Charli XCX spent over a decade in the electro pop trenches before suddenly blowing up big time in the Brat summer of 2024.
So it’s not a surprise that the British singer, who said “all of my albums work in opposites” and “repel against each other,” would react to long-time-in-coming viral success with a stylistic about-face and pause for self-reflection.
The result is her new album Music, Fashion, Film, which gives its name to the tour that launched at Xfinity Mobile Arena in South Philadelphia on Friday with a hyperkinetic performance in front of a deliriously excitable opening-night crowd.
On its surface, the Music, Fashion, Film album appears to be a turn away from the Dionysian “Club Classics” culture of its predecessor into something more serious-minded and self-consciously mature.
The image on the album cover — and on the $50 T-shirts selling on the concourse — is not of the trendsetting pop star, but a group shot of three titans in their fields — Velvet Underground co-founder John Cale, fashion designer Marc Jacobs, and movie director Martin Scorsese.
Instead of the neon green that lit up Brat summer, the cover shot — and all Music, Fashion, Film imagery — is in black and white.
The album’s lead track, “Rock Music,” which she opened with Friday, Charli, 34, appears to be putting club culture in her rear view.
“Me and my friends,” she sings. “Yeah, we’re on to the next. I think the dance floor is dead / So now we’re making … Rock Music.”
And truth be told, she is — some of the time.
For most of the first and last thirds of the 100-minute show — which included 29 songs, with the briefest of breaks for exhortations like “Philly, this is the Music, Fashion, Film tour, are you [expletive] with me!” — she was accompanied by a three-piece band that included Morrisville, Pa., native Chris Greatti on guitar.
Music, Fashion, Film songs like “Wink, Wink,” “Persona,” and “2007” kicked into gear with overdriven guitars and hyper-pop-processed production that upped the adrenaline level.
And Charli — whose given name is Aitchison and whose stage name comes from a teenage online screen moniker meaning “Kiss Charli Kiss “ — fully embraced the rock aesthetic, striking poses that made her look like an Italian neorealist film star in the black-and-white image on the video screens.
But for all of their brash rock and roll presentation on a three-tiered stage topped by a facsimile of a smoke-emitting giant speaker — and no shortage of pyro going off throughout the show — the Music, Fashion, Film songs are actually introspective and soul-searching.
Not in a navel gazing, overly earnest way though. Charli XCX couldn’t bore you with self-pitying clichés about the perils of pop stardom if she tried.
Instead, she’s droll and sharply observant and self aware about a lack of fulfillment from fame. Along with Cale, whose recorded voice was heard on Friday from their collaboration on “House,” from the Wuthering Heights soundtrack released this year, Charli is a also a super fan of his Velvets bandmate Lou Reed.
And several Music Fashion, Film songs display a deadpan dark wit that show she has more in common with Reed than an appreciation for black leather.
Most amusing was “Card Declined,” a song about the failure of retail therapy to come through and transform your essential self when you need it most. “Let’s go shopping,” she sang on Friday. “I’ll buy a handbag. I’ll buy some shoes … a personality, a whole backstory … Card declined.”
Equally astute and self aware were “Persona,” “Wink, Wink” — in which she vowed ”I’m not a bad girl anymore, I promise” — and “Camera,” about being addicted to growing up in public, to a dangerous degree.
Charli played 13 songs from Music Fashion, Film, and included a few older cuts, such as “Party 4 U,” from 2020’s How I’m Feeling Now and the title song from her 2014 EP Vroom, Vroom.
And the surprise of the evening was “Stay Away,” pulled from True Romance, the debut album that brought her to Philadelphia for her first-ever U.S. performance at a Making Time party at Voyeur in the Gayborhood in 2012.
In the lead up to Friday’s show, Charli gave fans fashion tips on social media, saying the dress code is “whatever you want but if you want to commit I’d just get an old T-shirt and rip it to shreds and wear that.”
Many women, men, girls and boys took heed, usually pairing the distressed garment with something black leathery, and most leaving Brat gear at home.
And before the show, Charli also teased the tour’s vibe, which she said is “50% party, 50% existential crisis tbh.”
The songs from the new album carried the existential theme. Though to be honest, they were delivered with so much energy that the buzz in the room never let up.
But the unadulterated partying — and the shrieks of delight and singing along to every single lyric — really cut loose on the Brat songs that made up the meat in the middle of the show. With the band mostly out of sight, bass-heavy beats thumped as the general admission dance floor pulsated.
Like a boss, Charli prowled the catwalk and writhed on the ground. She was followed around by a coterie of what I counted as 14 associates, who were more like fashion-model voguers than dancers.
It was difficult to tell how many people were onstage at any one time because flashing strobes seemed to go off every millisecond. The group of planning-ahead fans next to me were better prepared than I, having arrived with Charli-esque sunglasses to wear when necessary.
The show got back to existential business at the end. First, with “SS26,” a lovely pop song with a sobering point of view that cast doubt on art’s ability to make a difference.
“Spring, Summer, ’26, when the world is gonna end, no hope for any of it,” she sang. “We’re walking on a runway that goes straight to hell, nothing’s gonna save us, not music, fashion, or film.”
That was followed by the closing, “No One Lasts Forever,” which also closes the album. It’s a song about seizing the day and embracing the here and now, ‘’cause nothing gonna last forever.”
On Friday, Charli put that point across musically as an inviting pop rock song. But then, as on the album, she handed off the mic to the voice of Canadian director David Cronenberg, recorded in conversation with her.
As a trancelike beat throbbed behind him, and Charli and dancers posed motionless on the elevated stage, Cronenberg spoke about how art can live forever, but artists can’t.
When everybody’s time is up — including the pop star being celebrated in that very arena on Friday — Cronenberg’s looped voice repeated 27 times, “They are dead, they are gone, no one lasts forever.”
And what that translates to — he and Charli were arguing — is the artistic license to be inspired and create in the moments that we’re here. That thought was boiled down to three words “Oblivion is Freedom,” which were spelled out on the video screens, and also on a T-shirt sold at the merch table.