It’s no secret that Charli xcx is a cinephile, so it wasn’t a shock when the avant-garde pop star revealed that her latest album would feature iconic horror auteur David Cronenberg — especially considering its title is “Music, Fashion, Film.” But what is surprising is just how impactful his contribution is to the wider meaning of the record.
The 83-year-old “Crash” and “The Fly” director closes out the 11-track, 30-minute album with a spoken-word monologue on the second-half of final song “No One Lasts Forever.” Up until that point, Charli takes listeners on a ride through her biggest genre leap yet as distorted guitars and sparse production take the place of bright synths and autotune. It’s a far cry from the club-ready bangers of “Brat,” and in many ways a reaction to its massive success — there’s the tongue-in-cheek “Rock Music,” containing a declaration that the dancefloor is dead; the pounding “Camera,” in which she contemplates her burgeoning acting career; the vapid-but-in-an-ironic-way “Wink Wink,” where she insists “people can change.”
But it’s not just Charli’s sound that has taken a heavier turn. Between seemingly surface-level lyrics about going shopping and wishing she was a pop star in 2007, Charli attempts to answer hard questions about an artist’s purpose. Track six, “I’m Afraid,” gives a taste of this as she laments the pitfalls of public life: “All this pain makes me believe/ I’m a better artist now/ An excuse I tell myself to act selfishly.” Throughout the record, Charli is really contemplating her role as an artist and the motivations behind making art — and whether it even matters, because the world is probably ending and we’re all going to die anyway.
Nothing captures this existential question more than “No One Lasts Forever,” which starts off as one of the most upbeat songs on the record but soon ventures into deeper waters. “That’s why I’m not scared of anyone/ ‘Cause nothing’s gonna last forever/ But you need to discover that feeling/ Of the crushing highs and lows of ego,” she sings over synths a bit more reminiscent of her “Brat” era.
It’s also the longest track on the album, by far, at five minutes and 42 seconds. Cronenberg doesn’t come in until around the three-minute mark, where he casually speaks — as if directly to Charli — seemingly about a near-death experience.
“As I was laying there on the sidewalk, I did not think about art at all,” Cronenberg begins. “I thought about people, I thought about life, and that’s why I like being close to my house. Somehow, that was comforting even though it makes no sense, you know? But no, I wasn’t thinking about art. And I wasn’t thinking about art as endurance, as immortality. I mean, we could talk about immortal artists of various kinds, and it can turn out that, yes, some artists have created art that has really survived thousands of years, and that’s fantastic. But experientially, for them? They are dead, they are gone, they are not experiencing that.”
Cronenberg ends his part by saying, like a mentor giving advice to his student: “Hear me assuring you that oblivion is freedom. They are dead, they are gone, no one lasts forever.”
The last minute-and-a-half of the track consists of that last line repeated again and again, overlaying on itself. It’s a mantra delivered as an elder who’s been through it, reassuring Charli that whether or not her art survives isn’t the most important thing — after all, she won’t be around to know. As an extremely successful director, considered the originator of the entire body-horror genre, there are times when Cronenberg must have felt unstoppable. But he’s also experienced immeasurable grief, with his wife of 38 years, the film editor Carolyn Zeifman, dying in 2017 (something he explored in his most recent feature, “The Shrouds”). Beyond just his art, it’s his life experience that makes him credible to speak these words — and they bring all of us back down to earth.
Instead of just being a gimmicky feature to fulfill part of the album’s title, Cronenberg’s words get to the core theme of “Music, Fashion, Film.” More than a rejection of Charli’s mainstream success disguised as a reinvention, the record is proof that true artists are constantly changing, growing, refusing to fit into a singular box. But as important as the art may seem in the moment, ultimately, it’s not. Because nothing is forever. And, if you let it, knowing that can set you free.