Charli xcx is going full rock ‘n’ roll for her next album.
In a new cover story with British Vogue, the pop singer revealed that she’s ditching the dance beats and Auto-Tune that made her last album, “Brat,” a lime-green phenomenon. Instead, her eighth record — which she made with “Brat” producers A. G. Cook and Finn Keane — will be guitar-centric and spotlights Charli’s raw voice. British Vogue describes it as a “rock reinvention,” reporting that one of the songs features the lyrics: “I think the dance floor is dead/ So now we’re making rock music.”
“For me, it’s fun to flip the form,” Charli said of pivoting to rock. “We know there’s gonna be people who are bothered by it, but that’s fine.”
Though the new album still doesn’t have a title or release date, Charli wiped her Instagram over the past few days and changed her profile picture to a grey-ish black color, indicating a new era. After the global success of “Brat,” which lasted well over two years and seems to have finally come to a close with the release of her mockumentary “The Moment” in January, Charli says she felt the need to get away from dance music.
“If I’d made another album that felt more dance-leaning, it would have felt really hard, really sad,” she told British Vogue, later adding: “We were doing our version of analogue, which is so silly and funny, but putting it through our lens, and making sure that nothing felt too macho, was important.”
Charli also said she isn’t sure if she’ll go back to performing in arenas after “Brat” led to nearly non-stop touring and festival appearances.
“I never thought I’d play arenas in my life, and who knows if I will again,” she said. “Maybe I won’t, but after you’ve done a few, you’re like, ‘Oh, this place.’ It really happens.”
Charli also has a flourishing acting career, and found herself delving into her passion for cinema at the height of “Brat” mania as a way of escaping. In fact, one song on the album is about acting and how it allows her to feel “something new and undiscovered and something kinda violent.”
“You’re not thinking one step ahead, or at least I’m not,” she said of acting. “It’s a very impulsive state to be in. That can be terrifying but it can also unlock this instinct in you, and it’s scary but it’s kind of nice, like, fuck it. And maybe I’ll fall on my face and humiliate myself but maybe I’ll do something really powerful, and if you don’t try, you never know.”
Read Charli’s full British Vogue cover story here.
