Charli XCX ‘making rock music’ for Brat follow-up as ‘dancefloor is dead’
By Casey Cooper-Fiske, Press Association Senior Entertainment Reporter
Pop superstar Charli XCX is reportedly “making rock music” for her follow-up to 2024’s Brat album.
The 33-year-old is said to sing “I think the dancefloor is dead, so now we’re making rock music” on one of the tracks from her upcoming studio album over heavily processed guitars, according to an interview in Vogue magazine.
The singer, whose real name is Charlotte Aitchison, told the fashion magazine: “If I’d made another album that felt more dance-leaning, it would have felt really hard, really sad, but what’s interesting for me is to bend the possibilities of what my perspective on that could be.”
Charli’s upcoming record, which will not feature her trademark auto-tune according to the Vogue piece, will follow her Wuthering Heights companion album to Emerald Fennell’s film of the same name, released earlier this year, and after Brat, which sparked a cultural phenomenon.
The “Brat summer” trend, which caused a frenzy on social media, incorporated sultry fashion choices inspired by the neon green and black album cover.
Of her new record, she added: “We were doing our version of analogue, which is so silly and funny, but putting it through our lens, and making sure that nothing felt too macho, was important.”
She went on to say that the new album would be inspired by her love of art and “what would happen if that was taken from me” and how it gives her purpose in life.
Charli added that she did not want to speak about her husband, The 1975 drummer George Daniel, on the album, after he was mentioned on a number of tracks on Brat including Club Classics and Sympathy Is A Knife.
She said: “I don’t really want to write songs about my husband forever. I’m not sure how interesting that is, and he knows that.
“If I write about our relationship, I’m probably only really interested in writing about some of the more obscure feelings of being married.”
It comes after the 360 singer starred in The Moment, a semi-fictional film looking at the release of Brat and the world tour that followed, earlier this year, which has also seen her appear in a number of other film projects including Pete Ohs’ Erupcja and Julia Jackman’s 100 Nights Of Hero.
The star has had two UK number one singles and three number one albums, and is best known for tracks such as Boom Clap, Guess and I Love It with Swedish duo Icona Pop.
