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\n\tFor more than a decade, Charli xcx<\/a> was a secret weapon, a brazen experimentalist, a raw diarist, and (apologies to Chappell Roan<\/a>) your favorite artist\u2019s favorite artist. But she was not, exactly, a pop star \u2014 the kind that fills arenas, covers magazines<\/a>, performs at the Grammys<\/a>, and has the masses hanging on her every word. The British musician\u2019s culture-shifting 2024 electro-pop confessional Brat<\/em><\/a> changed all that, lifting her name from \u201calso starring\u201d to above the title. Who better to churn out a 30-minute treatise on the art of image-making?<\/p>\n \n\tCharli is well on her way to mastering all three mediums spelled out in the title of her new LP, Music, Fashion, Film<\/em>. But the story of her seventh studio album has been its seeming swerve, as announced by its first single, \u201cRock Music.\u201d<\/a> The track \u2014 with its croaking guitar, cymbal smashes, and stuttering vocals \u2014 sounds nothing like Brat<\/em>\u2019s gleaming, clubby gems (or the bouncy pop-punk of her 2014 LP Sucker<\/em><\/a>, for that matter). But it doesn\u2019t define an aesthetic as much as an ethos: hanging around and making stuff with your friends. As another hitmaking iconoclast<\/a> once said, it\u2019s still rock & roll to me.<\/p>\n \n\tOver 10 succinct songs (and a comparatively sprawling closer), Charli and her writing and producing partners A.G. Cook<\/a> and Finn Keane dissect the stardom she hates to love and loves to hate. The breezy \u201cSS26\u201d toys with the idea of having a bad-girl image when everything in the world is bad. \u201cCard Declined\u201d starts as a comically simple clanger about being defined by one\u2019s possessions, then blooms into a brief reverie before closing with a minute of perky, love-struck indie pop. \u201cI keep thinking \u2019bout you, every single day,\u201d Charli sings, ostensibly to the handbag of her dreams.<\/p>\n \n\tThere\u2019s room for human affection on the album, too. \u201cI\u2019m Afraid,\u201d which bristles like an outtake from Nirvana\u2019s MTV Unplugged<\/a><\/em>, plunks a guitar\u2019s low notes as Charli reveals her anxieties about marrying the 1975<\/a>\u2019s drummer, George Daniel. On \u201cMagic Metal Montana,\u201d she gushes about her other great relationship \u2014 with her longtime collaborator, Cook \u2014 in a giddy run-on that praises his haircut, his dancing, and his ability to read her musical mind.<\/p>\n