The deconstructing Christian listener’s guide to: Music, Fashion, Film
Brief reflections on the latest Charlie XCX album...
Brief reflections on the latest Charli XCX album…
1. Rock Music
Rock Music was the first released single from the album Music, Fashion, Film. Charli declares in it, “I think the dance floor is dead.” While she had immense success with the Brat album, Charli told Vogue, “If I’d made another album that felt more dance-leaning, it would have felt really hard, really sad.” She just couldn’t do it. Something had to change.
People don’t realize the toll that Brat and its tour took on Charli, emotionally, creatively, and physically. She suffered nerve damage in her neck from her dancing on the tour, which she notes in the song.
But all that fans experienced on the tour was exhilaration. This is precisely how many of us have performed Christianity intensely, in a way that others experienced as exciting devotion but which left us damaged and in need of something else for our spirits to survive.
So now we’re making Rock Music...
2. SS26
SS26 offers a cheeky response to many of our modern insecurities and searches for meaning. The world feels like it’s ending, and “nothing’s gonna save us, not music, fashion or film.” We search for meaning in things that fail to fully satisfy.
And we tend to be self-deluded when we’re trying to navigate black-and-white spaces while being flawed people. You see this in the strikingly self-aware deludedness of the song: “But I didn’t do it, even if I did / Wrote a really good notes app apology.” It’s an homage to the silly excuses we make while we’re figuring ourselves out.
Charli gives us space for our self-delusions, something that can be really freeing with deconstruction. We can voice them honestly, and even with a wink (more on this with track 8, Wink Wink). There’s something freeing about this. It isn’t just nihilism, as we’ll get in the final track of the album.
3. Card Declined
Card Declined can feel all over the place. But so does trying to find your identity as you’re deconstructing.
In the song, Charli goes shopping for a new self, but her card keeps getting declined. “Let’s go shopping, I’ll buy a handbag / I’ll buy some shoes, I’ll buy a smile / I’ll buy some jewelry, a personality / A whole backstory, card declined.”
Brat was seen as materialistic and self-indulgent. As she leaves her Brat era, Charli spends Card Declined seeking identity in other indulgences and materialism. But it keeps failing.
As we deconstruct, we can similarly find ourselves window shopping for new identities that we purchase off the shelf. And those identities may look different from our old selves on the surface but are actually quite similar. We find ourselves falling back on comforting black and white thinking, dogmatism, or similar ways of being because they feel familiar. But they don’t give us what we really want.
And so “part 2” (the end of the track) goes beyond all that materialism, to land on human connection...
4. Camera
Camera gives spaces for layered selves that are multi-dimensional, with hopes and dangers, both good and bad in each. She’s insecure about chasing certain selves, like being “a girl on the screen.” But she also feels something alive when she’s on camera. “All I know is how it makes me feel.”
She chases after a feeling of being alive. It’s the only way to feel certain things, but it can have a dark side as well. “I feel different on the mark / Something new and undiscovered / And something kind of violent / Daring to fail and being ugly / I’m inspired and alive.”
The song resists simple answers or easy resolution to these questions, and instead chooses to just be in them for 2 minutes and 31 seconds. And in that space she is able to create art. Rather than the black-and-white, goodness vs evilness in fundamentalism, Charli helps us see the complexity of the things that make us feel. Which is life.
What could we create if we gave ourselves space to be brutally honest, to acknowledge the great things we pursue and the value of being honest about the costs?
5. 2007
2007 is the year before Charli started posting her songs on MySpace, before she began her public life as an artist. This song can feel like a nostalgic recall of a time making art for oneself. “I can take you to heaven like it’s 2007 / Pop star in my bedroom like it’s 2007-7.”
The bridge to 2007 can feel like a calling to the younger self, with all the freedom and also all the hope for the future: “You’re the way I wanna feel.”
We too can call back to our younger selves, before we put on all the trappings of life that we’ve performed for others, and which we are now deconstructing in search of a greater freedom and honesty.
6. I’m Afraid
I’m Afraid is Charli’s most overtly vulnerable song in the album, reflecting largely on coming into adulthood and marriage while being insecure about who you are.
“Happiness came in a box,” presumably the box holding her engagement ring. But can she give herself over to happiness? “I’m a wife, I’m a kid / I’m destroyed, I’m a bitch.” She asks, “What if I ruin it?”
The song is deeply painful, but moments of growth break through. “I replicate the things I learnt, I don’t blame him though.” Presumably, the internalized toxicity she carries is something she learned from others, who blamed the toxicity on her. But she departs from those models by not blaming like they do.
When we bring insecurities to light, we might discover that we’ve changed. And maybe we can be worthy of more than we thought...
7. Yeah
In “Yeah,” Charli repeats over and over again: “I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna / I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna.”
For those of us who came from communities where we were taught to disregard our own desires and to let people trample all over our boundaries, this repeated line can become a sort of deconstruction mantra.
And after you’ve learned to resist what you don’t actually want, you can reach a point where you find yourself saying, “Wait, now I wanna feel it.” That’s when the music is cranked up.
And then you look at others and can see, often before they can, “You don’t wanna, you don’t wanna / You don’t wanna, you don’t wanna.” You hope they can learn it too.
8. Wink Wink
Wink Wink is the cheekiest song on the album. She proclaims in the chorus: “Here’s the truth, and I gotta be honest / I’m not a bad girl anymore, I promise.” But she eventually ends the chorus with: “wink wink wink wink.” Cheeky.
So she’s changed. But she also hasn’t. And she’s not afraid to play with you when it comes to that.
We can also give ourselves permission to “grow up” but also not, to be a “good girl” but also to have our “wink wink” moments.
“My point is I think people can change.” But we don’t have to change in every way and forever. And we can be ok with that. We can hold all that.
9. Persona
At first listen, you might assume that Charli is offering a biting critique of a deeply insecure friend in Persona. She includes one of my favorite lines from the album: “Don’t f****** choke on your ego when you see me coming.” I want to tell that to one of my exes. Although he probably (fairly) would like to say the same thing to me…
But upon further listening, you wonder whether she’s singing about herself, and seeking empathy amidst the biting critique: “I know you’re performing, I know that you’re hurting.”
This is something we often need on our deconstruction journeys, amidst all the hurt. Often we want to turn anger outwards. But we risk missing the insecurities it reveals within.
Where we want to land in relating to both others and ourselves is where she ends the song: “I know you see me when I see you.”
10. Magic Metal Montana
A love song to her best friend.
As I was learning about friendship in Christian communities growing up, I thought the deepest friendships were grounded in similarities. This at times could lead to a resistance to boundaries and an encouragement of codependence.
But Charli writes a love song for a love of difference: “You don’t drink, so I’ll drink for two” and, “You speak my language, but we're different.”
She also pushes against the silly Christian idea that men and women can’t be friends. In this album, her most insecure song is about her husband. While the love song is about her friend.
And I love that.
11. No One Lasts Forever
A reflection on art and death featuring film director David Cronenberg.
Charli opens by mentioning her confidence, her fame, her success. But she transitions from the parties to sitting on the floor talking philosophy, where she knows “deep down that it’s here and now / ‘Cause nothing’s gonna last forever.”
In the midst of the highs and the lows, she finds a peace and freedom in mortality. And Cronenberg does the same in his voiceover, reflecting on how every artist eventually dies, as does their ability to experience art. But he says, “These are true things and thank goodness for them.”
We, too, can find a freedom in accepting our mortal limitations and creating in the midst of them...