Charli XCX: watch the video for new single “Rock Music”, in which she wanders among piles of cigarettes and stage-dives

“I think the dance floor is dead/ So now we’re making rock music”. Charli XCX is back with her new single “Rock Music”, released just hours after her friend The Dare played it during his opening set for the PinkPantheress show in Brooklyn. Made together with collaborators A.G. Cook and Finn Keane, better known as EasyFun, the track opens with an abrasive guitar riff as Charli launches in: “Me and my friends/ We go out, we take pictures/ We make stuff together, and sometimes we cry/ We kiss each other, real incestuous vibes”. The release came with a black-and-white video showing her wandering the city streets and smoking next to huge piles of cigarettes.

“Rock Music” arrives just days after the release of footage filmed in October 2025 at Rue Boyer Studios in Paris, in which the British singer-songwriter (born Charlotte Emma Aitchison) showed the process behind making the track. The video came with an ironic caption: “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”. The reference was to her recent British Vogue cover and the magazine's description of the artist's new creative direction, dubbed a “rock reinvention” following the success of “Brat”.

“For me it's fun to flip the form on its head,” Charli explained in the interview. “We know there'll be someone who's bothered by this, but that's fine… If I'd made another album leaning more into dance, it would have been really hard, really sad. We were making our version of analogue, which is such a silly, fun thing, but it was important to filter it through our own perspective and make sure nothing came across as too macho.”

The single follows “Wuthering Heights”, the 2026 album tied to the film directed by Emerald Fennell starring Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie, as well as the soundtrack for David Lowery's “Mother Mary”, made together with Jack Antonoff and FKA Twigs. Last month “Party 4 U”, one of the best-known tracks from “How I'm Feeling Now”, was reissued on 7-inch for Record Store Day.

At the same time, Charli XCX has ramped up her film work, appearing in Pete Oh's “Erupjca” and the “Brat”-linked mockumentary “The Moment”. Upcoming projects include Julia Jackman's “100 Nights Of Hero”, Gregg Araki's “I Want Your Sex”, Cathy Yan's “The Gallerist”, and a new, as-yet-untitled film from Takashi Miike.

Over the summer the British singer will headline numerous festivals, with top-billing dates at Lollapalooza on July 31st, Outside Lands on August 7th, and Reading and Leeds Festivals on August 28th and 29th. In the fall she will also headline both weekends of Austin City Limits alongside Lorde and Twenty One Pilots.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google