Charli XCX bids farewell to Brat summer – but not to pop music

Paris – 22 July 2026: Two days before the release of her new album “Music, Fashion, Film” on 24 July, Charli XCX is making one of the calculated turns that, in her case, rarely have only musical significance. After the deliberately dazzling and overstimulated world of “Brat,” things now sound drier, more guitar-heavy, almost intentionally less glamorous. However, the singer rejects the obvious assumption that this is simply an excursion into rock.

The songs introduced so far, “Rock Music,” “SS26,” and “Wink Wink,” have fueled that speculation. Distorted guitars, minimalist rhythms, and a less euphoric emotional foundation are pushed to the foreground. “SS26” in particular connects the world of fashion and pop melancholy with a sparse sonic image, deliberately moving away from the maximalist hyperpop of recent years. The album title places music, fashion, and film on equal footing—as if it aims from the outset to neutralize the familiar question of genre.

Charli XCX herself has rejected the label of a rock album. That is not merely a terminological correction. Her pop has always been a laboratory: sometimes club-oriented and synthetic, sometimes emotional, sometimes deliberately exaggerated. The new guitars therefore resemble less a commitment to a new stage than material she appropriates and brushes against the grain. Rock, in her hands, becomes a texture rather than the preservation of tradition.

Still, the distance from “Brat” is clear. The album released in 2024 spread far beyond the music world as an aesthetic attitude: acid-green color blocks, self-performance, partying, and exhaustion formed a particularly effective combination. The fact that Charli XCX is not simply continuing that era now follows her artistic logic. Pop stars are often rewarded for repeating themselves; she seems to regard repetition as more of a risk.

According to official information, “Music, Fashion, Film” comprises eleven tracks. This compact form suits an artist who has long worked through compression: a chorus can function like a slogan, a synthesizer sound like a backdrop, a dress like an argument. At the same time, the album title suggests a more skeptical stocktaking of the creative industries that both sustain and erode pop.

In Paris, Charli XCX presented her upcoming album at a listening event in early July. The city is not merely a fashion backdrop. It suits a project that moves between runway, cinema, and studio while making that uncertainty its subject. The new record will therefore likely be heard not as a rejection of “Brat,” but as its more sober afterglow.

Whether the pre-released tracks truly form a unified new sonic chapter can only be assessed when the album arrives. For now, only one thing is certain: Charli XCX is not leaving the architecture of hyperpop to seek refuge in a rock pose. Instead, she continues to build a kind of pop that understands its own surface—and precisely for that reason does not entirely believe in it.