Anyone who witnessed the supercharged mayhem of Charli xcx’s Brat tour will know that topping it seemed impossible. For two summers plus change, pop music’s prime aggravator turned arenas and festivals into strobe-heavy sermons for her album. Fans turned out, hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of them. And then, when the fervor hit its peak, she burned that lime-green backdrop into ashes.
A break was supposed to follow, but a series of impromptu sessions with her closest collaborators, AG Cook and Finn Keane, led to the surprise creation of Music, Fashion, Film. On her eighth studio album, she rejected the sonic tropes of the dance floor and unlocked a new euphoric space—the hot thrum of a rock club. So how do you transpose that intimacy—the vibration of strings and the sweat-sharing crowdedness—into an arena show? If you’re anything like Charli, you throw out all preconceived ideas completely. You say “pop show,” and she suggests Caravaggio.
Early in the Music, Fashion, Film tour, at one of its Brooklyn stops, Charli invited us backstage to scratch away at the ideas behind this behemoth show. In our latest TOUR GUi-DE, she dives into quick changes, how she keeps the live show tight and frenetic, and making a tour that feels like a “painting and a poem.”
Watch Charli xcx’s Music, Fashion, Film Tour GUi-De below.
SHES SUCH AN ICON 😭😭😭😭