At the Outside Lands festival in San Francisco, pop artist Charli XCX joined the Strokes during their set to perform the 2001 track 'Take It or Leave It,' trading verses with frontman Julian Casablancas. The appearance took on additional resonance given that Charli's new album 'Music, Fashion, Film' had recently outsold the Strokes' latest release 'Reality Awaits' on the Billboard chart. Casablancas responded with playful humour, bowing to Charli's commercial success and introducing her to the crowd with theatrical fanfare. The two musicians had previously worked together on a 2024 remix collaboration, suggesting an established working relationship.

The performance raises questions about Charli's artistic positioning. Her latest album has prompted widespread rock comparisons owing to its raw guitar textures and aesthetic attitude, yet Charli has publicly resisted rock genre classification, describing such categorisation as outdated. When her lead single 'Rock Music' and stylistic parallels to bands like the Strokes were raised in interviews, she emphasised her preference for artistry outside fixed genre boundaries, noting that work need not be either earnest or ironic—it can function as both simultaneously. Whether the onstage collaboration represented genuine artistic alignment, commentary on the ongoing genre debate, or simply an opportunistic musical moment remains deliberately unclear.