Charli xcx is “so inspired, basically all the time.” Just 3 months after releasing a full-length soundtrack for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, she is back to give us the first taste of what might be XCX8.
Invoking heated online discourse as she declared “the dance floor is dead” in a British Vogue interview just to release a danceable pop-punk track titled “Rock Music” is both the troll behaviour and cultural sensitivity that very few like Charli could capture.
Produced by her long-time friends and collaborators Finn Keane and A.G. Cook, “Rock Music,” at its core, does not stray too far from the signature PC Music club-banger sound the three are so well-loved for, except for a few distorted guitar riffs. Charli herself, however, has always been a genre bender. The sonic cohesion of past projects like Pop 2 and her self-titled album were defined by unexpected features with artists from vastly different genres. There’s nowhere else you can hear Caroline Polacheck and Brooke Candy back-to-back like on a Charli record, just as there’s no other artist who can make a song called “Rock Music” and still make you want to shake your booty.
The lyricism is classic Charli: absurdly fun, overtly self-aware, and sincerely ironic. Declaring the so-called death of the dance floor, it marks the end of not only brat summer, but also of an entire cultural persona Charli has popularised: the 365partygirl with tongue stuck to skinny cigarettes and shoes half on walking home in last night’s makeup.
Pop culture, at the end of the day, is just a Charli xcx mockumentary and we are all living in it.
“Rock Music” is out everywhere now.
