Charli XCX Embraces Film with "The Moment" and Soundtrack Work

8:18 AM EDT on May 8, 2026

Charli is not giving us a break. Popstars gotta pivot, baby. Following the never-ending life cycle of 2024's Brat , she made a mockumentary film about that moment, aptly titled The Moment , fully pivoted to film with a few acting roles , and even wrote soundtracks for films she wasn't acting in — Wuthering Heights and Mother Mary . Then in an interview published a few weeks ago she revealed a lyric and money quote from even more stuff she's got brewing: "I think the dancefloor is dead, so now we’re making rock music."

She later tempered that sentiment, captioning a recent social media teaser , "a video of me making a song called rock music that is not actually rock music which is funny because i never said i was making a rock album." Today, we finally get a taste of her new "rock" era. The aptly titled single "Rock Music" is here.

Charli is going to send me into a spiral, and I love her for it. "Rock Music" is loaded and silly, or ragebaity as we're now calling it. It is rock music — there are guitars and drums. But it's rock music in the sense that rock music is dance music; it reminds me of Daft Punk's "Digital Love." Her voice glitches, and the sound is muddied. Just as on the dancefloor, the rock arena has sex and drugs. It's physical.

"Rock Music" is a catchy paradox. Charli's delivery is deadpan. It malfunctions. It's nearly emotionless. But that sort of speaks to our increasingly numbing and overstimulating times. "The nerve damage is real, but it's the only way to feel something/ Hurt yourself," she declares after singing about banging her head too much. She declares "Rock Music" is rock music, and it is and it isn’t. If anything, it shows how much all these genres overlap — going out with friends, flailing limbs, drugs, sex, being fucking reckless.

The song also comes with a video by close pal and collaborator Aidan Zamiri, who directed The Moment . It's fucking sick. Charli is in her element: There's a room with mountains of cigarettes; the smoke from her cigs get conflated with smoke from the grimy city streets she struts on; there's ripped tights and broken guitars and televisions pushed out of windows. There's even a fine art wink, a shot of her finger reaching out to a fan in the crowd mirrors Michelangelo's "Creation Of Adam" in the Sistine Chapel. Oh yeah, and her husband, the 1975's George Daniel, makes appearance playing drums in a combo with Finn Keane and A.G. Cook. At one point Charli sits on the kick drum, and it explodes. There's so much going on here.

Watch "Rock Music" below.

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_Originally reported by [Stereogum](https://stereogum.com/2498320/charli-xcx-rock-music/music/)._