I don’t make the rules. So I’m not really sure why this happens. But it seems that every twenty years or so, popular music metamorphoses, and the change is embodied in one iconic track. In the mid-‘60s, Dylan went electric.
In the mid-‘80s, Rick Rubin convinces Run-DMC to cover Aerosmith. In 2003, Andre threw pretty much all of pop, soul, and R&B into a blender and created the tastiest musical smoothie of all time.
I mean, do you really need a Polaroid picture?
I don’t know if we are witnessing some kind of full-circle moment this week with Charli XCX’s new single, but it does seem important. Or maybe it’s all just tongue-in-cheek. It is Charli after all. She is, after all, a British millennial.
Charli XCX rocks out on her new single
“I think the dance floor is dead
So now we’re making rock music.”
If this is a serious statement by the creator of Brat, then it would indeed represent a cultural tidal wave akin to “Like a Rolling Stone” or the “Walk This Way “ cover. It was just two years ago that Charli essentially defined what a hyperpop dance album should sound like. Brat was that good. But it wasn’t exactly revolutionary.
But she has given us some clues about a new direction. She stirred the pot quite a bit last month with an interview in British Vogue in which she admitted "It's fun to flip the form," and that the very thought of creating a dance album akin to 2024's titanic Brat made her feel sad.
Here new single, “Rock Music,” dropped on Friday. It is scheduled to be part of the follow-up to Brat, but we have nothing but hints and rumors about more guitars and less auto-tune. It will be easier to gauge what exactly “Rock Music” is when we hear it as part of an album.
But for now, we can say that it is a very cool song built on fuzzy guitars that are simultaneously wiry and froggy. Lyrically, in addition to the bold-faced proclamation quoted above,” she tells us…
“I’m really banging my head
I’m really hurting my neck
The nerve damage is real”
I wish I had been that self-aware the last time I saw Slayer. (By the way, Reign in Blood, Slayer’s genre-breaking thrash classic, came out the same year as the Run-DMC/Aerosmith collab – Rick Rubin, who produced both, was 23 at the time.)
Back to Charli… the question is this. Is “Rock Music” a serious departure or a satirical lark.
Being far too old to understand millennial humor, I consulted Business Insider, because, really, who can you trust to give it to you straight these days? Here are some of the hallmarks of the Charli generation's humor, according to writer Charissa Cheong: Irony, absurdity, and intense nostalgia.
Cheong was channeling younger generations who consider that humor cringe-worthy, but I’ll leave value judgments out of this discussion.
I don’t know if Cheong wants to write music reviews, but I think she may have inadvertently just nailed Charli’s single. It probably exists as an absurd statement and a loving tribute to bands from her youth. I hear Elastica in “Rock Music,” but maybe that’s just me. I hear Elastica in a lot of places.
And I love Elastica. Which ought to give you a hint about whether I like “Rock Music.” I do. It’s enormous fun. It’s also very short, clocking in at under two minutes. At about 90 seconds, just after the final chorus and before the outro, Charli had the perfect chance to throw in a guitar solo. It could have been one of those short, spiky ones that teeter between melodic and noise. It would have fit perfectly.
I have a feeling the concept was never really considered.
Because let’s be honest. “Rock Music” isn’t really a rock song. It nods in that direction, but I have a feeling that you will be hearing it a lot in the club this summer, probably in some extended mix that still won’t have a guitar solo. It will be enlivening that dead dance floor just like “Von Dutch” and “360” did a couple of years ago. “Rock Music” does rock harder than those songs, but it’s not exactly the Bobby Lees.
For the record, an actual rock band – maybe the greatest ever – also released a new single on Friday. The Rolling Stones don’t need to entitle a song “Rock Music” – they were doing that fifty years ago. I like their song “In the Stars,” but I can’t say I love it. It’s not quite as bluesy as “Rough and Twisted,” the other single they have dropped in advance of their Foreign Tongues album. I really like “Rough and Twisted.”
“Rock Music,” for me at least, kind of slots in between those songs, but it is nothing like them. I know, it’s not much of a revelation. Charli is not very much like Mick. Stop the presses.
“Rock Music” is a fun song. A really fun song. But for better or worse, it will not start a revolution.
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