Ahead of the release of her new album, “Music, Fashion, Film,” musician Charli XCX released the single “Rock Music” in May, in which she sings that "I think the dance floor is dead, so now we're making rock music." The line prompted no small number of reactions in the music industry, including from Courtney Love and Madonna, who was just about to launch “Confessions II,” a sequel to 2006’s “Confessions on a Dance Floor.”
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Charli XCX at the Metropolitan Opera Gala, 2026
(Photo: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)
Charli XCX at the premiere of 'Wuthering Heights' in London, 2026
(Photo: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
On stage performing at the Glastonbury Festival, 2025
(Photo: Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)
Shortly afterward, Madonna posted a message on social media: “If your dance floor feels dead, maybe you’re just playing the wrong music.” She did not mention Charli XCX by name, but online and in the media it was interpreted as a direct response. Love, by contrast, called her a “troll” in the complimentary sense of the word. In other words, an artist who throws out a provocative statement to challenge conventions and unsettle people. Exactly like her.
The “clash” between Madonna and Charli XCX looked like a changing of the guard between two generations of pop stars identified with nightlife. Charli represents the Brat generation and contemporary club culture, while Madonna is perhaps pop’s greatest symbol of the dance floor since the 1980s. Now she is doing everything she can to reclaim that status for herself.
Charli XCX at Saint Laurent's Spring-Summer 2027 Men's Show
(Photo: Aurore Marechal/Getty Images)
It was likely a public relations exeרcise, since a month later the two shared cigarettes and a bench at the Saint Laurent fashion show during Men’s Fashion Week. Charli arrived in a red slip dress, while Madonna made do with a lace minidress. Later, they co-hosted the fashion house’s party at Paradis Latin, one of Paris’ historic and iconic cabaret clubs in the Latin Quarter.
'Fashion won’t save us, but let’s get on the runway and walk'
“Music, Fashion, Film,” released in late July, is Charli XCX’s seventh album. She is one of the biggest pop stars of the moment. Since its release, the 30-minute album has received positive reviews for stretching the boundaries of the genre between pop and rock. But the album is also a fashion and cultural project that continues the way the star has turned herself in recent years into one of the most influential figures in pop’s visual language. After the Brat era, which made neon green and an unpolished aesthetic popular, she continues to blur the line between music, cinema and fashion.
Charli XCX at the Berlin Film Festival, 2026
(Photo: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images)
Charli XCX performing at the Grammys, 2025
(Photo: Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
That declaration of intent begins with the album cover, which features a black-and-white photo of three living legends: filmmaker Martin Scorsese; avant-garde musician John Cale, one of the founders of the Velvet Underground, with whom she recently collaborated on the soundtrack for the film “Wuthering Heights,” which she composed; and fashion designer Marc Jacobs, who was the first to cast her in a fashion campaign in 2018, when she was still a young British indie singer, to promote The Sack Bag, photographed on all fours.
“Marc was the first person ever to give me a fashion campaign, and he was the first person who, in a way, opened the door to that world for me,” the singer wrote in early June on X. “I did three campaigns for Marc, and I think he has always truly managed to convey youth culture through his work. That was true from the beginning of his career, when he worked as a designer at Perry Ellis and launched the grunge collection in 1992, which was very controversial and led to him being fired, after which he continued to do his own thing independently. I think he has always spoken his truth as a designer, and has always managed to communicate with young people.”
Charli XCX at the Cannes Film Festival, 2025
(Photo: Monica Schipper/Getty Images)
He is not the only fashion designer she flirts with on the new album. The video for the song “SS26,” a kind of abbreviation for the Spring-Summer 2026 collection, takes place entirely at a fashion show, where Charli XCX appears both in the front row and as a model who changes many faces. Alongside her are other figures from the fashion world, including fashion film director Loïc Prigent, fashion show sound and music designer Michel Gaubert and others.
“Fashion won’t save us, but let’s get on the runway and walk,” famed fashion editor Carine Roitfeld, the former editor of Vogue Paris, says at the start of the video, with fashion designer Anthony Vaccarello, Saint Laurent’s artistic director for the past decade, beside her. The musician has business ties with both of them, including wearing the brand’s clothes at high-profile red-carpet events and aggressively marketing the fashion house’s YSL makeup line in the video itself.
Martin Scorsese, John Cale and Marc Jacobs in the photo for the cover of Charli XCX's new album
The song’s words are more timely than ever, revealing Charli’s attitude toward the chaotic reality around her. On the one hand, she presents a sense of anxiety and loss of faith in a world on the brink of collapse. On the other, she shows an ironic awareness of the place in which she herself operates as an artist. She sings about Spring-Summer 2026, a runway leading toward hell and the sense that nothing, not music, fashion or film, will save us.
Charli XCX at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Gala, 2025
(Photo: Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
Between romantic gothic and Hollywood classicism
One of the signs that Charli XCX has turned in recent years from an underground phenomenon into a mainstream icon is also the shift in her relationship with the fashion world. During the Brat period, she built herself an anti-glamour image through aggressive sunglasses, tiny tank tops, leather clothing, sheer effects and an aesthetic inspired by London nightlife. Over the past year, however, she has begun adopting red-carpet looks that try to present the same attitude, only in evening gowns and luxury ensembles.
Charli XCX at the Metropolitan Opera Gala, 2025
(Photo: Savion Washington/Getty Images)
Charli XCX at the Golden Globes, 2026
(Photo: Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
At the Metropolitan Museum of Art gala in New York, held in May a year ago — an event she attended then for the first time in her career — she appeared in a dramatic outfit by the Belgian fashion house Ann Demeulemeester, designed by Stefano Gallici, with gothic elements, feathers and jewelry. At the 2026 Golden Globes, which she also attended for the first time, she chose Saint Laurent, wearing a white maxi skirt with a black feathered corset that loaded her with the dark drama with which she is identified.
Charli XCX at the premiere of "Wuthering Heights" in London, 2026
(Photo: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
On the public relations tour for “Wuthering Heights,” she continued in the same dramatic vein. For the London premiere in February, she appeared in a dramatic pink bridal gown by Erdem, with crystal embroidery and a matching veil — a look that moved between romantic gothic and classic Hollywood cinema. The attempt to translate the “dirty” aesthetic into more accessible looks did not always work for her, but it will be interesting to see how she sharpens her style going forward.
At the same time, Charli XCX’s new challenge may be the most complex one for any artist who moves from the margins of indie into the mainstream: how to remain “cool” after becoming a global phenomenon and a code word for the color of summer 2024. But is it possible to be part of counterculture and also a star appearing in Kamala Harris’ election campaign? Or to be photographed in Anthony Vaccarello’s boring clothes for Saint Laurent and still be considered groundbreaking? She is apparently well aware of that tension and even turns it into part of her work.
Charli XCX at the Metropolitan Opera Gala, 2026
(Photo: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images)
Charli XCX at a Saint Laurent party, 2026
(Photo: Ilya S. Savenok/Getty Images for Saint Laurent)
“I’ve always been interested in the moment when something cool dies, and is abandoned by the first people who made it desirable and aspirational in the first place,” she wrote in a post on Substack, a digital platform for publishing and distributing independent content. “Of course I would rather be considered ‘cool’ by a small group of people than be known by everyone.”
Perhaps it is precisely that honesty that allows her to continue playing on the boundary between the margins and the mainstream, and between personal expression and the commercial pop machine she has become.