Earlier this month, Charli XCX watched “Point Break,” the 1991 action flick starring Keanu Reeves as a rookie FBI agent. It was, she said, “top to bottom the coolest everrrrr.”
How do we know that? Because she logged it on Letterboxd — in an account that has become a sneak peek into a pop icon’s personal artistic appetite. It’s a portrait of a woman who’s as likely to consume low culture (“The Idea of You,” the schmaltzy Anne Hathaway boyband rom-com) as high (she gave Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1960 masterpiece “L’Avventura” 5 stars). The film reviewing account has lent itself to Charli’s overt styling of herself as an arbiter of taste and an unabashed fan of pop culture.
The rollout of Charli’s newest album “Music, Fashion, Film,” released Friday, is a kind of Rolodex of references, proof she’s done her homework. The album’s main cover doesn’t feature the pop star at all, but instead titans from the three sectors in the title: John Cale, the legendary Welsh singer and producer who helped found The Velvet Underground; Marc Jacobs, the fashion designer for whose campaigns Charli has posed for in the past; and the director Martin Scorsese, looking characteristically nonchalant (Charli’s latest review of a Scorsese film? 5 stars for “Cape Fear,” the 1991 psychological thriller).
