For her new album, “Music, Fashion, Film,” pop star Charli XCX enlists legendary filmmaker David Cronenberg for the album’s closing manifesto. It’s fitting given the scope of the record as a celebration of art in its many forms. Cronenberg is best known as a body horror mastermind, with such films as “Videodrome,” “The Fly” and “The Brood” among his most acclaimed works.
Charli XCX previously expressed a deep appreciation for Cronenberg. “I don’t necessarily go to movies to feel good,” she told Variety, noting her love of Cronenberg’s 2014 thriller/comedy “Maps to the Stars.” She added, “Don’t get me wrong. There are definitely some movies that I love that are feel-good, but I like a lot of sad and dark movies.”
“Music, Fashion, Film” features viral singles “Rock Music,” “Wink Wink” and “SS26.” But it’s perhaps her Cronenberg collaboration that leaves the biggest mark.
Filmmaker Makes Profound Statement in ‘No One Lasts Forever’
David Cronenberg contributes spoken word to “No One Lasts Forever,” offering up an existential view on art and creators. “As I was lying there on the sidewalk, I did not think about art at all,” he says through hazy distortion. “I thought about people. I thought about life.”
“…that’s why I like being close to my house. Somehow, that’s comforting,” he continues after the warbling vanishes. “And I wasn’t thinking about art as endurance, as immortality. We can talk about immortal artists of various kinds. It can turn out that some artists have created art that has really survived thousands of years, and that’s fantastic.”
“But experientially, for them, they’re dead. They’re gone. They’re not experiencing that,” he concludes before that statement becomes a looped refrain, eerily driving home the madness of human existence.
Charli XCX’s Love for Fashion & Film
Charli XCX also employs “Black Swan” actor Vincent Cassel for a starring role in her “Camera” music video. In the visual, the pop singer plays director and guides Cassel around the set of what appears to be an action/thriller.
For her “Rock Music” video, she worked with long-time collaborator and filmmaker Aidan Zamiri (“The Moment”), and she later featured a slew of fashion personalities, including Carine Roitfeld, Anthony Vaccarello, Farida Khelfa, and Lucien Pagès, for her “SS26” video, in which she walked various Paris runways.
In 2026, Charli XCX not only made her horror film debut in Daniel Goldhaber’s remake/sequel “Faces of Death” but also starred in three films that debuted at the Sundance Film Festival. Those are “The Moment,” “I Want Your Sex” and “The Gallerist.” Additionally, she released a companion soundtrack album for Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” featuring John Cale and Sky Ferreira and will star in horror director Takashi Miike’s forthcoming, yet-untitled, new film.
When considering film scripts, she depends on her instincts and actively works on “building things with my network of friends and directors that I admire and things like that,” she said in the aforementioned Variety interview. “Whatever kind of creative project I’m working on, I always prefer when the initial spark is coming from me and my fellow collaborators rather than sort of outsourcing. I try and go and find material myself, basically.”
