Charli xcx is stepping onto the rock scene — literally. In a new teaser for her upcoming song “Rock Music,” the pop star stomps on an electric guitar, breaking the base and neck apart with one swift motion.
The black-and-white clip arrived on Instagram on Thursday (May 7) after weeks of Charli teasing her new era. Only her feet — wearing impossibly high black stilettos — are visible in frame. The moment she makes impact with her sharp heel, a blast of fuzzy guitars and drum hits sounds off.
“rock music. song and video out tonight. 9pm pst,” she wrote in the caption.
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The singer first teased that she was embracing an edgier vibe on her next album in an April interview with British Vogue, which premiered one of the new song’s lyrics: “I think the dance floor is dead, so now we’re making rock music.”
“If I’d made another album that felt more dance-leaning, it would have felt really hard, really sad,” she told the publication at the time. “That’s interesting for me is to bend the possibilities of what my perspective on that could be.”
Charli has since clarified that she isn’t necessarily fully pivoting genres. On Instagram, she recently shared a clip of herself in the studio and wrote, “a video of me making a song called ‘rock music’ that is not actually rock music which is funny because i never said i was making a rock album.”
“Rock Music” will mark the musician’s first release since her Wuthering Heights companion album arrived in February, reaching No. 8 on the Billboard 200. Before that, her magnum opus Brat peaked at No. 3 on the chart and launched Charli into mainstream stardom.
