Charli XCX - Music, Fashion, Film

After the neon club rush of Brat, Charli XCX picked up the guitars, and Music, Fashion, Film comes here with die-cut packaging, a postcard and a poster.

Released in 2026, the album was made almost exclusively with longtime collaborators A. G. Cook and Finn Keane, and it shares a sensibility with her film work, including the mockumentary The Moment, without acting as a companion piece. The cover lines up John Cale, Marc Jacobs and Martin Scorsese, one figure for each word of the title.

Eleven short songs fly by in about half an hour, built on fuzzed-out power chords, drum machines and the odd spoken-word passage. "Rock Music" crashes in at under two minutes, glitchy and impatient, and "Card Declined" grinds on crushed, choppy guitar. "Magic Metal Montana", a platonic love song for Cook, takes a post-rock turn with a sudden tempo change, while "SS26" delivers one of the stickiest choruses here.

Lyrically she circles fame, performance and what it means to be an artist, delivered with distortion and plenty of humour, and David Cronenberg even turns up on the closing track.

Charli has always made her best moves sideways, and this is one of her boldest, a pop star treating the guitar as one more toy in the studio.