Charli XCX is ditching the dancefloor for new “rock” album
Charli XCX is ditching the dancefloor and making a rock and roll album.
In a new profile for Vogue, Charli XCX shared several demos of her new album, following the official soundtrack for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights and, importantly, the global phenomenon of her 2024 dance release, Brat.
“I think the dance floor is dead,” Charli XCX drawls on one of the tracks, as reported by British Vogue, “So now we’re making rock music.”
The outlet described the project as a “rock reinvention”, including “heavily processed guitars”, and a re-focus on her raw voice, stripping away much of the autotune used on her previous album.
“If I’d made another album that felt more dance-leaning, it would have felt really hard, really sad,” the ‘365’ singer noted, saying she landed upon the genre of rock to “bend the possibilities of what my perspective on that could be.”
Looking back on Brat, she added, “We were doing our version of analogue, which is so silly and funny, but putting it through our lens, and making sure that nothing felt too macho, was important.”
Charli XCX is expecting backlash: “For me, it’s fun to flip the form”, she said of moving to rock, before adding, “We know there’s gonna be people who are bothered by it, but that’s fine.”
She added, “We knew we wanted to go to Paris to do it. We knew it would be this very hectic, rich time, and we like creating in that kind of atmosphere.”
Though specifics, such as title, tracklist, and release date, are nowhere to be seen, Charli did share that one of the songs on the album touches upon her acting career, and how it enables her to feel “something new and undiscovered and something kind of violent.”
Notably, Charli XCX starred in her own mockumentary, The Moment, which was directed by Aidan Zamiri and satirises the pressures of fame and artistry.
Meanwhile, the Essex singer-songwriter has been busy cementing her role in the film industry; after making her big-screen acting debut in Julia Jackman’s period fantasy, 100 Nights of Hero, she is slated for roles in upcoming movies Faces of Death, The Gallerist, and I Want Your Sex.
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