Charli XCX Says ‘Dance Floor Is Dead’ Backlash Has Affected Her Mental Health

Charli XCX has opened up about struggling with her mental health amid the discourse she inadvertently sparked while promoting her upcoming album.

Earlier this year, the Grammy winner gave an interview to British Vogue in which she shared that her musical follow-up to her career-defining Brat album would take a very different approach, taking inspiration from elements of rock.

The piece also quoted a line from Charli’s then-upcoming single Rock Music, in which she sings: “I think the dance floor is dead, so now we’re making rock music.”

At the time, Charli’s assertion that the “dance floor is dead” was met with a somewhat surprising amount of backlash – with even the Queen of Pop herself, Madonna, appearing to take a pop last month.

During a new interview with Rolling Stone, the British star insisted that the lyric in question was “very much about my relationship with Brat” rather than a commentary on dance music.

“My husband runs a dance-music label,” she pointed out. “There’s been such a wealth of incredible dance/electronic-adjacent records that have been coming out recently, whether it’s Slayyyter or Underscores or PinkPantheress. Dance music is in an incredible place.”

Charli added that while promoting her new music, “the discourse” has been “loud”, which “sometimes” can “be very overwhelming”.

“I am finding it tough to [navigate],” she shared. “I don’t know. I’m finding my emotions are very, very volatile at the minute, I’ll be honest.”

She continued: “I don’t really look [online] as much anymore. It’s just better for my brain. I know people probably won’t believe me, because I am inherently, at least in the past, a very online artist. But I recently have been really struggling with my mental health to the point where, if I’m being real, I’m in the worst place mentally that I’ve been in my life.”

Charli is currently gearing up for the release of her seventh studio album, Music, Fashion, Film, on 24 July.

Last month, she alluded to the muted reception lead singles Rock Music and SS26 have received, telling her social media followers: “I made an album and it’s really different from the last one. That is a fact. And I love it! And you might not, and that’s cool.

“If you do [love the new album] that’s cute, but if you don’t, that’s totally OK because that’s just what it is to have personal preferences. Yeah!”

Earlier this year, Charli claimed during her interview with British Vogue: “If I’d made another album that felt more dance-leaning [after Brat], it would have felt really hard, really sad.

“But what is interesting to me is to bend the possibilities of what my perspective on that could be.”

Admitting that her new music might not be what fans of the dance-pop she’s already known for would want, she noted: “For me, it’s fun to flip the form. We know there’s gonna be people who are bothered by it, but that’s fine.”