Charli XCX and the Emptiness After Success

I’ve been wanting to write something ever since Music Fashion Film came out — or rather, ever since I heard No One Last Forever. I’m not gonna lie, after Brat took over everything and brought a completely different vision to electronic music, I was all for her continuing down that path. I was even going around saying I had no expectations for this album. But this album, and especially No One Last Forever, completely burned away all my prejudices. All I want to say to her now is, “Queen, keep going.” It’s obvious she fell into a huge void after Brat. Especially after finally achieving the success she’d wanted for so many years. Life is strange, and so are human beings. The two never seem to match. You want life to go your way, but it doesn’t. You fight, you struggle, and it still doesn’t. If there’s a battle going on, life always wins. Turns out you can’t hide behind massive success or huge crowds either.

I’d love to keep seeing Charli out there, constantly creating, no matter what anyone says. Is she problematic? Absolutely. Does the bad sometimes outweigh the good? Absolutely. But let’s be honest — we’re all like that. None of us is really better than anyone else. We’re human. Deep down, we’re all embarrassing creatures. We all have flaws. We all have a shadow side. At least Charli isn’t walking around wearing a “clean girl” mask. She’s strong enough to look directly at that part of herself and creative enough to turn it into art. I think the people who love her the most are the ones who’ve met their own shadow too. As for the people who don’t like her, there’s really nothing to explain. Nobody has to like anyone anyway.

Now, getting to why I love this song so much… Apparently David Cronenberg made this song after being inspired by something he said in an interview. Halfway through the track, we even hear the clip that inspired it. By the way, the song strangely reminded me of Frank Ocean’s Futura Free. Maybe it’s because both songs close their albums, or because they’re both stream-of-consciousness reflections on the impermanence of life. Years later, getting Futura Free vibes from another song made me incredibly happy. I guess I found another song to cry to. :) Trust me, having Scorpio rising isn’t easy.

Right from the beginning, Charli is incredibly honest. She says, “Ever since people started knowing my name, my parties have been amazing. I don’t want to go home.” Then she immediately follows it with, “Nothing lasts forever.” It’s the complete opposite of everything she just said. In the second verse she talks about her problems, about people seeing her as problematic, and about conversations with her beloved French people, only to arrive at the exact opposite once again: “Nothing lasts forever.” By the third verse, she accepts that nothing lasts forever and says, “I’m not afraid of anyone,” almost as if she’s taking her power back. Then, in the end, she clearly collides with her own shadow and says, “I need to figure this feeling out.” That’s what being yourself feels like sometimes. The instability. Never feeling like the same person two days in a row. That thing that suddenly holds you back and pulls you down even when everything seems to be going perfectly. Welcome. Saying “welcome” is easy, of course. Actually facing it — and spending years pretending it’s not there — is a completely different story.

Then David Cronenberg’s voice comes in, and we listen to those collisions, those questions, and where art fits into all of this. To me, discovering the emptiness and ordinariness of life through his voice is the highest point of the song. We’re all going to make things. Create things. We’ll succeed. We’ll fail. But eventually, when our time comes, we’ll leave this world. Every single one of us. And that could happen at any moment. So in a world where none of us knows when we’ll be gone, are we clinging a little too tightly to success and to other people? As Cronenberg says, maybe we won’t even live long enough to witness the impact of our greatest achievements. Yes, there are immortal artists and immortal works, but they’re all gone, and no person lives forever. We hear Cronenberg’s voice repeating those words until the song ends, until they stay with us. Then he says what might be the only way to truly hack this world: “Oblivion is freedom.” Maybe being forgotten is the answer. Creating while knowing that one day we’ll be forgotten. It sounds incredibly depressing, but to me it’s the exact opposite. At a time when life has been tearing down everything I’ve built — or thought I’d built — and leaving nothing behind, this song arrived exactly when I needed it.

Charli has always been a huge David Cronenberg fan. She talks about him constantly in interviews, and her 2022 album Crash is one of the biggest proofs of that. By the way, hearing Cronenberg’s voice simply exist throughout her Lollapalooza performance while the subtitles rolled across the screens was one of the best concert moments I’ve seen in a long time. I’ve uploaded that performance to my own channel as well. If you’re looking for “Charli XCX — No One Last Forever Live,” I’ve left the link below. https://youtu.be/WqJV9oLT8Uk?si=hC41Gibv0KyA7y2V Take care of yourselves, and be kind to yourselves.