Charli xcx has admitted she is not inspired by new music.
The 360 hitmaker ventured into acting and filmmaking after making her acclaimed 2024 LP Brat because she wasn’t “hungry” for music.
Speaking in conversation with Yung Lean for Dazed, she said: “After Brat, I felt really uninspired by music. I don’t really listen to that much music anyway. I listen to you, Lou Reed, Sophie, AG Cook, Benjamin [Bladee], George [Daniel, Charli’s husband and drummer with The 1975], and that’s kind of it. I’m not listening to a lot of stuff and I’m not particularly hungry to learn about new music. It’s never inspired me, really.
“I’ve always been more inspired by film. So I think at that point, when I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired by music, I wanted to delve more into a different creative space. You have always done that. I’m blown away by the amount of work that you’re constantly making, whether it’s sculptures, paintings, clothes, music, or, now, film.”
However, Charli felt “immediately” inspired to begin making music for the forthcoming Wuthering Heights film.
She recently wrote on social media: “After being so in the depths of my previous album, I was excited to escape into something entirely new, entirely opposite.
“When I think of Wuthering Heights, I think of many things. I think of passion and pain. I think of England. I think of the Moors, I think of the mud and the cold. I think of determination and grit.”
The soundtrack includes the song House, featuring John Cale from The Velvet Underground, whom she is a massive fan of.
Charli’s Brat album was phenomenally successful – winning a slew of Grammy and BRIT Awards and entering the public consciousness through the Brat Summer trend – but she feared it would get her “dropped” by her record label.
Speaking to Gwyneth Paltrow on her Goop podcast recently, she said: “I actually made this record being like, ‘OK, I’m just going to do this one for me. Maybe I’m going to get dropped by my label, and that’s fine.’ That was kind of the headspace that I was in.”