Charli xcx is on the cover of the new edition of British Vogue, where she is interviewed by British journalist Laura Snapes, the same one who suspended her EP ‘Vroom Vroom’ in 2017 and later regretted it. The interview revolves around the creation process of Charli’s eighth album, the long-awaited successor to ‘brat’, which “is not finished yet”, but is quite advanced, thanks to a collaborative work that involves Charli and only two other people: AG Cook and Finn Keane.
Charli confirms that her next album will be rock, although she indicates that it will be in her own way, and lets Snapes listen to a fragment of a new guitar song in which she declares that the “dance floor is dead” (wow, just when Madonna returns) and that “that’s why we rock now.”
The journalist describes other unreleased songs, such as one in which Charli remembers feeling like a pop star in her room when she was a teenager, combining rough guitar and sweet melody: “I can take you to heaven like it’s 2007 / Pop star in my bedroom like it’s 2007,” she sings. In another, she recalls a crazy night in a philosopher’s apartment, where she reflects on the transience of life: “Nothing is going to last forever / And no one is going to last forever.”
Snapes assures that the music he has heard from ‘brat’s’ successor completely dispenses with autotune and puts the electric guitar and Charli’s raw voice at the center. Charli, who recognizes that after almost 20 years in the industry, little music motivates her anymore, admits that she finds it “fun to turn the form of rock music around,” although she suspects that some listeners will not be convinced by the proposal. His words suggest that the tone of the songs will be intimate and reflective. That is, the album will not be ‘Sucker’ 2.0.
The concept of the successor to ‘brat’ is also vaguely raised in the interview: Charli’s relationship with her work. “(The album) is about reflecting on how I interact with the other great love of my life along with George: art. And what would happen if that were taken away from me. How I wouldn’t have a purpose, and how, for better or worse, art does give me a purpose in life.”
