Music, Fashion, Film Review

Music, Fashion, Film is Charli XCX's follow-up to Brat, released by Atlantic on July 24, 2026. She made it with A. G. Cook and Finn Keane in ten days at Rue Boyer Studios in Paris in 2025, after the burnout that followed Brat and the songs Emerald Fennell asked her to write for Wuthering Heights, and it runs eleven songs in about thirty minutes. The sound mixes pop with distorted guitars and a Daft Punk tinged electronic rock, and the subject is the persona itself: Camera on what stardom costs, SS26 on online backlash. It debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 with 78,000 units, her biggest opening in the US, and at No. 1 in the UK.

Critics took it seriously: 81 on Metacritic from 27 reviews. The Guardian found it disarmingly deep about how unstable identity is, Rolling Stone called it a brilliant, catchy and often very funny look at the machinery of fame, Pitchfork gave it 8.2 for being intentionally, imperfectly human, and the Line of Best Fit called it her most fully realised statement. The dissent was about the writing. The Independent found its sound and themes confusing and contradictory, with some lyrics a hangover from Brat, the Telegraph called them surface level, and the Skinny heard the magic mostly in the singles.

Cook and Keane's production and its loud, playful energy earn A grades. The lyrics are sharper on fame than on anything else and repeat Brat's tricks in places, so they are a B, and it is an A.