It seems like Charli XCX's penchant for experimentation shows no sign of slowing down. After last year's Brat summer, the singer-songwriter has hinted (or possibly teased?) that guitars just might be on the horizon for her seventh studio album.
Last year, rumors swirled that Brat could have been her last album – Charli herself revealed in an interview with Billboard that it very well could have been, if she weren't so intrigued by a certain music legend.
“I saw this tweet the other day that was like, ‘Does anyone think that this is Charli’s last album?’… Then I was like, ‘Actually, that could be cool if I didn’t really make music anymore after this,’” she admitted.
“I’m definitely thinking about it because I really want to act. I don’t know. I’m just so deep in this, I can’t see outside of Brat, but it’s funny. I kind of want to make a Lou Reed record, to be honest. That would definitely be a pretty big swing.”
The Lou Reed throughline continued this year. After joining Clairo on stage at Australia's Laneway Festival to perform Sofia [from Clairo's 2019 debut Immunity] – complete with a more traditional band setup – Charli shared a video on social media in which she talked about how much she enjoyed the show and teased whether a studio collaboration is in the works.
“I really had fun doing it and it got me thinking, what if we made a record with guitars or strings or both. Lou Reed era maybe – I dunno, just saying. I heard it before it [referring to Sofia] came out, like, a few years ago, and I always loved it.”
Considering Charli XCX's track record, a more guitar-driven record is certainly not outside the bounds of reality. A team-up isn’t out of the question either, especially since Clairo and Charli already collaborated on the track February 2017 from the 2019 album Charli.
In fact, in an interview with Grammy.com, one of the producers on Brat, Finn Keane, recently disclosed that “there is a desire in her to do the complete opposite thing again, which is very in keeping with her ethos.”
He continued, “Some of the conversations we're having and music we've been playing around with the last couple of months have been completely the opposite. I love that spirit. It's the iconoclastic impulse to rebuild something completely different, to show that you actually could do this other thing, this whole other side of your artistry.”
Charli XCX's Brat world tour makes its triumphant return on April 5 with a show in Mexico City, followed by more headline shows across the States and Europe, as well as headlining sets at Coachella.
