Charli XCX’s new era has begun with the release of her single and video “Rock Music” — except it’s not really “rock music,” despite the presence of some crunchy electric guitars.
In the mostly black-and-white video for the two-minute song, Charli pushes an amplifier out a window and struts around New York City in a bra and jeans. She also smokes a mountain of cigarettes and starts a mosh pit. The video ends with a freeze-frame of her face in close-up, which turns into a wall-size photo that a bunch of moshing guys bust through.
“I think the dance floor is dead/ So now we’re making rock music,” she jokingly sings, before making fun of the trappings of the genre.
“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,” she sings.
“Rock Music” is Charli’s first new song since she released the album she created for the movie Wuthering Heights in February.
As previously reported, after British Vogue claimed in a recent article that she planned a “rock reinvention,” Charli clarified that that wasn’t exactly true by sharing a video of her in the studio making this new single. The caption read, “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.”
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