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CHARLI XCX: Music, Fashion, Film (Atlantic)

Verdict: Candid, catchy, confident

Rating: Four stars out of five

As a party-girl record built around dance beats and vibrant lime-green artwork, Charli XCX's 2024 album, Brat, turned the Essex-raised singer from someone who was, in her own words, 'famous, but not quite' into a bona fide superstar.

It sparked the 'Brat summer' and turned Charli into a bill-topper on Glastonbury's Other Stage. And its bold cover art became a viral sensation.

After declaring the Brat summer over, the 33-year-old born Charlotte Aitchison initially pivoted to film, creating the soundtrack to Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights and starring in documentary movie The Moment, a satirical portrait of stardom.

But she's now returning to pop, and she cleverly revamps her sound on her seventh studio album, out today.

Music, Fashion, Film largely eschews dance in favour of grinding guitars and distorted electronics. At times, it taps into a strand of off-kilter indie-rock popularised by US bands such as the Pixies in the late 1980s.

Made with regular collaborators A.G. Cook and Finn Keane, it's short and sharp. Its 11 songs race by in 30 minutes, and nothing outstays its welcome.

Charli XCX's new seventh studio album Music, Fashion, Film released on Friday - and it's a revamp of her last solo effort (the pop star is pictured at Glastonbury festival in 2025)

The Essex-born singer's 2024 album Brat turned Charli into a bill-topper on Glastonbury's Other Stage

It also details what sounds like a full-blown identity crisis.

It's obvious that success wasn't quite what Charli had envisioned, and these songs offer a witty, knowing take on her love-hate relationship with fame, taking in her bad-girl persona, acting career and 2025 wedding. 'It's complicated how I feel,' she sings on I'm Afraid. 'But I have to get it out, so my insides don't turn black.'

She opens with a mission statement. 'I think the dance floor is dead,' she tells us on Rock Music, a paean to loud guitars and stage diving, even if it does contain traces of her electro-pop past.

Guitars are more to the fore on Yeah, while Card Declined – about shopping for a personality – reiterates her skill at mixing mainstream styles and more experimental fare.

Her lyrics are typically candid. 'What if I ruin it? Take the ring, take the ring,' she sings on I'm Afraid, addressing her marriage to George Daniel, drummer with British band The 1975.

Camera sees her laying bare her mixed feelings on juggling film roles with music, while Wink Wink parodies her reputation as a party animal. 'I'm not a bad girl anymore, I promise... wink, wink,' she teases.

Aitchison has previously written songs about her showbiz peers, including Lorde, and she addresses another 'best friend' (without naming names) on Persona.

Her observations, as usual, are nuanced rather than vengeful. 'I see your face in a film and it makes me wanna cry,' she sings. 'Every day you're suffering, but you say you're doing fine.'

Amid her doubts, the sun sometimes peeps through. Magic Metal Montana is a tribute to her producer Cook ('I'd be nothing without you'), while closing track No One Lasts Forever advocates living for the moment, and 2007 harks back nostalgically to her formative years in Essex. 'Pop star in my bedroom,' she reminisces.

Music, Fashion, Film is unlikely to launch a fashion craze along the lines of 2024's Brat summer. For starters, its artwork is a plain photo of musician John Cale, fashion designer Marc Jacobs and filmmaker Martin Scorsese.

It does, however, rubber-stamp Charli's position as Britain's most adventurous mainstream pop star.

Charli XCX plays Reading and Leeds Festival on Friday 28 and Saturday 29 August.