It’s official: Brat is out and rock is in, according to Charli XCX.
The “360” singer, 33, announced that she’s finishing work on her eighth album – and she’s done a musical 180.
“I think the dance floor is dead,” she said in a new cover interview with British Vogue for its May issue. “So now we’re making rock music.”
While the Brit Award winner, born Charlotte Emma Aitchison, didn’t share a release date, the interview stated that she was completing the project last month.
Charli became a global phenomenon during the release of her sixth album Brat, with its instantly recognisable lime green cover and party girl theme capturing the zeitgeist of 2024. She took home British Album of the Year at the Brit Awards in 2025, as well as two Grammys and a Billboard Music Award.
Despite the success of the hyperpop album, though, Charli said she had wanted to move away from the dance genre for her new album.
“If I’d made another album that felt more dance-leaning, it would have felt really hard, really sad,” she explained, while her husband, The 1975’s George Daniel, suggested that she “broke dance music”.
Teasing the new album, Charli said that she wanted to “bend the possibilities of what my perspective on” what rock music could be, with her new music exploring what would happen if art – “the joint main love of my life outside of George” – was taken from her.
“How I would have no purpose, and how for good or bad, art does provide me with purpose in my life,” she added.
She admitted that working on the album while also shooting a new film with Japanese director Takashi Miike had been “a bit of a nightmare”, breaking down in tears during the conversation.
“I’m overwhelmed and emotional but I’m ready to go,” she said. “My body isn’t handling it very well.”
The star also described working on her new album as a reset after Brat catapulted her to new levels of fame, revealing that she gave herself nerve damage in her neck from performing on the Brat tour.
Last year, the singer released the soundtrack to Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights to critical acclaim, with The Independent’s Helen Brown giving the album five stars and describing it as a “windswept, gothic triumph”.
She also ventured into acting, playing herself in her mockumentary The Moment earlier this year, and taking on roles in Gregg Araki’s erotic comedy I Want Your Sex, thriller The Gallerist and upcoming horror Faces of Death.
See the full feature in the May issue of British Vogue, available via digital download and on newsstands from Tuesday 21 April.
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