She Became the It Girl of Summer 2024. Now She’s Lifting a Middle Finger to It All. - Slate Magazine

What the report says

Slate Magazine reviewed Charli XCX’s new album, “Music, Fashion, Film,” framing it as a deliberate refusal to repeat the cultural moment created by her 2024 album “Brat.” The piece argues that the new record turns away from the expectations attached to her recent mainstream dominance and instead uses noise, irony and self-questioning to examine fame, taste and artistic ego.

A central focus of the review is the album’s final track, which features a repeated sample of filmmaker David Cronenberg reflecting on mortality after a health crisis. Slate describes the looped phrase as shifting from bleak to strangely musical, linking it to the “speech-to-song” effect and presenting it as a kind of mantra against self-importance. The review also notes that Cronenberg is the album’s only guest feature, while the cover image includes John Cale, Marc Jacobs and Martin Scorsese as symbolic figures for music, fashion and film.

Slate situates the album within Charli XCX’s post-“Brat” period, citing her writing about the tensions of coolness becoming commercial, her public comments on “anti-marketing,” and her role in “The Moment,” described as a satire connected to the “Brat” phenomenon. Songs such as “Persona,” “Camera” and “SS26” are presented as part of a broader interrogation of image, heritage, politics, fashion and cultural decline.

The review concludes that “Music, Fashion, Film” works better as a critique than Charli XCX’s surrounding public commentary because it is concise, playful and musically energized. Slate reads the project as an artist at a peak moment rejecting repetition while still foregrounding collaboration and pop experimentation.