Charli xcx on climbing from nothing into music, fashion

After a decade building her career from pop’s edges, Charli xcx is now filling arenas and headlining festivals on her own terms. The 34-year-old Grammy winner seized the moment with her 2024 album Brat, which led to her first arena headlining run. Now, supporting her July album Music, Fashion, Film, she’s pushing further into music, fashion and film while staying true to her uncompromising creative vision.

In an interview with Billboard published Oct. 3, 2026, Charli reflected on how her focus on music, fashion and film shapes every creative decision she makes.

Climbing from nothing

“I’ve really climbed my way up from nothing,” Charli told Billboard. The ethos extends to every decision she makes, from her live show to her collaborations. “I’m not really performing to please anyone other than myself,” she said, “which is maybe not the attitude that everybody takes, but that’s the attitude that I take.”

That creative independence shapes how she chooses her collaborators and conceptualizes her work. For the Music, Fashion, Film tour, she worked closely with creative director Imogene Strauss, a longtime friend and collaborator.

Building the music, fashion and film show across disciplines

“I’ve worked closely with [creative director] Imogene Strauss, who is essentially one of my best friends, on building numerous tours of mine,” Charli explained. “She knows what I mean, I know what she means. We have a linguistic shorthand where we can just get to the core of an idea really fast.”

That collaborative shorthand extends to her work in the studio as well. She credited producer A. G. Cook with the same kind of intuitive creative partnership, describing the collaborative process as crucial to her output.

For the music direction of the live show, Charli worked months in advance with longtime collaborator Mitchell Snyder. “It’s almost like making a remix album, using all of the stems, deciding where we’re putting ‘oblivion is freedom,’ deciding that we’re even doing that, starting from nothing,” she said, describing the meticulous approach to the setlist.

The choreography drew from Charli’s interest in merging fashion and movement. She worked with Eric Christensen, known for his runway work with Mugler and his movement direction on fashion photo shoots, including work with Saint Laurent. “I really wanted to work with someone who had an extensive fashion background and was doing shows and was understanding the variety of different walks,” she said.

The mission statement: oblivion is freedom

A David Cronenberg monologue closes Music, Fashion, Film, and one line from it, “oblivion is freedom”, has become the mission statement for both the album and the tour. When Billboard asked why that specific phrase, Charli explained its personal meaning.

“It’s the part that’s most related to how I feel about performance, for better and worse,” she said. “For me, performing live is very physical, sometimes very painful. I just have to throw myself into it and lose my inhibitions and almost enter another state.”

That philosophy extends beyond the moment onstage. “I have to lose myself to be able to feel free onstage, and so ‘oblivion is freedom’ was the perfect thing to pepper across the live show, because it’s genuinely how I feel when I perform and it’s the mission statement of the album, in a way. Destroying what is comfortable and what you know can sometimes lead to this new creative freedom.”

Tour details and what’s next

Charli launched her North American Music, Fashion, Film tour on Sept. 11 in Philadelphia, opening with “Rock Music,” the album’s lead single. The North American leg wraps in October. She’s announced six European dates for February 2027 in Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester, London, Amsterdam, and Paris, with Audrey Hobert opening all dates.

In an August interview with Pitchfork, Charli explained why she prefers shorter tours. “I always have such an admiration for people who go on tour for a long time,” she said. “The stamina that it takes is just not something that I particularly care to get. And the monotony, doing the same thing over and over again doesn’t feel alive enough for me.”

Reporting from Billboard, NME, Pitchfork and Consequence contributed to this story.