If you’re as hyped as I am for Charli xcx’s upcoming studio album, Music, Fashion, Film, then you might have also had the jittery, robotic melody of its lead single (“now we’re making rooooooooock music”) stuck in your head for weeks. In ‘Rock Music’, Charli firmly rejects the signature electronic soundscape that took her from being the darling of critics to a mainstream icon, and makes bold statements on the place of rock and electronic music in a post-Brat world – most significantly, announcing the dancefloor to be resolutely “dead”.
Interestingly, Charli’s nightlife scepticism goes hand in hand with an ostensible rejection of electronic music and an astute embrace of rock, as though the latter cannot overlap with clubbing – it’s precisely because the dancefloor is dead that Charli says she’s “making rock music” now. Guitar-focused rock music has been definitively out of the mainstream for well over a decade, perhaps even longer. Aside from the recent rise of bands like Geese and Turnstile, rock itself has died, or at least has remained dormant for a long while. A genre which once occupied over 60% of the Billboard Hot 100 has faced a steady decline since the turn of the millennium, being slowly replaced by pop and hip-hop. As someone who grew up obsessed with rock music, from grunge to shoegaze and more, my rock playlists are dominated by older tracks, their release dates spanning from the 60s to the 90s – part nostalgia, part genuine yearning for the days when rock was as creatively fruitful as possible.
For this reason, ‘Rock Music’ is all the more interesting. It is a fascinating blend of parody and utmost sincerity – on the one hand, we see Charli grapple with the legacy of her career-defining dance record, and on the other hand, she employs a catalogue of cheesy rock tropes, from lines like “I’m really banging my head” to the sugary, optimistic, ‘let’s make a rock band!’-style spirit that you only find in film and TV. In a way, Charli tells the critics who doubted her authenticity on Brat, rock can be just as superficial. Maybe ‘Rock Music’ is best thought of as the ‘Song 2’ of the 2020s: a satire of a genre which is often contrasted against her discography, rather than seen as complementing it. Charli also sticks to her roots in terms of the song’s production, filtering her perspective on rock through the distinctive A.G. Cook and Finn Keane production that we have come to associate her with. She has one foot in the door of rock and one in the door of electropop, refusing to commit to either side, and it is much to her advantage.
Just as quickly as she soared to electropop stardom, Charli abandoned her ‘365 party girl’ image to embrace a rock edge, bearing her influences proudly (namely, The Velvet Underground). She is inevitably reacting to her newfound fame and the anxieties that accompany it, but her reinvention also reflects the state of nightlife in the mid-2020s, which she declares to be “dead”. In Oxford, however, there does seem to be a place for rock music on the dancefloor – Indie Fridays continues to be massively popular, along with Boogaloo and other regular fixtures. But Charli’s statement may nevertheless ring true. Could Oxford nightlife do with better music? Most certainly. For me, the number one factor that puts me off clubbing in this city is how dire the music can be. My apologies, but I never want to hear ABBA or the same old Y2K playlist again. My ideal club night would either have a stacked lineup of student DJs, spinning anything from acid house to jungle, or it would simply be an all-night Future marathon – like a sleeper agent, I’m suddenly awake and alert when I hear the words “I’m on that good kush and alcohol…”
Nightlife discourse continues to circulate social media circles of the 2020s, thanks to shifting patterns and trends, partly fuelled by Charli herself. It would be a lie to claim that Brat did not bring electronic music into the mainstream, after a 2010s dominated by trap at one extreme, and Lana Del Rey-esque ‘sad girl’ pop at the other. Complete with a hyperpop flair, Brat and its various club anthems prompted renewed interest in partying and raving, as well as in the production of electronic music – think back to that viral episode of the Tape Notes podcast, in which Charli breaks down the Logic session of ‘Club Classics’. Even I now own the Pioneer DDJ FLX-4, the standard DJ decks for any performative cool kid.
Statistically, young people are going out less, and are also drinking less alcohol. But while this is often chalked up to ‘the damn phones’, or the pursuit of a clean-girl lifestyle, there are much larger structural factors at play. The dancefloor as a physical space might not be in rigor mortis just yet, but it is dying. In Oxford alone, at least 11 nightlife venues have closed in the last two decades. Only we true Oxford oldheads, in our third years and above, will remember the days when Park End was at Atik, or when Intrusion, Oxford’s goth night, was held at Kiss Bar. This pattern is repeated in almost every part of the country, and contributes significantly to the general feeling amongst Gen Z that nightlife is in fact on its last legs. Even on an individual level, can you afford to spend upwards of £8 on a single spirit and mixer at a club? From drinks and Ubers to club tickets and post-club Hussain’s, the cost of a night out is becoming increasingly extortionate, and presents a material barrier to the formation of community, identity, and a great experience. Sure, you could go to an underground, illegal rave, but who’s paying for the decks? The sound system? The legal fees when the fun is shut down?
Naturally, I write as a student and for students, who, by and large, do not have infinite funds to invest in a spectacular clubbing experience. I highly doubt that the economic burden of nightlife on the consumer is a significant problem for Charli, or any other celebrity of her stature, many of whom have responded negatively to the bold statements made in ‘Rock Music’ – her feelings seem to be fuelled in large part by her ruminations on what it means to be cool. Likewise, while I may be inclined to agree that the dancefloor is “dead”, my perspective is certainly skewed as a third-year with an exam-ridden friend group, for whom the Radcam has become the default third space. Tongue-in-cheek as it may be, Charli xcx’s ‘Rock Music’ speaks to the structural issues actively decimating nightlife across the world, issues she addresses candidly on its follow-up, ‘SS26’, even if her motivations may be more aesthetic than political.
