Charli XCX Sang With the Strokes? Cool

Charli XCX joined the Strokes onstage during their Outside Lands 2026 set in San Francisco, performing "Take It or Leave It" from their 2001 album Is This It. Julian Casablancas invited "Charli motherfucking XCX" up during the band's performance, playfully acknowledging that her new album had outsold theirs on the charts. The guest appearance drew attention partly because Charli's latest record has been widely compared to the Strokes' guitar-driven sound, despite her insistence that it should not be pigeonholed as rock music.

Charli had performed her own headline set at the festival, held in Golden Gate Park, the night before joining the Strokes. Casablancas noted that her new album, Music, Fashion, Film, had beaten the Strokes' Reality Awaits on the Billboard 200, jokingly crowning her "queen of everything" before their duet. The pairing echoed an earlier collaboration, as Casablancas had already featured on Charli's 2024 remix album, and both new records share stylistic traits including raw guitars and spoken-word segments. When pressed on comparisons between her track "Magic Metal Montana" and the Strokes' "Soma," however, Charli gave little away, replying simply "Cool."