“We’re so inspired/Basically all the time,” Charli xcx declares on “Rock Music”, the opening track of Music, Fashion, Film. The song is laced with irony, but that lyric feels rooted in truth and sums up why the artist born Charlotte Aitchison made Music, Fashion, Film. Because—as much as she wanted to slow down after the biggest moment of her career, 2024’s BRAT, which provided the mood (and colour scheme) for an entire summer—she just couldn’t stop. “I was like, ‘I really gotta take a break,’” Charli tells Apple Music. “But when inspiration strikes, I feel like you would be naive not to jump at it. I feel so lucky to get the inspiration that I don’t ever feel like I can let it slip past. This came randomly, I was not expecting it, but I kind of went with it, and I’m happy that I did.” Music, Fashion, Film was made mostly in Paris at the end of 2025 with her regular collaborators Finn Keane and A. G. Cook. And it finds Charli swapping out the neon colours and hot-mess fun of BRAT for a far more insular sound that leans towards guitars and lyricism that’s—as ever—both knowing and honest. “I can only ever do what I feel is right and truthful to me as an artist,” she says. “But I will say that my pattern is that my work often works in pendulum swings. Inherently, my albums are reacting against each other in some sort of a way.” You wonder, too, if this is an album Charli needed to make, its distinctly un-BRAT sound a means of breaking free of any expectations people might have had of her. And, perhaps, this was also what she had to do to process her superstar moment—the intensity of which she has said left her feeling exhausted and creatively empty—and make peace with how long that kind of cultural relevancy can last anyway. There’s that line in “Rock Music” about the dance floor being dead, which feels like Charli’s way of closing the BRAT chapter for herself, while on the powerful David Cronenberg-featuring album closer, “No One Lasts Forever”, she considers fame, perceptions of her, the ephemerality of things and the mortality of artists. Don’t worry, though: This being Charli xcx, there are also plenty of less deep moments, including “2007” and “Wink Wink”, which recalls French band The Teenagers’ indie-sleaze era track “Homecoming”. And yet, there is still a despondence that runs through this album. “We’re walking on a runway that goes straight to Hell,” she sings on “SS26”. “Nothing’s gonna save us, not music, fashion or film.” And on the crunchy “Card Declined”, she takes herself shopping to buy everything from a handbag to “a smile”, “a personality” and “a whole backstory” in a sullen take on consumerism that also sounds like a wish for a blank slate. Despite this clearly being an intentional shift away from BRAT, the lyrical intimacy which made that album what it was remains here. See “Magic Metal Montana”, about finding a best musical friend in A. G. Cook and on which she claims she’d be “nothing” without him, or “I’m Afraid”, where she frets about being “nothing” without her husband as she airs insecurities about herself. “I’m a wife, I’m a kid/I’m destroyed, I’m a bitch/I’m too drunk, I can’t sleep/I can’t feel, I’m afraid,” Charli almost chants over haunting production before adding, “I’m afraid I’m nothing without him/What if I ruin it?” Elsewhere, on “Camera”, she luxuriates in the revitalising feeling of being in front of the camera (in 2026, she starred in The Moment, a mockumentary based on her own idea) even if she also wonders, “Do I wanna make music? Am I being fucking stupid/If I try to be a girl on the screen when I’m turning 34?” And then there’s “Persona”, which, post-“Girl, so confusing”, will surely provoke plenty of internet speculation about its subject. “Don’t fucking choke on your ego when you see me coming,” sings Charli. “You call me your best friend to keep me at arm’s length.” But whatever uncertainties Charli might be feeling inside, this album also reflects the undeniable facts of where she is at, seven albums in: culture-shifting artist, front-row attendee at fashion shows, film star. As Charli puts it, “It’s a very personal title, because it’s what my life has become about.” And if that life has hit a point where you can call up Marc Jacobs, John Cale and Martin Scorsese to star on your album cover—one you don’t even need to appear on to get people to listen—then it must be going pretty well.