Charli XCX Does “Rock Music,” Her Way (That Is to Say, Not Seriously)

As someone who has continually talked about the ways that The Velvet Underground has influenced her, it seemed inevitable that Charli XCX would, sooner or later, delve into that genre of music. And, like The Velvet Underground themselves, what Charli XCX is doing with her take on “rock music”—which also serves as the title of her latest single—is more experimental and “interpretive.” With XCX’s interpretation of it not only incorporating elements of the hyperpop sound (for how could it not when it’s once again co-produced by A. G. Cook?), but also heavily focused on the visual element of the genre.

This is why the video, shot in black and white (with some errant scenes in color), is so integral to the song. Directed by Aidan Zamiri (another staple in XCX’s “artistic crew”), it opens on the image of Charli XCX sticking her head out of an apartment window as she smokes a skinny cigarette. On the perch of the window is also a TV (namely, a Samsung, since Charli perhaps still has a deal going with them) that looks like it might fall off the edge at any moment. Needless to say, TVs tend to famously be the “natural enemy” of rock stars when they’re staying in hotels—among the first items to be smashed during a party. So yes, it feels like XCX is playing into the iconography and stereotype in a subtle manner. Along with referencing the illustrious image of Kate Moss hanging out of a window (her back on the ledge of it while her face was positioned “upside down”) while smoking. This done as her fiancé of the day (that day being back in 2007), Pete Doherty, “serenaded” her with his guitar while hovering right above her.

As for the TV, just when you thought it might be safe, XCX abruptly pushes it out the window while looking knowingly at the camera (breaking the fourth wall is in keeping with her love of the meta). Zamiri then cuts to the inside of the apartment (something akin to the Chelsea Hotel), showing Charli wearing just a bra and some jeans as she swaggers through the space before stubbing her cigarette out into an ashtray on the table where her husband (a “rocker” himself), George Daniel, happens to be sitting. At which point, the opening verse commences: “Me and my friends/We go out/We take pictures/And make stuff together/And sometimes we cry/We kiss each other real incestuous vibes.” It’s during that last pair of lines that a cut to another scene shows Charli throwing Zamiri down onto the ground and playfully-seductively licking the side of his cheek. Well, at least XCX can admit to the incestuousness of famous friend groups (and bands, like Fleetwood Mac).

Dragging Zamiri through the carpeted hallway of the building, her lyrics continue to boast (for boasting is the Brat aspect of Charli that simply can’t be shaken), “Yeah, we’re so inspired/Basically all the time.” By the time this is said, she’s started walking out into Times Square (because New York is where The Velvet Underground existed, thus it’s only “right” that she should shoot the video for “Rock Music” there). Initially wearing a leather jacket (a key part of the “rock star uniform”), Charli is quick to fling it off herself and keep sporting her black bra in public. As for her talk of being inspired “all the time,” it speaks to what she wrote at the end of 2025 on her Substack:

“Feeling creativity in abundance is such a fucking blessing and relief. It doesn’t even matter if the ideas are good or not, it just feels euphoric to feel the fountain flowing again. After my previous album, Brat, I had this feeling that I wouldn’t be able to make music anymore. When I vocalized this, George said, ‘Yeah, but you always feel this way. We all do.’ And he’s right, we do, but it felt so potent this time, sort of like being hit by a truck and left on the side of the road to bleed out.”

Part of that post-Brat potency wasn’t just her slew of acting roles or the Wuthering Heights Soundtrack, but also making the album that counts “Rock Music” as its lead single. So yes, Charli wasn’t lying when she said the “fountain is flowing again.” Though, to be fair, when has it ever really stopped flowing for her? Ever since her debut, True Romance, XCX has shown that she has a work ethic that rivals her party ethic, genuinely adhering to the adage, “Work hard, play hard” in a manner that most rock stars have rarely been able to successfully balance without burning the candle at both ends. Which Charli definitely does, but still somehow manages to “push through” regardless. In other words, it’s as she sings in “Rock Music”: “Yeah, we’re on to the next/I think the dance floor is dead/So now we’re making rock music.” It was that line about the dance floor being dead, revealed in her British Vogue cover story, that caused some feathers to ruffle (as most “rock stars” are adept at doing).

Some took the lyric a bit too seriously—for example, an article on Polyester that countered, “Excuse Me, the Dance Floor Isn’t Dead.” Perhaps not grasping that Charli’s “declarative statements” are often ironic, tongue-in-cheek or just downright flippant. Which brings us back to Lou Reed, King of Flippancy, being one of her great idols. Indeed, she cited his August 1974 press conference in Sydney as among her favorite of his “interviews.” In it, he’s glib, monosyllabic and utterly irreverent as the press do their best to take this whole “rock star” thing seriously. Which was their first mistake in trying to “relate” to Reed. As it would be anyone else’s mistake to “relate” to Charli by receiving this foray into her version of rock too seriously.

After all, as another female rocker (Meredith Brooks) once said, “Just when you think you got me figured out/The season’s already changin’.” The same goes for XCX and whatever genre or musical endeavor she decides on next. To try to “categorize” her—as is the tendency of most critics and fans to want to do—is inane at best and impossible at worst. Or, to put it, as her tenuous friend, MARINA, does on “Can’t Pin Me Down”: “You can paint me any color/And I can be your clown/But you ain’t got my number/No, you can’t pin me down.”

One thing that Charli has allowed to be pinned down by the public is the fact that performing onstage for all these years has caused her extensive nerve damage. As she told Variety at the end of 2024, “I’ve done a lot of physical damage to my body from performing, and I’m often in a lot of pain when I perform. Physically, I have nerve damage in my neck from things I’ve done on the stage.” But XCX owns that pain—wears it like a badge of honor—during the verse, “Wow/I’m really banging my head/I’m really hurting my neck/The nerve damage is real/But it’s the only way to feel something/Hurt yourself.”

The same can be said for smoking what, to borrow an Olsen twin wedding description, amounts to “bowls and bowls of cigarettes.” So many, in fact, that they amount to mountains and mountains stacked all around Charli during one especially iconic scene of the video—a testament to her chain-smoking prowess (and a scene that @cigfluencers will surely appreciate). In another instance of XCX comically embracing rock clichés, she writhes around on the floor amid smashed guitars while singing into a microphone with its cord wrapped around her entire body (kind of like what Paris Hilton did in 2004 for a David LaChapelle photoshoot).

The scene following that reveals her in the back of a car wearing a lacy, stylish neck brace so that the line, “The nerve damage is real” can play at that exact moment. She then appears with her “band,” so to speak, consisting of Cook, Keane and Daniel (who, of course, plays drums). It’s around this time that she sings, “Yeah, maybe jump off the stage/I hope they catch you today/But if they don’t, it’s okay.” It’s a phrase that not only refers literally to crowd surfing (as is the “rock show” way), but also to the notion that Charli is prepared to not be “caught” by the audience this time around. The ones who might not necessarily vibe with her “anti-Brat” era. And yet, if “Rock Music” were so anti-Brat, it wouldn’t still bear all the hallmarks of that “persona.” The cigarettes, the party girl attitude and aesthetic, the general “I don’t give a fuck” aura. It’s all still there, merely repackaged.

Perhaps that’s why, at the end of the video, a scene of a close-up shot on Charli’s face becomes merely a poster that a crowd of blokes (this, too, being the deliberate demographic showcased so that XCX can cater to another cliché about rock music—that its primary listeners are male) are able to burst through it. Her effigy once again destroyed as it is in the “party 4 u” video. For, time and time again, Charli will remind that it’s all just an image. And images were made to be destroyed.