Song of the Day: "Camera"

A column about music, and about how the music informs our lives. Today's author is Joe. See the previous songs HERE.

"Camera"

Charli XCX

from Music, Film, Fashion

2026

I googled "what should a middle-aged man wear to a pop concert".

I didn't get an answer, because there's not actually an answer to such a question. If you're asking a question like that, you're thinking too much about it. It didn't actually matter what I wore to the Charli XCX concert. I knew I wasn't going to be like the rest of the crowd—I am in my late 30s, I am male, I am mostly straight. These are identity things that I cannot change, and so it was always going to be impossible to "fit in" at such a venue, in such a crowd, here to see such an artist. The question wasn't whether I should even try. The question was actually: would I be able to not give a shit and just enjoy myself?

Well, yes and no. This is a journey, a work in progress. I was impressed with the crowd (and not in a sexual way, which would be creepy, and would absolutely earn everyone the right to call me the creepy old guy I was trying so desperately not to be... even though, yeah, totally my crowd in that way, I'll admit, here, on this blog, just between me and you, friends forever) in that they were mostly on their feet the whole time, dancing. Even during the opener, friend of the blog underscores—this was the most "into it" I've ever seen an audience during the opening act. During the 29(!)-song Charli XCX set, most of the young women were standing and dancing the entire time. Loved it.

But I couldn't join them. I mean, I could, but I couldn't. Didn't have it in me. Too self-conscious. This isn't a pop-concert-specific thing with me. I'm mostly like that at weddings these days too. Occasionally I can push myself an do some stiff dancing for a couple songs, but it takes a lot out of me. I'm self-conscious about that kind of thing even when I'm around my peers, let alone around a crowd that inadvertently makes me feel othered. I know that no one cared. No one would give a shit or give me even one second of attention or acknowledgment if I stood up and danced to "Club classics." Everyone is the protagonist of their own story. No one is paying attention to anyone else. I could've danced. But I still felt it, that barrier. The only thing I ever knew to help break that barrier down was alcohol, but I know now that the knocking down of barriers with that aid was mostly a sham, that it was all in my head, that I have it within me to dance but struggle to bring it out in a true and honest way.

I had a right to be there, at the pop concert. At this particular pop concert, anyway. I love Charli XCX's music. I respect her as an artist (and not in a parasocial way, which might unfortunately the case with a lot of her younger fans, but so it goes with pop stars in the 21st century). Compared with mostly all of her peers working in this specific genre, I have managed to connect emotionally to Charli's music the most. I discovered the kinship with brat, and am delighted to find that the connection stays strong through Music, Film, Fashion. To be ultra-clear here: when I say "connection," I mean with the art. I know you might be thinking otherwise, with me being a heterosexual male and she being an objectively attractive female who has a purposefully attractive style and chose to do the one thing on stage that could've gotten me to admit to anything even close to a "crush" in an oblique, distant way (smoking a cigarette, goddamn so fucking cool, jesus fucking christ). Physical attraction is an absence of emotion. When I turn to consider my emotions, I am thinking about the art, and how the art affects me, and how I can relate to it, and how I know that the art is speaking to something that I already felt before I pressed play.

Charli XCX is the only pop artist that I trust is being her true and honest self in her art. She has described her tour (and thus, the art that she is presenting on this tour) as "50% party, 50% existential crisis." The latter obviously makes her real and true (who among us hasn't felt that way), but it's the former that gets me to trust her. There are pop stars that party, but Charli XCX is the only pop star whose parties are clearly, obviously a distraction from the existential dread that surrounds us. She's upfront about it, which is the part that I respect. There is no reasonable person on earth who could listen to "365" and think that Charli XCX is unironically describing herself as a "365 party girl." It's coated in irony, in sarcasm, and it's made clear in the songs that directly address the dread that these emotions are being covered up by the party, that the parties are temporary, that the dread is forever.

You wanna know what the biggest singalong bit of the concert was? In "Camera," Charli sang the line "Yeah, I can finally be totally honest, it's like I'm looking down the barrel of a gun," and every single 20-something woman in the audience yelled "Fucking shoot me!" That kind of thing resonates with me, because I too feel the darkness, and I too use elaborate ruses as a self-defense mechanism. It's not that I'm actually going to shoot myself, it's more that I am an active participant in the pageantry that in turns acts as a promise that I never will shoot myself, despite the darkness that surrounds me and you and everyone else.

In some perverse way, these thoughts are the core reason why I wanted to attend this concert. Despite everything I felt, the weirdness about being not like other people in the crowd, the discomfort of dancing and not dancing, the not even knowing what to fucking wear to such a thing, I knew that the music that would be played from that large, elaborate stage was going to betray the fact that, ultimately, the artist up there feels the same exact way I do. She's the star of the show, and she feels like she doesn't fit in either. The music speaks to that feeling.

And the music and the performance and the artist all work together to address the problem in concrete ways, I'd argue. I've been thinking about the backup dancers, and how this was not like anything I've seen with any other pop star performance (like on the TV or whatever), how usually the dancers are all strictly coordinated, but these women were more like a loose cohort of pals, often times crowding the stage to dance around and headbang and make sexy faces at the camera. At one point, most of them were just lounging around on the ground, smoking cigs. Sometimes all it takes is surrounding yourself with similarly minded people to feel better.

I've been thinking about the opener, underscores, a.k.a. April Harper Grey, a.k.a. our featured RC artist from 149 weeks ago. This artist started the year playing pop-up events out of a fucking U-Haul truck, and is ending it playing an active part in a stadium tour. I choked up a little bit when Charli brought her out mid-set to play one of her own songs to a rapt crowd. Personally, it unlocked something that I didn't quite understand about her 2026 album U, in that it represented the step after brat in pop music, how it took what was already twisted, and shatters it into broken pieces. But then that just really speaks to the idea that underscores is in the same boat as us, that Charli is taking her along and branding her a kindred spirit. Mostly, it says to me that Charli knows that the only way we're gonna get out of this fucked-up world alive is finding people who feel the same way, and bringing them under the big tent. I was there for the same reason underscores was there.

And I've been thinking about many parts of the show felt like I was at a legit rock concert. There were live musicians—guitar, bass, drums, keyboards—and Charli XCX stood in the midst of them, at the microphone that was on a microphone stand, and belted out songs that are—assuming you can strip away the pop music lacquer that covers everything by design—legitimate rock 'n' roll songs. "Rock Music" obviously, but that led into "Yeah," "Apple," and "Wink Wink," and so on. It was fantastic how she met my own sensibilities in the middle. Not for my sake, of course, but for her own. This is about making the tent bigger, and it's about having the power to do so, being talented enough to do it and curious enough to want to in the first place.

I had similar thoughts six years ago, when Charli XCX's rival Taylor Swift decided to "make indie music" in folklore and evermore. I wrote at the time what a joy it was that someone like me had a legitimate access point to an artist and a sound that I hadn't previously, and I was grateful that it happened. I can see now that it was all a COVID-induced mirage. I see it now that we have the best Charli XCX song and one of the greatest songs of all time period, "Sympathy is a knife," and then the horrendous, embarrassing follow-up (clap-back?) song by Swift, "Actually Romantic." This sequence of events both shattered my perception of the world's biggest pop star, and also clarified a lot about how music works and how I can and should respond to it. The best Swift song of all time is "betty," and I see that now as a talented artist writing pure fiction, and anything that I'm pulling from it coming from my own mind. I view Charli's best songs as works of pure non-fiction. Only one artist is doing this because they need to. Only one artist is doing it because they couldn't function emotionally if they didn't build these protective structures out of song. The other artist is just doing it for the show.

Maybe that's the wrong choice of phrase, "for the show," because I was at that Charli XCX show, and the show was part of the art too, the art that made me know where this artist stands, and where I stand, and where all these fans surrounding me stand, and how there's not much difference between any of us.

I do wish that I could be like Pam sometimes, who ably dressed the part (and for my money was the hottest person in the stadium, on or off the stage), and could sing along to songs like "Girl, so confusing" without having to justify it to herself through figurative speech. But I'm stuck with what I got. I am a tall, hairy, mostly unattractive male, and I am mostly straight, and I am cisgender, and I am old and getting older. And I fucking love this music, and I feel connected to it, and so I try to use that to understand myself a little better. What I understand is that it's okay to feel awkward and out of place, and that, instead of cowering away, I should face it, crack a joke, put on something sexy, and just be myself.

Yeah, I can finally be totally honest, it's like I'm looking down the barrel of a gun.