Charli XCX Points the Lens at Herself on “Camera”

The pop star closes out a rollout built on music, fashion, and film with a single that finally asks whether she wants all three.

“Camera” arrived on July 21 as the fourth and final single from Charli XCX‘s new album, Music, Fashion, Film, released under exclusive license to Atlantic Records three days ahead of the full record’s July 24 arrival. Where the rollout’s earlier singles, “Rock Music,” “SS26,” and “Wink Wink,” leaned into guitar tinged noise, “Camera” pulls back into something hazier and more mid-tempo, guitar led electronic pop built for a lyric sheet rather than a mosh pit.

That lyric sheet is doing most of the work here. Charli spends the song questioning the pivot toward acting that has defined her last two years, at one point singing bluntly about either chase a role on screen makes sense as she turns 34. It is the most plain autobiography she has sounded since Brat’s more confessional stretches, trading that album’s club sheen for something closer to a diary entry set to a beat.

The song was nearly a very different single. It had originally been floated as the third release from the album before a late swap brought “Wink Wink” forward instead, and a full version leaked briefly on TikTok on July 6 before the official rollout caught up to it, following a run of listening events at indie cinemas where Charli herself turned up unannounced.

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The video, directed by longtime collaborator Aidan Zamiri, spends its first half almost entirely on French actor Vincent Cassel, shot in black and white on what looks like a desert film set as handlers apply fake blood between takes of a violent scene he is visibly unhappy about reshooting. Charli does not enter the frame until roughly the midpoint, arriving on a camera dolly to direct rather than perform, a small reversal that fits an album cover built around the same idea: the standard edition art features John Cale, Marc Jacobs, and Martin Scorsese standing in a stark kitchen with no sign of Charli at all, though a later special edition cover added her into the same room.

Cassel, best known for La Haine, Irreversible, and Black Swan, later leans on that history in the video itself, referencing his own iconic pose from La Haine mid-scene. Zamiri has directed several of Charli’s recent videos, including “360,” “Rock Music,” and “Wink Wink,” along with Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather,” and shot the black and white Music, Fashion, Film cover art as well.

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With the album out and a run of festival dates including Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits ahead of a fall arena tour, “Camera” jure less like a victory lap and more like the moment Charli spells out, on record, what the whole rollout has been circling.

Read Drift’s related feature, Charli XCX: Apple.

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