Fez — Charli xcx has announced that her new album, “Music, Fashion, Film,” will be released on July 24, opening another chapter after the global aftershock of “Brat.”
The British pop artist revealed the project on Instagram, sharing a black-and-white album cover featuring musician John Cale, designer Marc Jacobs, and filmmaker Martin Scorsese. The trio appears to visually represent the album’s title: music, fashion, and film.
Charli said the record will include 11 songs and run for 30 minutes and five seconds, describing it simply to fans as available for pre-order.
The title comes from her recent single “SS26,” where she sings: “Nothing’s gonna save us, not music, fashion or film.” The track’s video leaned heavily into runway imagery, with Pitchfork describing it as a fashion-show scene “on a runway that goes straight to hell,” featuring appearances from figures including Carine Roitfeld and Abra.
A new sound after ‘Brat’
The announcement confirms that Charli is not trying to repeat the neon-green formula that made “Brat” one of the defining pop moments of 2024.
Her new era has already been teased through “Rock Music” and “SS26,” two singles that point toward a rougher, more guitar-heavy sound while keeping her taste for electronic distortion and club-adjacent chaos.
In April, Charli told British Vogue that she was moving toward rock music, saying “the dance floor is dead,” while Pitchfork reported that the new project is expected to be guitar-forward, with less of the Auto-Tune that has shaped much of her signature style.
The shift is intentional. Charli has said she does not want to make a second “Brat,” and that changing form is part of the thrill. People reported that she expects some listeners to be bothered by the pivot, but sees that tension as part of the point.
Pop as a three-way collision
The album cover makes the concept unusually literal. John Cale evokes experimental music history, Marc Jacobs brings fashion-world symbolism, and Martin Scorsese anchors the film side of the project.
It is a very Charli move: half joke, half thesis statement. After turning “Brat” into a full cultural language, she now appears to be staging the next album as a collision between creative industries that promise meaning but may not save anyone from burnout, spectacle, or collapse.
That tension also defines “SS26.” The song and video treat fashion as glamorous, doomed, and addictive all at once. The runway becomes a place where everything looks beautiful while the world falls apart.
