Final Song In Charli XCX’s New Movie The Moment Explained By Director [Exclusive]

Ever since I saw the film premiere in Park City, I had to ask you this question, because I was just floored, so delighted by the ending. It really made the whole thing come together for me, especially the use of The Verve’s “Bitter Sweet Symphony.” I started punching the air when I started hearing those notes. What was the decision that led to that needle drop? Was there ever pressure or worry of like, “Should we be using a Charli song instead?”

I’m so glad you asked this question, because one, I’m really grateful that the ending landed for you like that. It made me really happy. But yeah, so okay, there’s a couple of really … I’m really glad you asked about this. There’s a couple of reasons that I think “Bitter Sweet Symphony” was the perfect ending to it. One, funny enough, “Bitter Sweet Symphony” has kind of been … I mean, I’ve loved that song for so long. I’ve loved the music video for so long. The Walter Stern music video. It’s an incredible video. Funny enough, that video was one of the main references I had for “360,” the music video, where it’s like someone walking with a terrible attitude, you know what I mean? Unbothered with the world around them. And actually I did dial a lot into that. I’ve never actually got to tell anybody that, but that was one of our key references for “360.”

So it was something that I held in the back of my head as a bit of ethos for the “Brat” attitude, you know what I mean? But then down the line when we were thinking about it again, there’s some other reasons […] I feel like it’s a video where London is presented in a really cool way. And I would always refer back to it when I was talking to Sean about, “I love the way London looks in this music video, that it looks kind of a bit messy and grimy.” So that was also another reference for us there.

Then when I actually came to [“The Moment”] ending, I think “Bitter Sweet Symphony,” it’s such a massive, massive track that it’s obviously a cool and emotional song, but then it’s had this experience in life where it’s become so massive that it’s moved through eras of being extremely cool, to then being overplayed, to being cool again. And it’s kind of experienced all these lives, where it sort of moved beyond being kind of popular in the same way.

The other thing that I thought was very interesting is that for a very long time, The Verve weren’t able to make any money off of that track whatsoever, because it used this sample from The Rolling Stones. And I thought this was such an interesting tie to the idea of the ownership of art and who owns art, and it weirdly tied so thematically to our film. So putting that at the end there, I think it kind of summed up a lot of the main themes of our movie. We were able to get rights to it because I think it was only a couple of years ago, they were actually able to, again, get rights to the track and be able to get royalties off of it. Charli wrote a letter to Richard Ashcroft, and he was really happy for us to use the song, which was really cool.

Yeah, it’s a super emotional track, and it’s also got this kind of curse of being so overplayed and so in the zeitgeist, but also outside of it. And then obviously that kind of funny relationship with ownership, which is what we play with in our film. Similarly, when we go to A.G. [Cook]’s remix of “I Love It,” again, that’s the only other kind of needle drop in the film. But it’s again, a song which has had the same kind of relationship with creative ownership. Charli wrote this song for Icona Pop. It was an Icona Pop song for a very long time. Now it’s kind of Charli’s song again, but it’s all a bit muddy and a bit wooly. So I thought it was really cool to have these two tracks back to back that have had this funny life and relationship with credit, creative ownership, that kind of thing. And also, we did think it was cool that there’s never … all music in the film is either score, either A.G.’s score or it’s Charli practicing a track, so it’s slightly heard diegetically. I thought it was kind of cool to finish on a song that wasn’t hers. It was also another kind of like — what’s the word I’m looking for — a kind of emancipation from “Brat.” [laughs]

“The Moment” is in theaters now.