Charli XCX - Music, Fashion, Film
BY ALLIE HOFFERT
On May 31, 2026, X (formerly Twitter) user @tristandross posted “charli xcx subversively deconstructs fame and pop stardom on latest single My Subversive Deconstruction Of Fame And Pop Stardom.” Charli XCX officially announced Music, Fashion, Film the next day. She might as well have posted a screenshot of that tweet and saved us all the trouble of listening to the album.
On Music, Fashion, Film, Charli XCX wants you to know that she’s an intellectual. She talk-sings laconically about “sittin’ on the floor of a Parisian apartment with a French girl talking about philosophy.” She has a spoken-word dialogue with horror auteur David Cronenberg on near-death experiences and the immortal nature of art. She’s even posed John Cale of the Velvet Underground, fashion titan Marc Jacobs and legendary director Martin Scorsese on her album cover.
At the same time, she also wants you to know that she doesn’t really care that much. Across most of Music, Fashion, Film, her writing is plagued by a desperate need to constantly double back, wink away sincerity and beat into your head the idea that she is actually very self-aware so you shouldn’t take anything she’s saying too seriously.
Single “Wink Wink” boasts some of the worst lyrics across the album — the first verse opens with “I used to lick cream off strawberries in the summer / And maybe I fucked your dad / Just kidding, I'm only saying that for effect” before the chorus repeats “I’m not a bad girl anymore / wink wink / wink wink / wink wink.” This kind of grating cheekiness is a persistent problem across Music, Fashion, Film. Charli’s attempts at ironic introspection come up empty because they don’t add anything interesting to the vague concept of “being self-aware.” She tries to comment on the sinister nature of celebrity and public image and capitalism or whatever, but it’s 2026. Everyone’s already severely irony-poisoned. None of this is new or exciting.
Attempts at serious commentary on fame and persona similarly fall flat. “I'll buy some jewelry, a personality / A whole backstory, card declined,” Charli deadpans on the eye rolling “Card Declined,” a song whose painfully trite message is established, reiterated and driven into the ground before the end of the first verse. “SS26” takes a halfhearted stab at cancel culture and Notes-app apologies. It’s a bit rich coming from someone whose last album featured a tribute to Dasha Nekrasova (although that song at least had a killer piano solo).
It’s no wonder that the best-written songs on Music, Fashion, Film are some of the only songs mostly devoid of incessant cynicism. “Camera,” a somewhat honest commentary on Charli XCX’s celebrity image and recent foray into acting, and “I’m Afraid,” a genuinely heartwrenching song about her anxieties surrounding her marriage, are some of the only compelling songs on this album.
Music, Fashion, Film was produced in large part by A. G. Cook and Finn Keane, two longtime Charli XCX collaborators responsible for some of the most innovative pop music from the last decade. It’s not their best work. The guitar-heavy production loses all of its novelty and most of its appeal before the first half of the album is over. As seen in their 2023 collaboration Soft Rock, A. G. Cook and Finn Keane are more than capable of stellar guitar-driven music, but the vast majority of their production across Music, Fashion, Film is repetitive and uninteresting.
Some interesting bits manage to surface throughout Music, Fashion, Film’s second half. The arpeggiated outro to “Magic Metal Montana” is a production highlight. “Yeah” is a fun, punchy rock song that doesn’t bring itself down with winking self-aware lyrics. The spoken-word David Cronenberg interlude in “No One Lasts Forever” is genuinely interesting, as is the repeated “they are dead, they are gone, no one lasts forever” in the outro. It would be a bit more poignant if it followed lyrics that weren’t “now I’m sitting on the floor of a Parisian apartment with a French girl talking about reality.”
SCORE: 2,701/10,000