Charli XCX - Camera

Charli XCX is a Grammy-winning artist who has been making music since she was a teenager. In July 2026, she released her eighth album, Music, Fashion, Film. It debuted at number 1 on the UK charts—her 4th album in a row to hit number 1 there. In addition to her music career, for the last few years, she’s been acting in films. And for this episode, we talked about how those experiences inspired her song “Camera," and how she and producer Finn Keane figured out how to translate that into music. For more info, visit songexploder.net/charli-xcx https://songexploder.net/charli-xcx.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.

• 0:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I'm going to be on tour, playing some shows this fall. I'm going to be in London on Wednesday, November 18th. I'm going to be performing solo at Roughtrade Records on Denmark Street. And I'm going to be in conversation about my music, moderated by one of my favorite actors and writers, Matthew Bainton. And a ticket to the show also gets you a copy of my album on vinyl or CD. And in December, I'm going to be on tour supporting S. Carrie. We're going to be playing a bunch of shows in the Northeast US. So I hope to see you in one of those places. You can find all the details and get links to tickets at songexploder.net/live. That's songexploder.net/live.

• 0:55Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This episode is sponsored by LinkedIn. Anyone who's ever had to spend money on marketing knows how tricky it can be to feel like you've spent that money wisely. Well, with LinkedIn Ads, you can be sure that you'll get a great return on your investment. You can target your campaigns by company, industry, job title, and more. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com/songexploder. That's linkedin.com/songexploder. Terms and conditions apply. Thanks to Quince for sponsoring Song Exploder. I have this Quince cashmere sweater that's become my go-to in the fall. And it's one of those pieces where, as soon as I started wearing it,

• 1:40Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I couldn't really remember what I used to wear before I had it. It's the Mongolian cashmere quarter-button sweater in black. And those kinds of staples are what Quince is known for. Jeans, t-shirts, jackets, sweaters, and actually, a lot more, too. And everything at Quince is priced 50% to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So you're paying for quality, not brand markup. Their 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters start at just $60. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers. Or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. It's now available in Canada and the UK, too.

• 2:24Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know that it was Song Exploder. You'll be supporting the show. This episode contains explicit language.

• 2:35Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Charli XCX is a Grammy-winning artist who's been making music since she was a teenager. In July 2026, she released her eighth album, Music, Fashion, Film. It debuted at number one on the UK charts. Her fourth album in a row to hit number one there. In addition to her music career, for the last few years, she's been acting in films. And for this episode, we talked about how those experiences inspired her song, Camera, and how she and producer Finn Keane figured out how to translate that into music.

• 3:21Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Could you introduce yourself?

• 3:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. My name is Charli XCX. Prior to this song, I was kind of going through this thing of, I don't really want to make music for a while. Not in a dramatic way, but, you know, I'd been making a lot of stuff. I made Brat, then I made this whole kind of remix album. And I was playing a lot of shows. I was DJing a lot. I was, you know, doing all the stuff. And I think I wanted to not make music again for a while because I wasn't sure that I had anything to say. And actually, I really wanted to explore film,

• 4:04Speaker 01

  which has been sort of a long-term passion of mine. And over the past three, four years, I've actually been able to really act on that passion. I made a film called Arupcia in 2024. And prior to that, I'd been on set with Greg Araki for like one day and a couple of other films for one day. And I had spent earlier in the year making a film. The film was called The Moment. And we shot it in five weeks, you know, really condensed, really quick. But in that five weeks, we really kind of bonded as a cast and crew.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  And it felt really creatively stimulating and rich. That lack of control that sometimes you get when you walk on set as an actor on somebody else's film is actually, for me at least, quite freeing. You know, like to go on, perform, like you fuck up, you don't do a good take, but whatever, it makes you feel alive. There's something very, very vulnerable about that. I've spent my life, you know, since I was 14, really making music and being very much in control of my own destiny in terms of every single like output about me and my artist project.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  And the beginnings of this song was kind of me mourning that feeling and thinking about that feeling of being surrounded by these incredible people whilst shooting a film. And honestly, the feeling that I got from being on camera in that kind of a way, in an acting capacity, rather than being on camera as a musician in a music video, for instance. So I was kind of like, I really want a creative pause from music. And then, out of nowhere, inspiration struck

• 6:15Speaker 01

  because thinking about those feelings was kind of the initial seed of inspiration for this song. It started in the summer of 2025. My friend Finn Keane is a long-term collaborator of mine now, but particularly on this new album, you know, I made it sort of exclusively with him and AG Cook.

• 6:43Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You've worked with a lot of different producers. What is it that makes you want to keep going back to the two of them specifically?

• 6:49Speaker 01

  You know, the reason I go back to them is because there's no rules, you know? I think my biggest gripe with the pop music landscape and the songwriting landscape, which I will say has kind of like become a little more scarce, like this mentality that I'm about to discuss. But I definitely remember in like 2015, in LA, it was very much this sort of like old-school, kind of traditional mentality when it came to writing particularly pop songs. A lot of kind of rules of like, oh, well, to make the song technically good,

• 7:34Speaker 01

  you have to hit the highest note in the chorus. You can't repeat any of the notes in the verse, in the chorus. All this bullshit, like, you know, I don't know. Like, who came up with these fucking rules? This is some bullshit, like, I don't know. So we've never really been interested in that. And don't get me wrong, like, I really appreciate a well-written pop song. I really appreciate a more traditional sounding pop song in terms of like melodic structure. Like, don't get me wrong, I'm into it. But this idea of, oh, no, that's wrong, is something that I would come up against actually quite a lot, especially when I was in LA, in that time, hopping around and like kind of exploring different producers. People would be like, oh, well, that's not right.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  That's not good, like that melody isn't good. I'd be like, well, why do you know that? Why do you get to say that and I don't? And I'm the artist, like, I'm never working with you again. Like, do you know what I mean? Like, it's just, to me, a good melody is all about conviction. That's it. It doesn't matter if that melody is on the same note. If it's performed in a truly honest way, that's it. I just have to believe you. To me, that's what makes a good song, if I believe you, inside and out, not if it's following some like ABA formula or whatever. You know, it's like, there are a hundred songs that can be written like that,

• 9:02Speaker 01

  but if there's no conviction behind it, then it doesn't matter. And so Finn and AG, we all kind of believe it just has to feel honest and real. And I think that's why I go back to them, you know, because it's freeing, because there are no boundaries or rules within the songwriting. We're able to sort of explore all of these different territories without feeling like we're doing anything wrong. When Finn and I made the Wuthering Heights album together, we were working with strings a lot for the first time. We'd been very inspired by John Cale.

• 9:40Hrishikesh Hirway?

  John Cale from the Velvet Underground?

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were really thinking about his quote.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  There was always a standard that was kind of set for how to be elegant and how to be brutal.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Elegant and brutal, which is the two words that he used to describe the criterion for whenever he was making a Velvet's record. We were kind of exploring that with Wuthering Heights. You know, whenever we were recording strings, we were thinking the strings have to be elegant and brutal. So there weren't these kind of like conventional, smooth, like gorgeous, luscious strings. They were a little scratchy, a little aggressive.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  And I think that record and working with strings in that way sort of went on to inspire me to be like, okay, so like, I wanted to use a lot more guitars on this record. Maybe we should explore our version of guitars, because I'd never really done that before. Like, my previous records don't feature a lot of guitar. And so that was kind of the jump-off point. Finn played some chords, strumming them normally on the guitar

• 10:51Speaker 01

  with, you know, very sort of simple like kick snare rhythm.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  And that's another thing I love about working with Finn. We kind of like just throw a track out real quick because we don't want to like suck time out from working together. Like, we don't want to like spend like ages perfecting the sound of a snare drum, only to be like, oh, actually, I don't have an idea over this or whatever.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  I then sang a kind of scratch melody with not many lyrics, just kind of like vague vowel sound type thing. And we kind of sat with it for a minute. And then we were like, okay, this is cool, but there's something a little smooth about the way the guitar is played. I kind of knew we needed to make the production feel a lot more like raw and direct and rough, because that would really kind of reflect this very exposing feeling of being

• 12:04Speaker 01

  on set as an actor and it being kind of humiliating. And so I kind of wanted the guitar to feel less perfect and a bit more reflective of that feeling that I was trying to capture. And so we decided to cut the chord at like a very awkward point.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Which then kind of made the guitar very, very chopped in this sort of intense and kind of like rough way.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  It went from being something quite pretty to something a lot more jarring and distinct.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  It feels very angular to me, and that is also very much the feeling that I have on set. It's like a little uncomfortable or something in a way that I like.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  That became like a real like identity to the song that then went on to kind of help us figure out not only other production elements, but the kind of lyrical journey of the song.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  There's this part where I say, am I being fucking stupid if I try and be a girl on the screen when I'm turning? And I was like, I cannot say 33. That would be so lame. If screen rhymed with three, that would be like just the worst decision ever. And luckily, I am turning 34, so it made sense for it to be that.

• 14:14Hrishikesh Hirway?

  But at the time, it was 2025, so you were turning 33.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I had the foresight to know that this record would come out that year. Thank God, my gosh.

• 14:25Hrishikesh Hirway?

  What is it about rhyming that you felt so strongly against?

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Well, I think because this song is very much me talking to myself about something quite embarrassing, about wanting to act and wanting to feel free and danger when I do so. And also knowing that some people will always say that I suck or can't do it. And no matter who you are or what you're doing, if you decide, oh, you know what, I'm a little older and I want to like embark on this new creative journey, or not even a creative journey, it's like quite vulnerable to sort of put yourself out there in a world

• 15:08Speaker 01

  which is so hell bent on scrutinizing absolutely everything and everyone. And so I think because it is that embarrassing inner monologue, it didn't feel right to have rhyme because, at least for me, rhyme requires a bit of premeditation. And, you know, this song more so than any, we really wanted to keep that stream of consciousness kind of a vibe. So to have rhyme in this song would have maybe made it feel like a thought I was going back to rather than a spontaneous one.

• 15:51Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah, that's brilliant.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  You know?

• 15:54Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah, it's a really great answer.

• 15:57Hrishikesh Hirway?

  More with Charli XCX after this.

• 16:05Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 16:52Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 17:35Hrishikesh Hirway?

  low as $30 each month, and you can get up to $3 million in coverage. So take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com/songexploder. That's E-T-H-O-S dot com slash songexploder. Application times may vary, rates may vary. This episode is sponsored by Tidal. If you're an artist or if you know somebody making music, you should know about Tidal Upload. It's a way to share and sell music without the usual barriers. You can upload your music directly to Tidal at no cost. You decide how you want to release it. You can share it publicly with Tidal listeners, or you

• 18:17Hrishikesh Hirway?

  can keep it private until you're ready. Or you can sell your music directly through Tidal Upload. Your music will also be considered by Tidal's editorial team for their playlists. And if your track is selected for their spotlight program, you'll get a $1,000 bonus and you'll be on one of their marquee playlists. And now, Tidal has dropped its platform fee to 0%, which means you keep more of your earnings there than on any other platform. Visit tidal.com/songexploder to create an account and start uploading your music for free. That's tidal.com/songexploder for zero platform fees on every sale. Your music, your earnings.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  I like to write with a lot of autotune, and a lot of my songs have a lot of really heavy autotune on them. But when I did the initial vocal take for this, it was very, very, very tuned. And there is still tune on this track.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  But actually, what we really liked was then doubling the vocal with the completely untuned vocal.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  That contrast, again, it's like that jarring thing. I think that was important to us, you know, for it to not feel super smooth. Because there's definitely a version of this song that could have felt very kind of like smooth and sort of perfect, but that doesn't really match the feeling of what I'm singing about. So that's why we decided to not go that route. I always feel like the mistakes are the best and most human moments, actually. And there is one of those in this song, actually, right at the end of the chorus, when I say,

• 20:36Speaker 01

  "When the camera's on", there's this accidental, like dodgy guitar lead static.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  It was just gonna be a break. And we were like, oh, wait, that's actually really good and weird and punctuates it in a way that's like way more interesting than like a traditional beat cut.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  That was sort of like one of those mistakes that we loved.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  And then in the sort of outro of the song, everything becomes super minimal. And there's that bass that is plugged in and played direct with no effects pedal or anything like that, you know, to give it this sort of like very honest presence. I say, "I can finally be totally honest. It's like I'm looking down the barrel of a gun. Fucking shoot me." And when I said "fucking shoot me," I don't know where my head was at. I really was talking about like a gun. I wasn't thinking about the double entendre of like the camera.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  And then it's actually only like afterwards, I was like, "Oh, wait, that's cool." But I didn't mean that. I was not being smart like that in the moment. I was really talking about like, "Kill me," you know? But then after a while, I was like, "Oh, it means both. Thank God, people aren't going to think I'm being suicidal."

• 22:16Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I'm curious where you're at now with the feeling that had preceded this song, the idea that you wanted to take a break from music, given that it's a year later and now you have this new album.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:28Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Where are you at with the feeling that was in this song? And I guess this song itself as a document of that feeling.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  It's funny, I don't have children, but someone who has kids was telling me about this. This idea that like, if a woman decides to have a second child, biologically, we're kind of like trained to put the pain and stress and trauma and angst out of our mind. The literal physicality of birth or pregnancy or things like that, it's like, actually, we sort of forget about that when it comes to having another baby or something. And not that making an album is the same as giving birth, but maybe that's why I sort of keep forgetting that I've actually kind of like felt this a lot.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Maybe it's just like my inner like fucking trauma system is just being like, "No, forget about that because you're about to do it again." I don't know, but yeah.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  In terms of the song, I actually think this is a really sad, sad song.

• 23:33Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Why is that?

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's about running away from myself and my identity and wanting to escape into another identity where people can't find me. It's sort of this endless quest to feel something. The more and more I live life, the harder it is to feel something from creative pursuits that happen over and over again. Music, for instance, you know? And so I think wanting to pivot is about that.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  It's about this desire to feel on a level that hasn't been felt before. And so, yeah, I think there is something sad about this song for me now, which doesn't make me like it less. I love the song and I stand by all of the feelings within it. But there is something a little heartbreaking for me about it because it's like, will I ever be able to be still and just like be happy with who I am? I don't know, jury's out, you know?

• 24:56Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And now here's "Camera" by Charli XCX in its entirety.

• 27:31Hrishikesh Hirway?

  To learn more, visit songexploder.net. You'll find links to buy or stream "Camera," and you can watch the music video.

• 27:39Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This episode was produced by me, Craig Ely, Kathleen Smith, Mary Dolan, and Tiger Biscoe. The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm. If you'd like to hear more from me, you can subscribe to my newsletter, which you can find on the Song Exploder website. You can also get a Song Exploder shirt at songexploder.net/shirt. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway. Thanks for listening.

• 28:20Speaker 03

  Radiotopia.

• 28:23Speaker 03

  From PRX.

• 28:28Speaker 04

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