’Twas the end of October, and so everywhere
The Sweat tour had wrapped like it’d just gotten here.
We’d danced to the apple fall’n far from the tree.
Dedicated ourselves and our streams to Charli.
The world was chartreuse and pop rang in our heads,
Unsure if Brat Summer had come to an end.
There’s no question about it, Charli xcx’s “BRAT” has taken the world — and the Internet — by storm. Although the album’s initial promotion and contentious artistic direction turned heads and split opinions (perhaps down symmetrical lines), the electric green shade and Arial fontsoon became synonymous with the season’s hottest lifestyle: living “Von Dutch,” living freely, and living one’s own “Brat Summer.”
In the leadup to the album’s release in early June, Charli teased diligently: three singles, two of which sporting star-studded remixes, an album cover sneak-peak with copious X backlash, and a big bright NYC billboard to match. The success wasn’t premeditated, with even Charli crediting its stylization to the belief that the album wouldn’t appeal to a large audience. She’d rather spend the budget elsewhere, leaving her fanbase to ooze with confliction on if the album artwork was disappointing or if people just weren’t “getting it” as much as they should. Debuting with 75.4 million streams within its first week, it quickly came to light that Charli’s brash marketing garnered not only fan discussion, but universal attention.
Charli xcx has always bubbled under the surface of pure pop-stardom. Her vocals dominated the 2010s radios via Icona Pop’s “I Love It,” Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy,” and her own “Boom Clap,” yet the majority of her independent work didn’t reach the same wavelength asthe general public. Gravitating around the general orbit of dance and electro-pop, her music has begun to veer further and further into the sphere of experimentalism. Charli’s 2016 “Vroom Vroom” EP, a bass-whomping collaboration with SOPHIE, faced criticism from Pitchfork as being “pointedly uncommercial and abrasive” — much to the author’s future regrets. “Number 1 Angel” (2017), “Pop 2” (2017), and “how i’m feeling now” (2020) leaned heavily into the experimental production influence from PC Music’s A.G. Cook, an attribute seemingly abandoned on her 2022 radio-pop attempt of “Crash.” In the meantime, her work found a dedicated fan base — the army of “Charli’s Angels” neck deep in internet subculture (e.g. r/popheads). “I’ve always been caught in this dichotomy of am I a left-field, underground artist or am I supposed to be a popstar,” Charli stated in an interview with Apple Music. “BRAT,” relishing in a behemoth of public acclaim, pulls from the best of both worlds.
Through and through, “BRAT” is a club album. Its sound derives from a place close to Charli’s heart and start as an musician: the London rave scene and its “unique minimalism that is very loud and bold.” “BRAT”’s motifs of party culture, rebellion, and self-exploration thrive in this paradigm: brash, aggressive, and often choppy sounds that form the mental tapestry of Charli’s non-stop, don’t stop (likely drug-induced) state of mind. At times, it comes off unpolished in artistic process and unpleasing to the ear, draped with imperfect synth harmonies and lyricism that reads more of a journal entry than a professionally-released album. However, Charli has made it abundantly clear that “BRAT” is a work made with intention, and not with the goal to appeal to the widest audience possible. BRAT is divisive and and rough around the edges, which caught it the appeal of critics and consumers alike, amassing over a billion streams and a whopping 95/100 on Metacritic. Ironically, the album was incredibly accessible, and everyone wanted a piece of the “BRAT” apple pie.
June marched on, and both the cultural and environmental climate adjusted to welcome “Brat Summer” into full swing. In contrast with 2023’s Barbenheimer blowout devoted to whether one finds themself to be an “Oppenheimer son or Barbie daughter,” “living that life” in the eyes of Charli xcx centered around everyone’s favorite unofficial golden rule: have fun. Whether this consisted of “bumpin’ that” per the encouragement of “365” or “fall[ing] in love again and again” (as discussed on “Everything is romantic”), Brat Summer centered around self-authenticity and living one’s life to the fullest. “fyi a big part of brat summer is having a reluctant bf who’s frankly over it <33,” Charli chimed in via TikTok, adding a new piece to the constantly evolving definition. However, as the concept expanded, people began to worry they might not fit the target demographic.
“charli what if i’m single, what do i do with brat summer then,” cites the top comment on her post. “How to have a brat summer when you’re old/fat/ugly?” asks u/Adept_Act8681 on Reddit, a wide issue for an album whose concept was so intertwined with the blessing of youth. Many arose with similar questions, and handfuls of articles attempted to answer them on the vast sea of the internet. “What is Brat summer? How do I have one? Who is Kamala Harris and how can I vote for her after Charli XCX’s most recent tweet?” The concept of “Brat Summer” quickly became deeply over-philosophized, entirely antithetical to an album that focused on letting go and simply not bothering to care.
Yet, above any fan discussion, Charli kept an acrylic-nailed grip on the flow of the culture: queueing the remix album and Sweat tour.
From “BRAT”’s initial release, and the subsequent release of “Brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not” three days later, fans quickly rushed to theorize a deeper meaning to a handful of the album’s tracks. Beyond the official tribute to the late SOPHIE in “So I,” listeners questioned if the album’s celebrity critiques were inspired by any specific names. While fans likened “Sympathy as a knife”’s take on the cutthroat music industry to her competitve relationship with Taylor Swift, “Girl, so confusing”’s love-hate letter to a fellow popstar was debated to be about musicians including MARINA, Lorde, and Rina Sawayama.While the former is still up for interpretation, the latter was confirmed to be Lorde through Charli’s next release, in which the pair “work[ed] it out on the remix” and voiced the cage-y nature forced on them as women in the music industry. As with any fairytale friendship ending, the moment looped full circle when three months later, the pair performed their track together at Madison Square Garden — a momentous occasion for cult fanatics and people who just love to record celebrities at concerts.
In part to the Sweat tour — co-headlined by Charli xcx and Troye Sivan — and its encouragement of phone fanatic culture, Charli let the fans do the marketing for her. Many videos found themselves unleashed from the concert pit to the throes of TikTok and X, giving anyone the chance to glimpse the show and its sights from 20 different angles. Bright green billboards adorned with musicians’ names began to pop up internationally, digitally scrapbooked by fans in the anticipation of a potential remix album. Charli officially broke the news at her Oct. 7 Orlando concert: “This is the tracklist with all the features — I need someone to take a picture of it and put it online, okay,” she yelled, tossing a crumpled paper ball into the audience.
“Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat” hit the internet full slam on Oct. 11, boasting similar acclaim via tracks that playfully ricocheted off of the original album. “i think songs are endless and have the possibility to be continuously […] reworked into something completely unrecognizable. that’s what i wanted to do with this record,” said Charli on Instagram, a testament to the album’s roots in shifting club culture and a rebellion against that staticism often seen with today’s media releases. The remix album serves almost as a call and response to the first release back in June, one packed to the brim with collaboration and an admiration for the artform of sound.
At this point, it’s been months since “BRAT” was first teased. We’re a handful of trends later, and dawning upon the season of end of year recaps and award shows that seem to dictate grand say in what was good, what was bad, and what was relevant. Yet, as Collins English Dictionary has just crowned “Brat” as 2024’s word of the year, “characterized by a confident, independent and hedonistic attitude,” the album’s season may have been fruitful longer than any of us — including Charli — expected. And, whether you’re bumpin’ that or not, the short-term “Brat Summer” may be the stepping stone to a long, luxurious Brat life.
