Charli XCX's Two ACL Sets Had Two Different Surprise Guests

The first chord of Charli XCX’s headline set at Austin City Limits did not come from a synth. It came from a wall of guitar. Her band opened “Rock Music” with it on Friday 2 October, straight after a monologue from the director David Cronenberg, and “I got the chills,” one fan said, according to the Austin American-Statesman. A week later, on 9 October, she headlined the festival’s second weekend with a set re-edited for the dance floor, and with a different surprise guest.

Two weekends, two guests and two quite different shapes of the same show. Here is how the first set was built, what each guest brought, how the second weekend leaned harder into club music, and where the Music, Fashion, Film Tour goes next.

Why the Set Opened on a Wall of Guitar

That opening was a production choice long before it was a stage choice. Music, Fashion, Film, released on 24 July through Atlantic, was produced entirely by A. G. Cook and Finn Keane, according to Resident Advisor’s review. RA still heard the glimmering quality of the duo’s pop production in places, “like on the shining synth melodies of ‘Camera’ or the deep warbling sub-bass on ‘Card Declined'”, but found it “locked behind a steady flow of Pixies-esque guitar crunch and drum machine automation.”

Exclaim! described the same trick from the other side, with Charli and her two producers “fuzzing out synths like guitar and melting guitar into metalloid textures.” On the record, then, the line between the two instruments is blurred on purpose. A synth line is distorted until it reads as a guitar. A guitar is processed until it sounds hard, metallic and machine-made. Underneath both run drum machines.

On a festival stage, the most direct way to carry that sound is a band, and that is what Charli XCX brought to Zilker Park: guitars leading from the first bar. It marks the break RA described, away from the party-girl persona of the Brat years and towards rougher, more candid material, and the set did not hide the change.

The lead single sets the terms. In “Rock Music”, Charli muses that the dance floor is now dead, as RA put it, and the track’s “little vocal chops” sit among the guitars. Exclaim! noted that she delivers its lines “in subtle AutoTune”. Opening a headline set with it was a clear signal: this tour starts from the new record, not from the old one.

How the First Weekend Was Built, Song by Song

According to setlist.fm, the 2 October show on the American Express Stage ran to 25 songs. After “Rock Music” and “Yeah”, she moved into “Apple”, “Wink Wink” and “Card Declined”. The pairing of those last two is neat on paper: RA wrote that “Wink Wink” brims with “whimsical synth melodies”, while “Card Declined” is the one built on that warbling sub-bass.

The staging escalated quickly. The Statesman reported that “Pink Diamond” delivered a throwback moment and that “House” came with fireworks timed to the beat and flames erupting at the end. The stage itself was built on several levels, with black-and-white visuals, and for “party 4 u” near the end Charli appeared on the top tier of the structure.

Most of the Brat material arrived in one run after the guest spot: “Club classics”, the Shygirl remix of “365”, “360”, “Sympathy is a knife”, “Von dutch” and the Billie Eilish remix of “Guess”. Elsewhere in the set she played the Lorde remix of “Girl, so confusing”, without bringing Lorde out. Choosing remix versions over album cuts matters for the sound of the night. The older songs arrive in their reworked arrangements, so they sit beside the new material rather than repeating 2024 note for note.

“Guess” also produced the effect that made the Statesman’s headline. “Underwear exploded from the stage in a cloud of confetti,” its reviewer, Ana Gutierrez, wrote, in a field that rain had already turned to mud.

Setlist.fm noted the live band joining Charli onstage later in the set for “If You Take Away the Music Then What Has She Got?”, “2007” and “Camera”, the song RA singled out for “the watery delay that gives ‘Camera’ its urgency.” The close returned to the new era: “Playboy Bunny”, “SS26” and finally “No One Lasts Forever”. When the set ended, the words “Oblivion is freedom” flashed across the screen.

Two Live Debuts From the First Guest

The first weekend’s surprise came straight after “House”. Charli welcomed Troye Sivan, her co-headliner on the Sweat Tour in 2024. The Statesman noted that the pair have also collaborated on “1999” and on a “Talk talk” remix, and that fans had spotted him around Austin earlier that day.

He did not revisit any of their shared material. Instead he used the slot to introduce new songs of his own. Setlist.fm reported that he performed “Le boy” for the first time, followed by the live debut of “Party”. Both are from his album She’s The Best, which was due on 9 October, the same day as Charli’s second Austin date. According to the Statesman, the two did not perform together.

ElectroPop.News has already looked at how a Madonna sample runs through Troye Sivan’s “Party”. Austin heard that track live before anyone else, a week ahead of the album, on another artist’s stage.

The Second Weekend Leaned Into the Club

On 7 October, Charli teased the follow-up on X: “acl weekend 2 i have a surprise for you.. <3”. Speculation, according to The Baylor Lariat, ran to Madonna or Lorde. The guest turned out to be Tinashe.

The Lariat’s reviewers, Kalena Reynolds, Sophia Monson and Arden Berry, found a very different festival on 9 October. The muddy first weekend had given way to a “dusty and dry” Zilker Park, and Kings of Leon shared the night’s headline billing. The crowd, many dressed in Brat green, danced enthusiastically when Charli moved into “Guess” and “Club Classics”.

Their most useful line is a production note: “The set was transformed by remixes that included samples from EDM hits and extended dance-centered intros.” Both are DJ techniques. A longer intro gives a field time to lock on to the kick drum before the vocal arrives, and a sample from a familiar dance record works as a cue that a large crowd recognises in seconds. One week after opening on guitars, the show had been re-edited towards the dance floor that “Rock Music” declares dead.

Tinashe arrived with momentum of her own. Her album Popstar, released on 25 September, had just debuted at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 with 35,500 equivalent album units, her first top-10 album and far above the No. 17 peak of Aquarius in 2014, as Ratings Game Music reported. The Lariat described a dance-led performance in red leather, after which Charli reappeared to finish her own set.

What the Two Sets Reveal About the Record

Reviews of Music, Fashion, Film were split. RA called the album “bracing, if rarely classic”, and felt its diary-style writing wears thin by “Magic Metal Montana”, a tribute to Cook. Exclaim! was warmer, describing a record “chic in simplicity, messy with a little snarl”.

On a festival stage, the record’s choices make more practical sense. Guitars give a large outdoor PA something physical to push. A drum-machine grid, like the one RA hears across the album, can carry a set from band songs into a dance block without a change of gear. And the remix versions of the older songs let them sit beside the new material without breaking the night’s palette. The Statesman’s verdict was that the production has grown, with more levels, more choreography and more visual spectacle, while the sentiment has become “smaller and more human.”

The sequencing has its own logic too. The first weekend opened with Cronenberg’s voice and closed with “No One Lasts Forever”, the album track on which the director speaks, so the set began and ended with the same guest voice from the record. In between sat a run of Brat songs the crowd already knew, which is how a headliner keeps a festival field on side while asking it to learn a new sound. The Statesman noticed the gap: not many people knew the lyrics to the new material yet.

The second weekend shows how flexible the format is. Remixes with EDM samples and longer intros are edits, not new songs, and edits are the easiest part of a live show to change from one week to the next. For a headliner playing the same park twice in eight days, that is a sensible way to make the second visit feel new without rebuilding the production.

Where the Music, Fashion, Film Tour Goes Next

The North American arena run continues for two more weeks, according to setlist.fm: Viejas Arena in San Diego on 14 October, two nights at the Kia Forum in Inglewood on 17 and 18 October, Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale on 21 October and MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on 23 October.

Then the tour crosses the Atlantic. Charli XCX plays Dublin’s 3Arena on 13 February 2027, the OVO Hydro in Glasgow on 15 February, Co-op Live in Manchester on 17 February and The O2 in London on 19 and 20 February, before the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam on 22 February and the Accor Arena in Paris on 24 February.

When the North American dates were announced in June, NME reported a limited run of $20 “Angel Tickets”, sold in pairs, and charity tickets in the first five rows of each venue, with 50 per cent of the net proceeds going to the Transgender Law Center. The open question for the European leg is which version of the show arrives in February: the guitar-first set of the first Austin weekend, or the club edit of the second.