The artist's divisive new song arrived alongside an Aidan Zamiri-directed video playing on classic rock tropes

Charli XCX has been taking in all the contrasting reactions to her latest song, “Rock Music.” The artist’s divisive new track arrived last week alongside an Aidan Zamiri-directed video that plays on classic rock tropes. “I think the dance floor is dead,” Charli sings on the glitching chorus. “So now we’re making rock music.” Rock and dance music defenders alike have reached for their pitchforks, but Charli isn’t interested in debating or explaining the song to them.

“I’m not gonna explain where i was coming from with ‘rock music,’ but all i know is that things can be funny, earnest, sincere, and joyful all at the same time and that’s what i feel about a lot of the things i make,” Charli wrote on Instagram. In the post, the artist compared the discourse around the song to how people reacted to A.G. Cook’s PC Music, particularly “how the label was deemed as almost critiquing or looking down on pop music or something.”

Charli noted “there was an element of that” when she released the Vroom Vroom EP in 2016. “It’s all kind of fascinating,” she said. “I love talking about music and art w my friends, so im happy people are throwing out thoughts.” As for her own thoughts, the singer admits that she will “probably regret” sharing what she is thinking about with the internet — and she can’t really be blamed after how people reacted to her musings on Substack.

To balance out the exposure of letting people into her mind, Charli also offered a glimpse behind the scenes of the “Rock Music” video. The French documentarist Loïc Prigent joined the artist in New York for the shoot, which involved her lighting a whole lot of cigarettes and pushing a few TV sets out of the window. On set, Charli also accidentally chucked a salt shaker at her husband George Daniel’s head. “I’m texting him like, ‘I hope you know it wasn’t intentional,'” Charli says in the video. “The medic and George are becoming best friends.”