Charli XCX - "Music, Fashion, Film" Quiz

Answer: Rock Music

Coming out of her "Brat" era and an immense spike in her popularity, Charli XCX claimed that burnout was pushing her to consider pulling away from the music industry entirely, but a chance collaboration with Emerald Fennell on the soundtrack for her "Wuthering Heights" adaptation led Charli to write an entire album as a companion piece to the film, opening the door to another new album in 2026.

The sessions led to "Rock Music", the first single off what would become "Music, Fashion, Film", which deviated away from hyperpop and dance music and into a rock-pop idea. The song and the album wouldn't really be rock, at least not entirely, but it would take Charli into a new space, stripping away a lot of the synth and beats of her preceding era in favour of something refreshing and intentionally different.

In response to the claim that she "[thinks] the dance floor is dead", Charli received online comments from Madonna who, in the months to follow, would release "Confessions II". Funnily, the two would collaborate on a remix of Madonna's track, "Danceteria", dispelling any rumours of an actual beef. Maybe dance music isn't dead after all.

"Rock Music" would peak at number thirty-six on the UK Singles Chart.

Answer: 2007

Charli has had a history with songs named after years as she's also released "1999" (feat. Troye Sivan) and "2099" (also with Troye) on her self-titled third album wherein the former track topped out at number thirteen on the UK Singles Chart (and went platinum).

"2007", however, wasn't taken as a single from this album, instead presenting as a middle-of-the-road pop track about Charli's feeling towards that year of her life, when she was 14. Between the guitar and drums, it's one of the songs that feels the most removed from her other more recent albums, but the most like it could be punched up to fit amongst the "Brat" tracks with the right attitude. Here, with the album's sensibilities, it feels like an ode to mid-2000s indie-pop.

Answer: Card Declined

The grungiest song on "Music, Fashion, Film", "Card Declined" is the result of a decision to slow down an otherwise rock-heavy song, distorting the guitars and percussion while Charli sings about overspending throughout. Much of the song lists out items and ideas that Charli plans to purchase-- a handbag, a shoes, a smile, a personality-- until the card is declined and she's left with nothing.

In live shows for the "Music, Fashion, Film" tour, the track was considered a stand-out, being one of the only ones to feature Charli walking a runway of flashing lights, doing so to simple choreography with her modelesque backup dancers. Before the tour, she indicated, in interviews, that it was the song she most anticipated bringing to the stage.

On the album, "Card Declined" concludes with a semi-hidden track, specifically an alternate version of the B-side "I Keep On Thinking Bout You Every Single Day And Night", which was originally released alongside "Rock Music" earlier in the year.

Answer: SS26

Released as the second single from "Music, Fashion, Film", "SS26" was quite unlike "Rock Music" before it, acting as a 'fashion' counterpoint to the album's 'music' lead-in. The title, an acronym for 'Spring/Summer 2026', is meant to reflect the idea of a fashion collection hitting the runway, imagery that Charli uses for the accompanying music video.

The song itself is less about fashion than it is about online persona management and dealing with peoples' expectations of celebrity responses. As part of the lyrics she indicates:

"I was hacked
It got taken out of context, obviously
But I didn't do it, even if I did
Wrote a really good Notes app apology"

"SS26" hit number forty-three on the UK Singles Chart and released with "Playboy Bunny" as a B-side.

Answer: Yeah

There's not much to "Yeah", a two-minute-long song that has a small vocabulary, as it just flips between Charli saying she "doesn't want to feel it" until she does, and then insisting "you don't want to feel it" until you do. But the song is energetic and evocative of Blur's "Song 2", driving from rock-tinged verses into heavier choruses; it doesn't need much to get a rock concert vibe rolling.

Charli has noted, in reviews, that the minimal nature of "Yeah" was intentional. Stripping back the overwhelm of hyperpop, the song still manages to do a lot with a little.

Answer: Wink Wink

Although it was anticipated that the third single from "Music, Fashion, Film" would fulfill the 'film' criteria after "Rock Music" and "SS26" checked the 'music' and 'fashion' boxes, Charli instead released "Wink Wink", perhaps her most pop-leaning track on the album, for radio play, pushing it up to number fifty-seven on the UK Singles Chart.

The song is exceedingly tongue-in-cheek. Throughout the verses, Charli talks about things the used to do back when she was younger and more promiscuous, but the chorus lies that she's changed. The music video accompanying the song drove the point home-- it was all a bit of wink-wink-nudge-nudge. It's hard to take the party girl out of the equation.

Per the chorus:
"Here's the truth, and I gotta be honest
I'm not a bad girl anymore, I promise
Here's the truth, and I gotta be honest
I'm not a bad girl anymore
Wink, wink, wink, wink"

Answer: I'm Afraid

The most down-tempo track on "Music, Fashion, Film", "I'm Afraid" is also the most vulnerable, with Charli expressing her anxieties of not being enough. During the track, she sings:

"I'm a wife, I'm a kid
I'm destroyed, I'm a bitch
I'm too drunk, I can't sleep
I can't feel, I'm afraid
I'm afraid, I'm afraid
I'm nothing without him"

Many fans believe that this song relates to her marriage to George Daniel, who's referenced in many of her "Brat" songs. The two wed less than a year before "Music, Fashion, Film" released, though the two dated (and collaborated) for three years at that point.

Answer: Magic Metal Montana

Written about Charli's friendship with frequent collaborator and producer A. G. Cook, the title "Magic Metal Montana" refers to things that A. G., himself seems to like that make him unique. Ultimately, the song is an open letter to him, musing on their professional and personal relationship, especially in light of their mutual collaborator SOPHIE's passing in 2021.

Notably, Cook took home a Grammy Award for Grammy Award for Best Dance/Electronic Album for his work on "Brat" back in 2024, though he'd worked on every Charli XCX album release since 2017.

Answer: Camera

The final of four radio singles from "Music, Fashion, Film", "Camera" checked the 'film' box, being written about Charli's growing interest in pursuing the medium. After "Brat", Charli not only released her own A24 mockumentary ("The Moment"), but acted in another six films, bulking up her filmography substantially.

"Camera" proved to be the top-charting of the singles from the album, reaching number twenty-one on the UK Singles Chart. It was packaged with the last of her B-sides from the era, "If You Take Away the Music Then What Has She Got", which similarly mused on Charli's own sense of creative self-worth.

Answer: Persona

"Persona" provides the topic it promises on the box, acting as another track wherein Charli contemplates her post-"Brat" self. Although she'd released numerous albums in her career to that point and been a long-established songwriter behind the scenes for a number of popular artists (and films), "Brat's" overwhelming popularity planted an image of Charli as a (365-)party girl into the minds of millions. It's that sense of identity, both interpreted and real, that finds itself under critique across "Music, Fashion, Film" -- a what's next coming from an absolute high.

Whether the song is solely about Charli or not is up for debate. She's said that if any listener thinks it's about them, it probably is.

Answer: No One Lasts Forever

The final track on "Music, Fashion, Film", and the longest of them due to its lengthy outro, "No One Lasts Forever" features, of all people, director David Cronenberg, who monologues about the nature of art in spite of the fact that the people behind it, and the art itself, will definitively, one day, perish. At the end of the song, Charli includes a lengthy section of a conversation she recorded with Cronenberg, taking during a visit to speak with him in Toronto, and she lingers on one line: "They are dead, they are gone, no one lasts forever." It repeats until the album ends.

Ultimately, critics took this song to be the final word on "Brat" and Charli's view on her career to that point, determining that there could be a sense of closure to such a defining legacy that can matter, certainly, but which is admittedly temporary -- and that's okay.