People often say art imitates life, but the inverse is also true. In On Writing, the novelist Stephen King said, “Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.” However, the singer-songwriter Charli XCX might disagree.
In a 2026 Rolling Stone interview, Charli XCX described feeling “creatively drained and not ready to write anything new” while making her eighth album Music, Fashion, and Film. However, her collaborator A.G. Cook explained coaxing the pop star back into the studio, with the knowledge that she would be in Paris for a fashion show: “I knew that by being thematically at fashion week, she could Method act the whole, ‘Charli’s going to record an album in Paris during fashion week.’” Again, the perennial question of whether life imitates art, or vice versa, became the entry point for her work.
Mirroring the circumstances of its creation, Music, Fashion, and Film analyzes the concept of relevancy and investigates what happens when coolness betrays itself under the pressure of capitalism. Charli XCX has already begun this inquiry in The Moment, a fictional mockumentary that satirizes the commercial success of her sixth record brat. Now, having completed the capstone project of the previous album cycle, she performs an autopsy on fame itself.
Music, Fashion, and Film depicts stardom as a dystopia. In “SS 26”, she pokes fun at the rehearsed nature of celebrity public relations: “I wrote a really good Notes app apology.” This method of issuing public statements seems unfiltered, but by joking about its alleged honesty, Charli XCX shows accusations of a calculated approach to fame don’t faze her. In the song’s music video, models walk off a runway and fall into oblivion, but she stares knowingly into the camera as the picture fades.
“Rock Music” introduces the album’s satirical vantage point, as XCX declares, “The dancefloor is dead.” Even though Music, Fashion, and Film is the singer’s first album to include guitars, such a drastic pivot is not a true artistic reinvention. Instead, by denouncing her signature style, she conveys an ambivalence to the public’s desire for a new sound. The stereotypical “devil-may-care” attitude associated with “rock” music is a vessel through which a provocateur parodies her own indifference to the limelight, which fans are well-acquainted with by now.
“Wink Wink” confirms that Charli XCX’s satire has become meta. Although this track alludes to the concept of breaking the “fourth wall” of celebrity, it is a straightforward raison d’être, establishing a need for subversion as her foundational state. In the chorus, she croons, “I’m not a bad girl anymore, I promise.” The punchline of the song is that, on a literal level, this statement is a lie, but the sentiment it conveys, of feeling misunderstood, is truthful.
In “Persona”, Charli XCX leans into sincerity. Like the most heartfelt track on brat, “I Think About It All the Time”, where she contemplated motherhood, “Persona” describes sentimentality existing in the shadow of an imposing career, describing two industry acquaintances sparring with subtle brags. The tension fades when she admits, “You call me your best friend, I secretly love it.”
For the aforementioned Rolling Stone interview, she invited journalist Angie Martoccio to the Hollywood Forever cemetery, where celebrities are buried. Cheerfulness has not been a requisite pop star quality for decades, but even so, she transcends a morose anti-celebrity persona: a trendy disposition in recent years. Having immortalized herself on brat, on Music, Fashion and Film, she brings the concept of cool, which thrives on temporary relevancy, to its logical conclusion: an understanding of impermanence, mortal or otherwise.
In the closing track, “Nothing Lasts Forever”, the film director David Cronenburgh contributes a spoken-word outro, recounting a near-fatal accident. He says, “When I was lying there on the sidewalk, I did not think about art at all. I thought about people.” Perhaps life is primary, and art is secondary, but that will not stop anyone from creating it.
The music video for “SS 26” depicts a fashion show, and, before the music starts, a spectator says, “Fashion won’t save us, but let’s go on the runway and walk.” Having experienced the pinnacle of success, Charli XCX has discovered the most permanent aspect of all creative industries: the desire to make something new.