BRAT proves why Charli XCX is Pop Culture’s Favourite Reference, Baby
PRESS PHOTO COURTESY OF ATLANTIC RECORDS
Charli XCX has had one of the most interesting pop careers as of late, starting out as a Myspace era rave DJ before pivoting to full-on pop star with a spate of hits in 2014. While she could have continued this trajectory and probably racked up more chart-topping hits, she instead gravitated toward the experimental production of the PC Music scene with her first hyperpop recording, the Vroom Vroom EP in 2016. Charli has since occupied the pop middle class; a veritable pop star but with an alternative appeal. Releases like Number 1 Angel, Pop 2, Charli, and How I’m Feeling Now all solidified her as a name in experimental pop, embracing the harsh fluorescents of PC Music as opposed to a more mainstream sound.
At some point, though, Charli seems to have decided she’d had enough of merely being a cult classic. Crash (2022) posited itself as the answer to the question, “What if Charli sold out?” The album was her highest charting ever. This was helped in no small part by its much easier listening experience compared to her previous output, embracing the warmer palette of mainstream radio pop instead of cold, synthetic PC Music soundscapes. However, much of her core fanbase felt unsatisfied with this bid to a more mainstream sound. This left her in an odd middle ground between “selling out” to classic success paths and maintaining her experimental reputation. It was in this middle ground that BRAT was created.
Charli returning to her club kid roots at the London PARTYGIRL DJ set July 6, 2024.
PHOTO BY ITAMAR KONDOLOGIT
BRAT openly rejects the sell-out aesthetic of Crash, instead embracing the subcultural “cool” that Charli had come to be known for up until that point. Club cultures are cultures of taste; what Charli presents us with BRAT is a particular vision of what “cool” looks like to her, name dropping characters from NYC nightlife (“360,” “Mean Girls,” “Guess”) and the notion of a “cult classic” (“Von Dutch”). This type of cool isn’t exclusive to the lyrical content of the album though, with Charli bringing back PC Music producers AG Cook and Easyfun to produce a set of minimalist club bangers, keeping with her pre-Crash discography.
Charli released this album at a very interesting time, at least for people who care about the niche aesthetics pop stars experiment with. The likes of Katy Perry, Camilla Cabello, and Halsey have all tried on a hyperpop persona which echo Charli’s carefully curated sense of cool. But these efforts betray just how valuable subcultures and their dedicated fans are to the entertainment industry as a whole. Camilla Cabello’s attempts to co-opt the hyperpop sound on C,XOXO (2024) continue to fall flat because the audience knows she’s never been a club kid; she doesn’t fully understand how to meld the imagery of hyperpop with the sound itself. It’s difficult to buy an artist as compellingly cool in a comparatively underground way if they have multiple Drake features on their record. In contrast, because Charli has been so heavily involved in hyperpop and club culture, the performance feels authentic. This “coolness” is a particular form of social capital. By leveraging her club roots, Charli is able to cash in on this social capital in a way that feels compelling and authentic to her audience.
What makes BRAT more effective than these mid-career aesthetic pivots is the way Charli’s feels rooted in authenticity. Despite her flirtations with mainstream stardom, Charli has always had rave culture at her core. She began on Myspace, performing at raves as a teenager with parental supervision. BRAT aesthetically leans much more toward these dance influences than it does toward the clear cut pop of Crash. It’s as if How I’m Feeling Now has left the quarantined apartment and hit the club instead. This is what makes BRAT work; it feels entirely authentic to who Charli is to drop an album like this. There is zero affectation, just 50 minutes of club bangers to lose yourself in.
However, BRAT is not just an album; it’s a live show, an experience, an entire summer. The marketing campaign and tour for this album have been just as integral to its success as the quality of the music itself. Charli has accompanied the club album with not just a live tour, but with a series of PARTYGIRL DJ sets, which almost feel like the best way to take in the new album. A YouTube comment on her boileroom set says it all: “born to be a rave dj, forced to be a pop icon.” It’s this bold authenticity that Charli brings to both the album and the promotional cycle that has allowed it to capture the club culture zeitgeist .
Charli presents a multifaceted image of the club experience on BRAT July 6, 2024. PHOTO BY ITAMAR KONDOLOGIT
But, while BRAT is sold to us as a club album, and that is what it is, Charli shows a more multifaceted image of the club experience than you might expect. Sure, there are the expected dance bangers (“360,” “365,” “Mean Girls,” “Club Classics”), but there’s also striking moments of vulnerability which you might not expect on a record about clubbing. “I think about it all the time” is an oddly moving song about Charli’s desire to have a child but feeling like she’s running out of time to do it. “Sympathy is a knife” is about jealousy toward another pop star; similarly, “Girl, so confusing” is about the confusing ambiguity of her dynamic with another pop star (probably Lorde, given the follow-up remix collab) who she is often visually compared to.
Charli pulls off this emotional dynamism because she authentically embodies the aesthetic vision she presents with this album. She knows what it’s like to be a party girl, she’s not just trying it on as a costume. We believe her when she says she struggles with snagging her tights on a lawn chair (“I might say something stupid”) or feels the occasional bout of existential dread (“I think about it all the time”). This contrast works, though. Every club night has a hangover; for every high, there is a corresponding comedown. What Charli shows she understands on this record is that to have one is to have the other in equal presence, and the resulting album is one of her most multifaceted and critically acclaimed records yet.
