Charli xcx: Rock Music Review – is she really moving on from pop? Not sure… | Charli xcx

LLast month, Charli xcx kicked off the campaign for her seventh album in an interview with Vogue magazine. Next thing caused a stir on the Internet, not because the 33-year-old star had said anything controversial, but because he also said that the sequel would be in 2024. Brat it may sound very different from what has happened before. “If I’d made another album that was more danceable, it would have been really sad, sad,” he said, not naively refusing to chase down Brat’s massive success in an attempt to replicate it. (Though, in fairness, you probably should have done this from House, the noisy, experimental collaboration with John Cale that he released late last year as the first single from his song to Wuthering Heights.)

He also played the interviewer a song that had “highly modified guitars” and the words “I think the dancefloor is dead, so now we’re making rock music”: Vogue ran with the idea, blasting Charli xcx’s “rock reinvention” all over the title and on its cover and other articles taken from this issue. What one reporter cleverly called “a hot topic on the internet from fans and music experts” followed, prompting the singer to respond, posting “a video of me making a song called Rock Music which isn’t a rock song which is funny because I didn’t say I was making a rock song”.

The fact that an artist can cause controversy by saying that his new album will sound different from his last album says something depressing about the time we live in, dominated by mixed services and their algorithms designed to serve more and more listeners. Similarly, if Charli xcx he was making a pivot towards the rock, would be a very bold move.

In recent years, we’ve become increasingly accustomed to rock artists – a move that includes everything from Auto-Tuned songs on Ozzy Osbourne’s last albums to. The work of hardcore punk band Turnstile is produced by Brat AG Cook to Sleep Token is the ultimate blend of progressive metal, electronic, pop and R&B – not the other way around. This seems like a sign that it’s been a long time since rock, whether it’s hard rock or other genres, has been an important part of the music conversation. There is still a lot of it, some of it is interesting, but nothing is happening that the best-selling rock songs in recent years have songs that have been around for decades, whether it is Arctic Monkeys, Linkin Park, Queen or Oasis. A pop star declaring that the dancefloor is dead and announcing that they are now making rock music may seem silly and far from true.

But listening to the track in question – the first from her as-yet-untitled new album – it’s clear that’s not what Charli xcx is talking about at all. There’s some jumbled electric guitars here – playing the vaguely familiar riff that’s on Hole’s Celebrity Skin – and what appear to be live drums, but Rock Music is a very familiar song. It is a deliberate studio – in less than two minutes, it ends suddenly, the sound is electronically cut as if someone has paused it – which sounds like someone thumbing his nose at the “truth” that is loved by the kind of rock music that would be offended by the story of a pop star playing in this genre. No one would mistake the lyrics for a sincere paean: they seem to have more in common with the wry, arched-eyebrow wit of LCD Soundsystem’s Losing My Edge or the Killers’ Glamorous Indie Rock & Roll than they do with, say, AC/DC’s For Those About to Rock (We Salute You) or Roll All Nis’s Rock. “Wow, I’m shaking my head, I’m hurting my neck,” he deadpanned at one point. “Yeah, maybe jump on stage, I hope they find you today, but if they don’t, that’s okay.”

It’s very funny, interesting and disturbing in ways that set it apart from the revolutionary and written-by-committee approach of the 21st century crowd. It’s stripped away from the Brat content to be read as a new track while keeping the album’s appeal. It also makes you want to learn what his new album will sound like, rock or not.