‘The Dance Floor Is Dead’

Goodbye, Brat summer. Hello, Charli xcx‘s rock era.

In an interview with British Vogue published Thursday (April 16), the pop star made a big reveal about her eighth studio album, which she’s currently hard at work on: It’ll be a rock record. That means lots of electric guitar — an instrument that was previously alien to her catalog of electronic pop tracks — and way, way less thumping club bangers such as the hits on her 2024 breakthrough album, Brat.

“For me, it’s fun to flip the form,” Charli said. “We know there’s gonna be people who are bothered by it, but that’s fine.”

The singer also took the publication with her to a studio session, previewing a song with a striking confession in the lyrics. “I think the dance floor is dead, so now we’re making rock music,” she sings on the work-in-progress track.

Many artists have experimented with different genres in the past, but the Brit’s venture into rock will be particularly significant. Not only did she skyrocket to a new level of fame through the dance-floor-worshipping Brat, reaching her highest ever peak on the Billboard 200 at No. 3; she is also highly regarded as a pioneer of modern hyper-pop.

But according to Charli, “If I’d made another album that felt more dance-leaning, it would have felt really hard, really sad … what’s interesting for me is to bend the possibilities of what my perspective on that could be.”

The artist most recently dropped an album of experimental, cinematic tracks for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights adaptation, which came out in February. The soundtrack project reached No. 8 on the Billboard 200, but she previously said she doesn’t necessarily view it as part of her official artist catalog.

“This collection of songs is an album, and sure, my name’s on the credits, but is it a Charli xcx album?” she wrote on Substack last year before Wuthering Heights‘ release. “I don’t even know. Nor do I really care to find out.”

Beyond the sonic shift of her next album, Charli also shared another tidbit about how her musicianship is changing in the new interview. “I don’t really want to write songs about my husband forever,” she told the publication of 1975 drummer George Daniel, whom she married in July. “I’m not sure how interesting that is, and he knows that. If I write about our relationship, I’m probably only really interested in writing about some of the more obscure feelings of being married.”

See Charli on the cover of British Vogue below.