After a decade in the pop fringes, Charli xcx’s 2024 album Brat propelled her to global stardom: an acid-green ‘Brat summer’, a Glastonbury headline slot and brat as Collins’ word of the year.

But how do you follow up the album that made you a star?

Charli’s latest album Music, Fashion, Film has now been released – and as Guardian deputy music editor Laura Snapes tells Lucy Hough: it’s a pivot to guitar and a “meta masterpiece about the instability of identity.”