Song Exploder - Charli XCX - Camera

Episode Date: August 19, 2026

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.

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. This episode contains explicit language. Charlie XEX is a Grammy-winning artist who's been making music since she was a teenager. In July, 26, 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 our 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 Keen figured out how to translate that into music. Could you introduce yourself? Yeah. My name is Charlie XX. 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, 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 Erupsia in 2024. And prior to that, I'd been on set with Gregoraki 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. 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 output about me and my artist project. 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 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, I made it sort of exclusively with him and A.G. Cook. 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? 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 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 I you know I don't know like who came up with these fucking rules. There's 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.

It's 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 well that's not right 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 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, but if there's no conviction behind it, then it doesn't matter. And so Finn and A.G. 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. John Kale from the Velvet Underground. Yeah, we were really thinking about his quote. There was always a standard that was kind of set for how to be elegant and how to be brutal.

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. 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 a jump-off point. Finn played some chords, strumming them normally on the guitar with, you know, very sort of simple, like, kick snare rhythm. 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 snare drum

only to be like, oh, actually I don't have an idea over this or whatever. I then sang a kind of scratch melody with not many lyrics, just kind of like vague vowel sounds 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 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, which then kind of made the guitar very, very chopped in this sort of intense and kind of like rough way. It went from being something quite pretty to something a lot more jarring and distinct. 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. That became like a real 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. 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. But at the time it was 2025, so you were turning 33. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I had the foresight to know that this record would come out that year. Thank God, my gosh.

What is it about rhyming that you felt so strongly against? 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 which is so hellbent on scrutinizing absolutely everything and everyone. And so I think because it is that embarrassing, in a 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. Yeah, that's brilliant. You know? It's a really great answer. More with Charlie XX after this. I like to write with a lot of auto tune, and a lot of my songs have a lot of really heavy auto tune 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. Oh, it's how it makes me feel, and it makes me feel, how it makes me feel. Yeah, it makes me feel. But actually what we really Yeah, it makes me feel

How it makes me feel When the camera's on But actually what we really liked Was then doubling the vocal With the completely untuned vocal It makes me feel How it makes me feel Yeah, it makes me feel

How it makes me feel Yeah, it makes me feel How it makes me feel 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 of. most human moments actually. And there is one of those in this song actually, right at the end of the chorus. When I say, when the camera's on, there's this accidental, like, dodgy guitar lead static. It was just going to 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 that's way more interesting than like a traditional beat cut. That was sort of like one of those mistakes that we loved. And then in the sort of 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't 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. 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. 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 for music, given that it's a year later and now you have this new album. Yeah. Where are you at with the feeling that was in this song?

And I guess this song itself as a document of that feeling. 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 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. 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 In terms of the song I actually think this is a really sad, sad song Why is that? 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.

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. Like, 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? And now here's Camera by Charlie XX in its entirety. Things I don't normally feel, yeah, to the honest, it's like I'm looking down the barrel of a gun. I don't feel embarrassed even if I suck. I'm if there's dangerous and maybe this is it. Maybe it's what I need, because it's the only way to feel like I'm not actually me. To learn more, visit songexploder.net. You'll find links to buy or stream camera, and you can watch the music video.

This episode was produced by me, Craig Ely, Kathleen Smith, Mary Dolan, and Tiger Biscope. 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 SongExploder shirt at SongExploder.net slash shirt. I'm Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening. I want to tell you about another Radiotopia show called Hyperfixed.

It's hosted by Alex Goldman, who you might know from Reply All, or if you're old school like me, his podcast before Reply All, TLDR. On Hyperfixed, listeners write in with questions, all kinds of bizarre questions, no matter how niche. and Alex investigates and answers the questions. If you did listen to reply all back in the day and you remember the segment they used to do called Super Tech Support, then you're going to love Hyperfixed. And Hyperfixed is currently gearing up for its first live show in September, in Brooklyn.

You can get tickets at tickets.com. Look for Hyperfixed wherever you listen to podcasts or at Radiotopia.fm.