Charli XCX makes rock music debut with worst rock song ever written
It’s never a good sign when a new release has people questioning whether it is a bit or not. Yet, it is impossible for all but the most juvenile ears to hear the opening line, “Me and my friends, we go out / We take pictures”, and not wonder whether you’re being fooled in some way.
More so than an actual song, Charli XCX’s rock music debut, ‘Rock Music’, feels like a sales pitch. It is music reduced to ‘product’ and sloganeering, as aptly displayed in the line: “I think the dancefloor is dead, so now we’re making r-o-o-o-o-ck music”. It feels so corny and disengenuous that it aligns more closely with internet meme culture than art. Perhaps that’s the tragic point?
But let’s pretend it’s not just music giving up on itself and devolving to marketing for a moment. Pop artists crossing genre boundaries is hardly new, and handled in a less hammy manner, the collision between hyperpop maximalism and sordid indie sleaze revivalism could’ve resulted in a catchy endeavour. The issue is that ‘Rock Music’ seems to understand the genre purely as an aesthetic signifier, and it is utter tosh.
It’s all cigarette mountains, leathery distortion, and queasy bullshit like “we kiss each other, real incestuous vibe” that proves cringe-inducing enough to snap a weak jaw. Nothing about it resembles an actual engagement with rock music as a form, tradition, or even a sultry attitude. Instead, it feels like a parody of the most surface tropes of Camden circa 2007.
So, is it actually just a big joke?
If it is, then who is the joke on? And who is laughing? Ardent ‘brats’ might claim that it is a purposeful parody or pastiche of rock, but surely satire has to offer something more than a recital of the most basic aesthetic traits. It’s akin to cracking a joke, and when it doesn’t land, saying, ‘Got ya! I was just joking’.
As my colleague, Lauren Hunter, put it when the same joke was wearing thin even a few months back, “Of course, no one’s blind to the fact that there’s an element of parody to all of this. But it was only funny for all of roughly a month at best”. Every sleazy reference and deliberately messy lyric lands with the exhausting self-awareness of someone announcing how wild they are while carefully checking whether everybody is watching.
It’s sucking the lime for too long to ensure everyone knows you’ve just had half a shot of tequila, and that’s the crux of its most egregious failure. It’s positively dystopian when you think about it: if this is a content/marketing startegy, designed as a wry wink to moving away from Brat (or, rather, not moving on at all) into a new era, then it is no more than a faux ‘clever’ advert, blowing smoke up its own arse, and confusing its self-aware wink for art in itself. It’s not ‘Rock Music’, it’s a YSL bag full of nought.
It’s like the music equivalent of the bloody Met Gala: a grotesque pageant of hyper-mediated ‘rebellion’ and ‘fashion’, but really it just wants attention and money (neither of which is an ideal aim in the current climate). And it swaggers around with the gotcha of ‘successfully wound up another boring critic who wants to ban fun’ with all the subtlety of a policeman’s knock.
Of course, pop is meant to be fun, but it’s also not meant to sound like an indie remix of a 2019 Bon Jovi single from a 13-year-old with a GarageBand preset in the process. The hook has the slippery quality of phlegm, the chorus is about as endearing as a nightclub on a Monday morning, and the whole enterprise is haunted by a faint whiff of vomit and vapes.
The track seems convinced that acknowledging its own artificiality somehow exempts it from criticism, flouncing about, wiping powder from its nose, as though winking at the audience automatically transforms advertising into satire, when all it is actually doing is manipulating the algorithm with incitement in a manner akin to various troubling online movements.
Besides, pop music does not suddenly become radical simply because somebody insists criticism is uncool, while attempting to bait just that. The issue here is not a lack of seriousness. It is a surplus of hollow calculation masquerading as spontaneity in sweaty leather pants. But above all, it’s just simply not a very good song.
Even trash should aspire to be good trash. It’s clever and inventive, inasmuch as the Hindenburg was clever and inventive; it’s rock music to die to and to die from.
