Charli xcx’s “Music, Fashion, Film Tour” Brings a Reality-Swirling Spectacle to Brooklyn: Review + Setlist

Charli xcx’s “Music, Fashion, Film Tour” is pretty literal. At her Monday, September 14th show at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center — just the second stop on the trek — all three elements of that title were on display.

There’s the music: a whopping 29 songs, including all 11 from her great new album Music, Fashion, Film, along with a pair of unreleased B-sides. There’s fashion: multiple costume changes (including a leather minidress that reads, “I’VE HAD SEX WITH CHARLI XCX”), flashy runway sequences, and a confetti cannon during “Guess” that launch a barrage of Charli xcx-branded panties in the air. And then there’s film: Charli is performing for us while very explicitly performing for the camera, dialing up the drama and imbuing the show with cinematic movement.

These three mediums are reflected so thoroughly within Charli’s new tour that their presentation is almost incongruous with the themes on her album, which have much more to do with the artistic process than the completed product. Much of Charli’s recent work has been self-reflective and, to a degree, raw; the “Music, Fashion, Film Tour” leaves behind Charli’s usual impulsiveness in favor of a more refined spectacle. It’s a deliberate pivot — one that positions her current era against the rich pop traditions she’s inherited.

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One way of looking at the “Music, Fashion, Film Tour” is as the apex of Charli’s exploration of “rock stardom,” an ethos she toys with throughout her new album. For the first time in years, she’s brought along a full band to play the new songs, providing faithful renditions without any substantial deviations. They may mimic the arrangements of Music, Fashion, Film a little too well, but their rockstar posturing onstage and interplay with Charli on songs like “2007” and “Yeah” are fun nods to the album’s meta themes; sometimes it feels like they’re hired actors performing the part of “Charli xcx bandmates.”

There’s also the pyro, and boy, is there pyro: Flame cannons, fireworks, a large blaze at the foot of the stage as she sings “I’m Afraid” (the most explicitly emo song on her new record). The blasts of fire help bring a sense of drama to the performance and establish that this is a version of Charli xcx that leans into more visceral spectacle instead of sleek minimalism. Do we need fireworks exploding to the beat of the climax to “House,” her goth-rock Wuthering Heights collab with John Cale? No — but is it awesome? Of course!

Given the sparse, club-centric aesthetic of her Brat-era shows, it tracks that Charli — now firmly in pop’s A-list — would scale up her production. After all, in addition to exploring the joys of the artistic process, Music, Fashion, Film also reckons with the cost of pursuing artistic greatness, and the meaning/meaninglessness of that very quest. The heavy weight of these ideas is rendered light via minimalist arrangements and tinny timbres on the record, but that’s a challenging tension to reflect in an arena tour.

Not to mention the fact that Brat and her prior works employed wildly different aesthetics, and — as we saw in her 2026 film The Moment — Charli also feels an obligation to deliver a pristine, capital-P Pop Show, no matter how much she dissects the machine behind it. So as much as I would have loved a version of her tour in which Charli destabilizes her own production and buckles under the weight of her own artistic quest, that just isn’t realistic.

Luckily, though, the old songs — those from Brat included — now stand in for the chaotic, post-pop lineage that brought Charli to this moment. “Track 10” and “Vroom Vroom” have become the centerpieces of her back catalogue. The former is Charli’s most complete fusion of raw emotion within the refined framework of a Top 40 pop song, the one that revealed the true depth of her inner life while simultaneously surrendering to the blueprint. Then there’s “Vroom Vroom,” which is so in tune with the current sound of pop that it’s genuinely remarkable that it came out 11 years ago. Before KATSEYE, before Slayyyter, before ADÉLA, there was “Vroom Vroom.”

The other older tracks also help put Charli’s journey in perspective. Hearing the vocal contrast between surprise song “Next Level Charli” and newer cuts like “SS26” is actually jarring, and “Next Level Charli” only technically came out seven years ago. Her level of versatility and control, autotuned or not, suggests that Charli has quietly developed into one of the most commandingly precise vocalists in modern pop. The way she can turn her bratty sneer on and off to make way for either sincerity or chaos helps root these shows in her singular persona. “It’s Charli, baby,” she cooed before closing the show with “Nothing Lasts Forever,” her signature catchphrase a reminder that she is, and has always been, an unmistakeable pop auteur.

It’s hard not to center on the final tableau offered on the “Music, Fashion, Film Tour”: It’s Charli, her dancers, and her band, frozen in a clump as David Cronenberg’s voiceover tells us, “They are dead, they are gone, nothing lasts forever, oblivion is freedom.” Here, the flame cannons erupt again, and the onstage display finally begins to glitch out. The illusion dissolves, the lights flicker and die out. Charli and her crew remain frozen. For a performer who has spent her career wrestling with the tension between the raw art and the finished product, it’s the ultimate exit: static, surreal, and completely on her own terms.

Get tickets to Charli xcx’s upcoming “Music, Fashion, Film Tour” dates here, and use code COS20 to save $20 on your first order over $200.

Charli xcx @ Barclays Center in Brooklyn — September 14th Setlist:
Rock Music
Yeah
Apple
Wink Wink
Persona
Card Declined
I’m Afraid
Track 10
Girl, so confusing
pink diamond
House
Next Level Charli
Dying for You
Club classics
365
360
Sympathy is a knife
Von dutch
Unlock It (with Kim Petras)
Guess
If You Take Away the Music Then What Has She Got?
2007
Camera
party 4 u
Vroom Vroom
Playboy Bunny
Magic Metal Montana
SS26
No One Lasts Forever