Of the three creative pursuits that give Charli XCX’s eighth album its title, the English pop star seems least interested in the first. She admits as much on ‘Camera’, the best song on Music, Fashion, Film, which makes clear her obsession with acting and a desire to pursue it more fully. ‘Do I want to make music?’ she asks herself. ‘Am I being fucking stupid if I try to be a girl on the screen and I’m turning 34?’
Even without this clue – which, like much of the album, is presented via the singer throwing out rhetorical spiel more or less unexpurgated – it is no great stretch to surmise that the pursuit of making music is struggling to fully hold her attention.
The follow-up to Brat, which made Charlotte Aitchison a global star in 2024 and instigated the entirely tiresome ‘Brat summer’ aesthetic, clocks in at a skimpy 30 minutes. A generous take is that the album was knocked out in the spirit of carefree spontaneity, perhaps in a conscious attempt to bypass the pressure of living up to such a huge hit. A less starry-eyed critique might conclude that it’s all a bit will-this-do. Many tracks arrive half-formed and depart half-finished, as though we are hearing Charli in the first throes of creativity, working through vague ideas in real time rather than striving to present the finished thought or song. It’s quite an interesting approach, conceptually, but ultimately scrappy and unsatisfying.
Only two songs here last longer than three minutes. On ‘Card Declined’, shopping is a proxy for an entire personality. ‘I’ll buy a smile/ …A whole back story/ Card declined’. Like many of the 11 tracks, it’s a song with one idea – not a terrible one, admittedly – which very quickly runs out of steam. ‘Rock Music’, ‘2007’, ‘Yeah’ and ‘Persona’ are barely here at all, built on the repetition of generic rock guitar riffs, glitchy rhythm and a handful of (consciously) trite phrases.
If Charli is getting a little bored with music, she at least remains fascinated by herself, as any good pop star should be. ‘I keep thinking about you every single day and night,’ she sings, the ‘you’ being the various lenses that reflect her image back at her and out into the world. Fame, identity, attention, self-perception, believing yourself simultaneously to be the worst and the best person in the room – these are all interesting subjects, but ones generally explored with surface-level enthusiasm.
‘I’m not a bad girl anymore, I promise/ Wink, wink,’ she sings on ‘Wink, Wink’, lest her recent marriage imply that she has settled into demure respectability, yet the rampant self-absorption lands as sweet rather than transgressive. Meanwhile, the offhand delivery and fourth wall-breaking asides – ‘Just kidding, I’m only saying that for effect’ – are mostly annoying, the zeitgeisty bon mots more crass than clever: ‘I was hacked/ It was taken out of context, obviously/ But I didn’t do it, even if I did.’
If Charli is getting a little bored with music, she at least remains fascinated by herself
Made with Charli’s regular collaborators, A.G. Cook and Finn Keane, there is perhaps enough material on Music, Fashion, Film to pull together a decent EP. ‘Magic Mental Montana’ – a pulsing platonic love letter to Cook – is light and pleasing, while ‘SS26’ is pretty and low-key. ‘Camera’, borne along by an appealingly scratchy guitar riff, is funny, vulnerable and knowing, a combination Charli XCX gets right perhaps less often than she thinks. It comes wrapped up in a catchy chorus and a properly effective punchline: ‘It’s the only way to feel like I’m not actually me.’
The photograph on the album cover depicts John Cale, Marc Jacobs and Martin Scorsese posing in stark black and white. The intention – as with much of the album – seems provocative at first before dissolving into ambiguity. Perhaps Charli is paying sincere fealty to three (old, white, male) masters of their respective fields, while also inserting herself into the frame as a triple threat. Perhaps she is demanding respect by association (she has already collaborated very effectively with Cale). Who can say.
Another arty old dude, David Cronenberg, pops up on the bright, citrusy, electro-poppy closing track. On ‘No One Lasts Forever’, the 83-year-old movie director delivers a monologue about the ephemerality of art and artists in the face of mortality. Music, Fashion, Film makes the same case perhaps a little too effectively. It already feels almost instantly disposable.
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