Charli XCX has launched her next musical era with the release of a new single titled “Rock Music.”
The song arrives only months after her last release, Wuthering Heights, which was a very dramatic, very serious companion album to Emerald Fennell’s film adaptation and a major switch-up from her now-seminal 2024 album Brat. With “Rock Music,” it seems that Charli has opted for yet another left turn: “I think the dance floor is dead, so now we’re making rock music,” Charli sings on the new track, a lyric that made waves after she revealed it in a recent feature with British Vogue.
So, is “Rock Music” Charli’s pop-punk rebirth? Is she doing Brat but with guitars? Is this all commentary on how pop stars decide they can just make music in other genres like they’re changing clothes — the age-old ‘I’ve played guitar this whole time’ rebrand packaged with a wink? It is, as you may have guessed, all of the above; Charli doesn’t so much make rock music on the song as she does perform the idea of making rock music.
Sure, the track’s crunchy guitars and power pop sheen bring it closer to the rock arena than a vast majority of her music has gone, and you could argue that Charli’s signature bratty sneer has always been informed by punk and various rock movements. But throughout the song — which flies in at just under two minutes — Charli remains completely unserious.
The first verse finds Charli and her friends going out, taking pictures, making stuff, and occasionally crying — “we kiss each other, real incestuous vibes (I knew you’d like that),” she adds. The second verse is devoted entirely to headbanging: “I’m really banging my head/ I’m really hurting my neck/ The nerve damage is real,” she sings, before advising the listener to maybe jump off the stage and hope someone catches them. And that’s it! No revelations, no commentary on the new success and pressures post-Brat, no shout-along chorus beyond a stuttered “roooooooooooock” at the end of each verse.
That’s why “Rock Music” feels both like a hilarious fake out and a genuinely brilliant turn from Charli. She’s essentially telling us at surface level that it’s not that deep, that rock music is just a jacket you can put on, an attitude to brandish. You can just decide that you’re making rock music, regardless of how it actually sounds. There’s something strange about how Charli and producers Finn Keane and A.G. Cook commit to the irony more than committing to the actual sound of rock music — and maybe they’re right to do so, because Charli knows her limitations and an album with My Chemical Romance or Queens of the Stone Age pastiche would probably sound awful.
Instead, “Rock Music” is yet another meta move from Charli as she’s further inhabiting the gap between being a ‘serious artist’ and making music that challenges our notions of what ‘serious art’ is or can be (see: “Girl, so confusing”). She does what she does best: turns the industry’s obsession with ‘the rebrand’ into a playground, proving that for Charli XCX, the most authentic thing she can be is a self-aware imitation.
“Rock Music” also arrives with a new music video, during which Charli plays with “rock” tropes: throwing a television out of a hotel room, smoking a lot of cigarettes, wearing a leather jacket, and, of course, moshing. The visual, shot in black and white, was directed by Aidan Zamiri, who recently helmed Charli’s new film The Moment. Watch the video for “Rock Music” below.
In addition to readying her new rock-themed project, Charli will head back to the US this summer and fall to headline a few festivals, including Lollapalooza, Outside Lands, and Austin City Limits. Get tickets to see Charli XCX here.
