At the end of the new Charli xcx album, there is a monologue in which a distinguished-sounding speaker describes collapsing on the street: “As I was lying there on the sidewalk, I did not think about art at all.” This is not Charli talking, even though almost every song on the record leading up to this one has seen her dissect what it is to live, succeed, create, reinvent and hide as an artist. “I thought about people, I thought about life,” says the voice, belonging to none other than 83-year-old auteur David Cronenberg. “I wasn’t thinking about art. And I wasn’t thinking about art as endurance, as immortality.”

For the listener, it starts to come together – worldwide pop star Charli, 34, is taking a masterclass from Canada’s existential filmmaker, the grandfather of body horror. First lesson: Should an artist aspire to make something that outlasts them? “Yes, some artists have created art that has really survived thousands of years, and that’s fantastic,” says Cronenberg. “But experientially, for them, they are dead, they are gone, they are not experiencing that. Hear me assuring you that oblivion is freedom.”

Cronenberg isn’t the only icon of a certain vintage that Charli is setting as her north star only two years after leading the zeitgeist with her album Brat – and its coinciding slime-green-coloured cultural phenomenon, “Brat Summer.” She also invited John Cale, 84, Marc Jacobs, 63, and Martin Scorsese, 83, to be on the cover of her much-anticipated follow-up, aptly titled Music, Fashion, Film. 

The stark black-and-white image of just these three “random old dudes” – as per one online Charli fan – with an ashtray in the foreground of the shot, raises endless questions: Does she think they make her cool? Or does her stamp of approval make them cool? Do old people now have the “It” factor? Have they always? Who is still smoking? Is this just a stunt – for show, for fashion, for marketing? Is it saying something generational – is everything old new again? Or is it as simple as this: Charli is at that point in her career where she can pick up the phone, call up her legit influences and bring them together on a whim in, according to Cale, “a random New York City kitchen”? Kinda like the way Taylor Swift could have had absolutely anyone sing at her wedding … and she chose Stevie Nicks.

Born in Sussex, England, to a Scottish father and Indian mother, Charli started performing at raves at 15, with her parents chaperoning. And as far back as 2012, she was co-writing chart-topping earworm hits for other artists, including Swedish synth group Icona Pop’s I Love It and preteen-fave Iggy Azalea’s Fancy and releasing her own club-beat heavy music – “My following was mostly gay men,” she has said. In 2022, she did the whole major-label hypersexualized pop star thing with her fifth album Crash, named after Cronenberg’s 1996 movie. Then came Brat – a rejection of anything traditional, be it in music or society (except maybe marketing). In simple terms, says Charli in 2024, Brat is “just that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and like maybe says some dumb things sometimes, who feels like herself, but then also like maybe has a breakdown but kind of like parties through it – is very honest, very blunt and a little bit volatile. Yeah, like doing dumb things, but like it’s brat, you’re brat, it’s brat.”

The social media set saw the persona as a reaction to the clean girl, healthy girl aesthetic (think: Hailey Bieber) that’s become so popular on Instagram and TikTok, and as a bit of shade to Swift’s polished perfection – not to mention a middle finger to the age-old custom of telling girls how to look, what to wear, how to act. It was empowering, frenetic and tapped into a generational angst.

But the Brat vibe, and definitely the album colour, got co-opted by brands from Kate Spade to Maple Leaf Foods (for their veggie Bratwurst sausages); and from presidential candidate Kamala Harris (whose team turned her website green after Charli posted “kamala IS brat”) to hipster babies in chartreuse BRAT onesies. “I have always rejected the idea that art, film, persona or music becoming commercial means it cannot also be considered cool,” Charli wrote on her Substack last year, obviously in response to the perceived watering down of her cutting-edge status. “The rejection of commerciality ‘just because’ is such a boring and immature argument that is perhaps more suited to some mediums than others but in general I find to be elitist in a way that does not thrill me whatsoever.” 

That said, Charli must recognize that since the beginning of cool (i.e. Miles Davis, James Baldwin, James Dean), it has been less mainstream, more avant-garde, far from a brand, with at least a hint of “stick it to the man.” Enter those ancient mariners – er, mentors – of Music, Fashion, Film. The cover boys were all hedonistically Brat in their earlier days, too. And along with Cronenberg, they were disruptors, rebels and wearers (or designers) of dark shades. Decades later, they still emanate cool as their art continues to say something, shock and evoke powerful feelings long after everything in music, fashion and film has seemingly been done. And it doesn’t matter if they’re no longer setting the world on fire, they can sit back and coast on past greatness, fielding calls from whippersnappers who’ve just discovered them and are begging to drag them in front of new and adoring crowds.

“Hear me assuring you that oblivion is freedom”

David Cronenberg to Charli xcx

In fact, rolling out much older, influential artists for your own pleasure or personal branding, to reach a new audience or to confuse and frustrate your current fans is nothing new. The Beatles put images of Edgar Allan Poe, Laurel and Hardy and Mae West – all of whom were born in the 1800s – on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. And they were only in their 20s when they filmed themselves under the influence of the 59-year-old Maharishi Mahesh. In 1976, The Band invited 63-year-old Muddy Waters on stage for The Last Waltz, and Cab Calloway was 72 in 1980 when he performed Minnie the Moocher in The Blues Brothers movie. Young male pop stars in the ’80s rediscovered 40-something women: George Michael and Aretha Franklin, Pet Shop Boys and Dusty Springfield, Bryan Adams and Tina Turner; while Art of Noise brought Tom Jones back from the dead at 48 to cover Prince. In today’s musical climate, Charli is actually late to the game. In the mid-2010s, Lady Gaga gave Tony Bennett’s golden years a boost, Olivia Rodrigo recently shone her spotlight on The Cure’s Robert Smith and countless artists have crossed “Make out with Madonna” off their bucket lists.

Still, Charli is not just swapping spit. At the height of her popularity – with four-year-olds to 40-year-olds – she is following up Brat Summer with Cronenberg Summer (a phrase she playfully displayed on stage during her set at Coachella). And in interviews, she’s encouraging her Millennial and Gen Z fans to get past the wrinkles and grey hair of the artists staring out from her album cover and actually engage with their art. My own 18-year-old daughter, a Charli admirer, admitted to not knowing any of the above names. Not even Scorsese! Sigh. But now the conversation has begun; The Velvet Underground and Nico will be played at dinner; Taxi Driver is cued up for the next family movie night. We might skip Crash, though, with apologies to Cronenberg. 

He’d understand. When he and Charli recorded their tête-à-tête in Toronto this year – after meeting at the city’s film festival in 2025 – he was quite PG. “It’s a cliché to say, but there is truth in that [making films] is like having children,” he says in a black-and-white mini movie Charli released along with the album. “When they’re young, you are in their lives every day, every moment, taking care of every need and dealing with every emotional crisis and everything else. Eventually they get older and they go off and they have a life – and at that point you are longer in their lives. It can be difficult, but it can also be wonderful. Some films, if they have a life, they are having a life without me. They don’t need me anymore. They can do it themselves.”

File that under: words of artistic wisdom from the father of the Fly to the mother of all Brats.