Charli XCX was supposed to be taking a break. Instead, she dashed off an 11-song album in weeks — and sparked a feud with Courtney Love and Madonna.
Her seventh album, Music, Fashion, Film, lands today, July 24, 2026, a swift follow-up to Brat, the era-defining 2024 record that was co-opted into Kamala Harris's presidential campaign and prompted Collins English Dictionary to update its definition of "brat" to mean "confident, independent, and hedonistic."
“Charli XCX releases seventh album Music, Fashion, Film, a guitar-driven departure from Brat, sparking backlash from Courtney Love and Madonna.”
After a punishing year-long tour, the singer accepted acting roles, wrote the soundtrack to Emerald Fennell's adaptation of Wuthering Heights, and married her long-term partner George Daniel. But instead of settling down, inspiration struck.
"Out of the blue, inspiration struck me," she says. "I suddenly felt like I had something to say, so I ran with it."
The result is smart, self-referential, funny and antagonistic — and deliberately not Brat 2.0. "If I'd made another album that felt more dance-leaning, it would have felt really hard, really sad," she told Vogue. "To be boring is to die right there on the spot," she added in a newsletter to fans.
The album's predominantly guitar-based sound — built from riffs rather than computer production — led Vogue to call it her "rock reinvention." Fans recoiled. Courtney Love accused Charli of being a troll. Madonna captioned a photo: "If your dance floor feels dead, maybe you're playing the wrong music."
But Charli pushed back. The song Rock Music includes the lyric "I think the dancefloor is dead, so now we're making rock music" — yet the track itself is full of manipulated vocals and electronic flourishes. "I never said I was making a rock album," Charli posted on Instagram, explaining that the song is actually about her relationship with Brat.
The album's title, Music, Fashion, Film, hints at the cultural whirlwind she's been navigating. It's an attempt to make sense of two years that transformed her from pop's cutting edge into a global phenomenon — without repeating herself.