Over the past few years, Charli XCX has emerged as one of the music industry’s most high-profile letterbox power users. (This will come as no surprise to anyone with an interest in online film culture who’s taken even a cursory glance at the genre-bending pop titan’s social media.) Still, a lot of eyebrows were raised when David Cronenberg, the famed body-horror auteur behind Dirty Hits, released a video of the film. crash– the inspiration for the title of Charli’s fifth studio album – was featured on the closing track of her new album music, fashion, film.
Perhaps there should have been some clue in the last part of that title. The album artwork features collaborations with Velvet Underground frontman John Cale and designer Marc Jacobs, as well as Hollywood titan Martin Scorsese. When revealed, the cover seemed to reflect two things: firstly, Charlie’s embrace of film and fashion as new modes of expression, whether through the aforementioned reinvention as an active online cinephile, or her turn toward acting as a side-hustle. But they are also all men who cast long shadows over the art forms they represent; Cultural icons with god-like representatives. People who have made and will leave seismic artistic contributions. Perhaps then, in the shadow of Brat — that omnipresent pop cultural moment that launched Charli XCX into the celebrity stratosphere during the summer — legacy will be uppermost in her mind, and what hers might be.
The album itself is filled with sarcastic, sometimes self-effacing lyrics about her post-brat Mega-fame. Many reviews have already pointed out how deliberately non-brat It feels that way – at least in how many of the songs sound unusually rocky (although this is hardly the big rejection of club music that fans were worried it might be). It’s self-conscious, it’s self-conscious, it’s all very selfish. The struggle with authenticity in the wake of an identity-shattering event. And then comes that final track, “No One Lasts Forever” and the Cronenberg cameo, which just might be the key to unlocking it all.
The song appears to center on Charlie after a big night out in Paris, chatting “philosophy” with a “French girl”. (It’s giving off strong vibrations after 6 a.m., when the drugs are wearing off, the sun is piercing the window blinds, and the birds are chirping, otherwise known as hell.) Once again, Charlie struggles with her public persona amid the ups and downs brat:The parties may be more fun, but the scrutiny on her character – people read her as “irresponsible and rude”, or constantly getting mad – is less so. She concludes that essentially all this is transitory; If “nothing will last forever,” as it says in the chorus, then why worry?
That’s where Cronenberg comes in. Sadly, he doesn’t get a chance to showcase his singing abilities. The feature takes the form of a verbal interval one hour conversation He and Charlie met last year. (“I went to Toronto to sit with him and record him,” she told the music station triple j. “We chose the parts that felt most related to the song, but the whole conversation is very interesting in its own right.”) In the excerpt, he appears to calmly describe a near-death experience.
“As I was lying there on the sidewalk, I didn’t think about art at all,” he says. “I thought about people, I thought about life.” Even as such a giant of the game, facing his own mortality, the things that mattered were very small and personal: family, friends, loved ones. “Yes, some artists have created art that has lived for thousands of years… but experientially, for them, they are dead, they are gone,” he adds. “Forgetfulness is freedom.” And then comes the sinister end note that closes music, fashion, filmA saying that echoes in the darkness: “They’re dead, they’re gone, no one lives forever.”
