’s genre-defining Brat.
The 11-track album, out now via Atlantic Records, includes previously released singles Rock Music, SS26, Wink Wink and Camera, and closes with No One Lasts Forever, featuring a monologue from director David Cronenberg.
Speaking to Rolling Stone ahead of the release, Charli described her instinct to move away from what made Brat such a phenomenon rather than attempt to replicate it.
“All of my albums work in opposites,” she said.
“They repel against each other, and that’s the connective tissue. I knew when I was making it that I was never going to make that record again. It’s not creatively rewarding for me to make the same thing twice.”
The album arrives after a characteristically packed 18 months for the singer, who has released a soundtrack album for Wuthering Heights, starred in the mockumentary The Moment, and continued rolling out new content and appearances at a steady pace.
In one of the film’s more memorable moments referenced by critics, Kylie Jenner’s fictionalised cameo in The Moment tells Charli’s character: “The second people are getting sick of you, that’s when you have to go even harder”, a line Charli’s recent run of releases seems to follow, whether read as sincere or ironic.
The album’s cover art features three figures chosen to represent its title, each drawn from a different creative field: musician John Cale, fashion designer Marc Jacobs and director Martin Scorsese, photographed together in a kitchen.
Speaking about being approached for the shoot, Cale described the invitation as characteristically spontaneous: “She said she had an idea to run by me. There was talk of a video, an ode to an imprint of time and place. Next thing, I was on a flight.”
Music, Fashion, Film is Charli’s fourth full-length release of any kind in just over two years.
