Last week, as I penned articles about increasingly extreme, apocalyptic weather events and how much of Europe is literally on fire as a result of climate change, the more nihilistic lyrics in Charli xcx’s new album, Music, Fashion, Film, felt chillingly relevant.The “end of days” vibes are palpably scattered across the British singer-songwriter’s eighth studio album, which swaps Brat’s club-pop stylings for rocky guitar.“Spring, Summer ’26 / When the world is gonna end, no hope for any of it / Yeah, we’re walkin’ on a runway that goes straight to hell,” she sings with signature deadpan delivery on the song “SS26”, consoling herself wryly that “I think I’ll be alright if I look good in the clothes”. Perhaps even more starkly, there’s the chorus of “No One Lasts Forever”, which simply repeats the words “No, nothing’s gonna last forever” over and over again until you feel like you might as well walk into the sea right now and get it over with.The pop star explores themes of vulnerability and daring to fail in ‘Music, Fashion, Film’ (Getty)But beneath all the existentialist dread – not even to be assuaged by worshipping at the altar of the thoroughly modern religion that is consumerism, we are warned on “Card Declined” – lies a much rawer, more powerful and inspiring message about failure. Particularly for millennials like me.In some ways, we are the perfectionist generation, created by an imperfect economic storm. We grew up being told – and genuinely believing – that if we did everything right, we would have a successful life. Study hard, work hard, and we could do anything we put our minds to: get the dream job, build a career, buy a house, have a family. All was within our grasp.Then came, for those of us born from the mid-Eighties to the mid-Nineties, a global recession in 2008 that turned everything we’d been taught upside down. For many of us, the banking crash happened at the least opportune of moments: just as we’d graduated from university or were embarking on the world of real, grown-up work for the first time. Except there was no work to be had. Unemployment surged, particularly among young people, and we gazed down the barrel of a horribly uncertain future.There was no space for risk-taking in this strange new world. If you were lucky enough to secure a job – any job – amid the mass cuts, redundancies and hiring freezes, you clung onto it like Titanic’s Rose atop a minimum wage-paying door. Failure wasn’t an option; in this unforgiving climate, mistakes were something to be feared, rather than embraced as “learning opportunities”. Enjoy unlimited access to 100 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon MusicSign up now for a 30-day free trial. Terms apply.Try for freeADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.Put a foot wrong and there was every chance you’d be out on your arse and back to square one. Whereas, keep your head down, put in more and more hours, and maybe, just maybe, you might be rewarded with not having to move back in with your parents in your mid-twenties. In a cut-throat, dog-eat-dog sea of competition, only perfection would do. Even then, the idea of achieving those promised milestones – an actual career, a home, kids – remained wildly out of reach.I say all this because, at some point, all that risk-aversion and putting safety and security ahead of chasing dreams became so entrenched that the idea of potentially messing up – of trying something new and getting it wrong, or even looking mildly foolish – started stifling us. It became a reason not to try in the first place; it became an excuse to protect ourselves from potential embarrassment or failure at any cost. But Charli, a millennial herself, is shaking off my generation’s toxic trait. She is, for want of a better cliche, “feeling the fear and doing it anyway”.It’s particularly evident on “Camera”, in which she shares the vulnerability and self-doubt that comes with eschewing the relative safety of an established career in the music industry in favour of acting. Charli, a millennial herself, is shaking off my generation’s toxic trait“Am I being f***in’ stupid / If I try to be a girl on the screen when I’m turning 34?” she asks. The answer is that she doesn’t care – you can feel the pure don’t give a f*** energy in lyrics like, “Daring to fail and being ugly / I’m inspired and alive”; and, later on: “I don’t feel embarrassed even if I suck / I’m always craving an experience that feels dangerous”. In the album’s opener, “Rock Music”, there’s encouragement to take a leap of faith into the unknown, even when – especially when – there’s no safety net: “Yeah, maybe jump off the stage / I hope they catch you today / But if they don’t, it’s okay.”Even in “No One Lasts Forever”, the fact that everything ends is actually a cause for hope and courage, an invitation to live in the moment and grab life by the cajones – not a reason to give up and retreat. “I know deep down that it’s here and now / ’Cause nothing’s gonna last forever,” read the curiously uplifting lyrics. “That’s why I’m not scared of anyone / ’Cause nothing’s gonna last forever”. The entire album, in fact, is a living, breathing testament to the theme of putting yourself out there, growing and evolving, trying something new – plenty of fans would have been expecting another electro-pop record packed with dancefloor bangers as a follow-up to Brat, not this pivot to a more punk and rock-infused sound. Charli did it anyway. F*** it. After such a brutal start to adult life, somewhere along the way millennials like me blinked the stardust out of our eyes and forgot to chase the things we really wanted. We forgot that getting it wrong sometimes, making mistakes or looking silly is all just part and parcel of being alive – and, far from being the end of the world, it can teach us about ourselves, build character, bravery and resilience, and help us connect with others. Or, as Charli sings, simply make us “feel” at a point at which it’s become all too easy to settle for being comfortably numb in an increasingly frictionless world. After all, if it really is all “gonna end”, what do you have to lose by taking a chance on a mid-life career change or trying stand-up for the first time? What’s the worst that could happen?Music, Fashion, Film reminds us that, yes, if you never try, you can never fail – but you can also never succeed.