Why Are There Three Men—and No Charli—on Charli xcx’s ‘Music, Fashion, Film’ Album Cover?

This morning, Charli xcx revealed the cover art for her upcoming album, Music, Fashion, Film, the much-anticipated follow-up to the zeitgeist-altering Brat. True to form, the image is nowhere near what one would expect from a world-famous pop star. Namely, it does not feature the star in question. Rather than merely a stylish shot of Charli, the photograph by Aidan Zamiri figures musician John Cale, fashion designer Marc Jacobs, and film director Martin Scorsese, three men who in some capacity epitomize their respective fields.

Fans, and perhaps everyone else at this point, might recall that Charli was also absent from the cover of Brat, which consisted of the word in black lettering over a sharp green background. The cover for Music, Fashion, Film is a refinement of this very same concept, which affirms not only that there are myriad ways of illustrating an album idea outside of the go-to glamour shot—the lo-fi rebelliousness of the Brat cover was the best harbinger for the energy the album would come to encapsulate—but that, in the age of social media, pop stars and artists don’t always need to center themselves in the art for their projects. Nowadays, there are countless opportunities for audiences to see celebrities—on TikToks, livestreams, and yes, magazine shoots—so an album cover can serve a different purpose.

In the case of Music, Fashion, Film, that would be to have three men who are at the height of each particular discipline and industry illustrate the concepts rather than utilizing a possibly unrelated photograph of Charli, or trying to execute an artistic visual concept that could come to depict those three different worlds.

Unsurprisingly, online sleuths had some thoughts. “Instead of a bunch of random old men, this would have been a MUCH better cover for the new charli album,” a user wrote on X alongside a screenshot from the artist’s recent video for “SS26,” perhaps jokingly—you truly never know when it comes to X. To which I say, replying in meme-kind: Open the schools!

The three “random old men” in question are some of the most compelling auteurs in their fields. Yet what makes this compelling transcends their stature in their respective industries. Cale and Scorsese are in their 80s and Jacobs in his 60s. They’re all white men. There is no cultural ethnic pandering, no consideration to what, in this context, would have been a trite idea of diversity and inclusion. Instead, there is the making of an image that would have likely not existed otherwise, and that marks a specific moment in a culture that they have all helped shape.

Each man also speaks to a certain pocket of Charli’s artistry.

The Velvet Underground’s Cale, with whom Charli collaborated with on “House” as part of the Wuthering Heights soundtrack, provides rock-and-roll gravitas to the whole endeavor—the lead single for Music, Fashion, Film was titled “Rock Music,” and Charli has spoken about a sonic departure away from the dance floor and more toward the spirit of rock.