Charli XCX on the reactions to ‘Rock Music’ and why the debate around it feels familiar

Charli XCX says the response to her recent single ‘Rock Music’ has been “really interesting,” a polite phrase for the sort of online split that tends to follow any sharp turn in her work. The track arrived last Friday, May 8, pulling away from the club-heavy momentum of 2024’s Brat and toward something rougher, guitar-led and a little more ragged at the edges.

The single’s grungy video only sharpened that sense of recalibration. In it, A.G. Cook, Finn Keane, formerly known as Easyfun, and Charli’s husband, The 1975’s George Daniel, appear as her rock band, turning the clip into a playful but pointed visual break from the neon-coded universe that defined her last album cycle. The reaction was immediate and predictably divided, with some listeners leaning into the change and others reading it less generously.

Charli, for her part, seems more fascinated than defensive. Posting on Instagram, she wrote,

“Seeing all the different reactions to my song ‘Rock Music’ has been really interesting,”

before comparing the discourse around it to earlier arguments around PC Music. In her telling, the label was once treated as if it were mocking pop rather than operating inside it, a feeling she said also came back when she released her third EP, Vroom Vroom, in 2016.

That comparison matters because Charli’s career has long been shaped by people trying to locate the joke before they locate the intention. Her Instagram note didn’t try to settle the argument so much as frame it.

“It’s all kind of fascinating. I love talking about music and art with my friends, so I’m happy people are throwing out thoughts,”

she wrote, adding that she was not going to explain where she was coming from with the song. Still, she made her position clear enough:

“all I know is that things can be funny, earnest, sincere, and joyful all at the same time and that’s what I feel about a lot of the things I make.”

She ended the post by admitting she’d probably regret sending the thought out into the internet in the first place.

Since then, Charli has already followed Rock Music with the stripped-back B-side I Keep on Thinking Bout You Every Single Day and Night, accompanied by a lo-fi black-and-white video. The pair arrive as she moves toward her next album, which her team confirmed last month she was finishing. It will follow Brat, the 2024 record that became a full-blown cultural phenomenon and, for better or worse, turned “Brat Summer” into a season-sized shorthand. Since then, she has also issued a soundtrack album for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights.

The new era has been teased in fragments. Speaking to British Vogue, Charli first introduced the lyric,

“I think the dance floor is dead, so now we’re making rock music”

, which quickly sent fans speculating about a heavier record. She later pushed back on that assumption, telling listeners,

“I never said I was making a rock album.”

It’s a distinction that fits her broader habit of teasing a direction without fully surrendering to it.

More details on the album are expected soon, though the title and release date remain unknown. Outside the studio, Charli’s screen work has been stacking up too: she wrote music for A24’s Mother Mary and appears in her own mockumentary The Moment. Her on-screen run also includes Erupcja, 100 Nights Of Hero, a comic version of herself in Overcompensating, and a role opposite Supergirl star Milly Alcock in a new horror film from Takashi Miike.

This August, she’ll also make her headline debut at Reading & Leeds, topping the bill alongside Fontaines D.C., RAYE, Florence + The Machine, Dave and Chase & Status. Visit here for tickets and more information.