Charli XCX’s New Album: Everything We Know So Far

Charli XCX has announced the follow-up to BRAT. Music, Fashion, Film will be released on July 24. Here’s everything we know about the pop star’s “rock album” so far.

Is it really a “rock album”? 

That’s how Charli herself characterized it in a recent British Vogue story. Despite the shift in genre, Charli is still working on it with two longtime collaborators, A. G. Cook and Finn Keane (formerly known as Easyfun), though Cook is apparently playing guitar on it. (If you want a taste of what that might sound like, check out the records Cook produced with his partner, Alaska Reid.)

Journalist Laura Snapes, who caught up with Charli XCX in Paris during last October’s Fashion Week, wrote the piece. “We knew we wanted to go to Paris to do it,” Charli said. “We knew it would be this very hectic, rich time, and we like creating in that kind of atmosphere.” It’s unclear how far into the process she is now.

Has Charli XCX released any singles from it?

On May 8, Charli XCX released her new single ‘Rock Music’, alongside a video directed by Aidan Zamiri. On May 22, she released another track, ‘SS26’, which was produced and co-written by A.G. Cook and Finn Keane. It arrived alongside a Torso-directed music video. Another single, the appropriately cheeky ‘Wink Wink’, followed on June 26.

What does the album cover look like?

Shot by Aidan Zamiri, the album cover is a black-and-white photo of John Cale, Marc Jacobs, and Martin Scorsese.

How long is the album?

“11 songs, 30 minutes, 5 seconds,” according to Charli’s announcement post.

What are the songs called, and how long is each song?

Upon sharing the album’s tracklist, Charli also revealed the individual song lengths:

1. Rock Music (1:55)
2. SS26 (2.46)
3. Card Declined (3:28)
4. Camera (2:31)
5. 2007 (2:04)
6. I’m Afraid (2:11)
7. Yeah (2:17)
8. Wink Wink (2:03)
9. Persona (2:37)
10. Magic Metal Montana (2:31)
11. No One Lasts Forever [feat. David Cronenberg (5:42)

What else has Charli said about the album?

In the British Vogue story, Charli gave a little more backstory about the direction she took with the record. “If I’d made another album that felt more dance-leaning, it would have felt really hard, really sad,” she said. “But what’s interesting for me is to bend the possibilities of what my perspective on that could be.” She added, “Now there’s just so much noise around anything else that I do in a way that I sometimes find a bit pointless. I’m like, ‘Why don’t I just make the album and listen to it with A. G. and Finn?’ But there’s obviously a narcissism that prevents me from doing that.”

Charli also said that the new album Charli “is commenting on how I interact with the joint main love of my life outside of George and what would happen if it was taking from me — how I would have no purpose, and how for good or bad, art does provide me with purpose in my life.” Presumably, that means there’s no lyric about wanting to rock out with George.

Cook had this to say about the process: “It’s looking for this intensity. It’s not just this flex of, ‘Oh, I did this other album.’ She’s really responding to a feeling that a lot of people have in 2026 of there being so much, almost too much. What do you hold onto? I’m inspired by seeing how she’s so ready to do that rather than take it easy.”

What does the album sound like?

Snapes got to hear some of the in-progress album, and her descriptions offer some idea of what the record might sound like. Of one song with the sample lyric “Card declined,” she writes, “Queasy feedback warps beneath a dead-eyed incantation about going shopping for a new personality and falling at the first hurdle.” Another is “a scuffed, sweetly melancholy song about the ‘quite mad’ night at the philosopher girl’s apartment.” (Sample lyric: “Nothing’s gonna last forever/ And no one’s gonna last forever.”) Another song, in Charli’s words, is about how acting makes her feel “something new and undiscovered and something kinda violent”; Snapes compares it to the vulnerable BRAT highlight ‘I think about it all the time’.

Who is the lone feature on the album?

In a French TV interview, Charli teased that there be a single guest on the LP, saying, “But you won’t be able to guess. I would bet money on you not guessing.” On July 7, she revealed who that guest is: the Canadian horror film director David Cronenberg. Though unexpected, it’s not totally surprising, as Charli has called herself “a big Cronenberg stan” and proposed “Cronnenberg summer” as one alternative to Brat Summer.

This post will be updated…