Earlier this week, in a post on her b.sides (formerly 360.brat) Instagram account, Charli XCX alluded to the existence of new music. She’s now confirmed that her proper follow-up to 2024’s Brat is on the way in a new British Vogue cover story, and what’s more, it’s apparently a rock album. “I think the dance floor is dead,” Charli tells Pitchfork contributor Laura Snapes, “so now we’re making rock music.”
In the profile, the new album is described as guitar-forward, with Charli’s distinctive Auto-Tune largely absent. “We were doing our version of analogue, which is so silly and funny,” she says. Brat producers A.G. Cook and Finn Keane, formerly known as Easyfun, returned for the recording sessions, which took place in Paris during Fashion Week last month.
The story does not reveal a title, but does quote lyrics from the album that center on Charli’s relationship to making art “and what would happen if that was taken from me”: “I can take you to heaven like it’s 2007/Pop star in my bedroom like it’s 2007”; “I can feel all the things I don’t normally feel.” “Nothing’s gonna last forever/And no one’s gonna last forever,” goes one line that appears on a song in part about the aftermath of Brat.
Elsewhere, Charli discusses her burgeoning acting career, which has included roles in Daniel Goldhaber’s Faces of Death remake, Gregg Araki’s forthcoming I Want Your Sex, and her own mockumentary, The Moment. It was apparently Goldhaber who convinced Charli to take on her first onscreen role in a live-action, scripted film. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt like, ‘Wow, I killed that,’” she tells Snapes. “I feel ready to do it 1,000 times if necessary.”
Of The Moment, which was filmed during her arena tour in support of Brat, Charli says, “Going through this widening of my audience has made me aware of how you can sometimes get made into these bullet points…[and] that’s not something I’m shocked or even bothered by. Obviously, that happens—it’s cool when you can draw a cartoon of someone in that way.”
In February, Charli shared her companion album for Emerald Fennell’s film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, which featured guest contributions from John Cale and Sky Ferreira. Taking to social media earlier this month, Ferreira insinuated that some of the songs on Wuthering Heights were in fact re-recorded versions of her own demos. Charli’s management subsequently clarified that, while some tracks included “material from earlier sessions,” the breakdown of credits had been agreed upon in writing prior to the album’s release.
Read about Brat at No. 7 in The 100 Best Albums of the 2020s So Far.