It’s hard for me to remember a time before BRAT. Charli XCX’s sixth studio album was released on June 7, 2024, less than four months ago, yet it feels like it’s been years since then.
I specifically remember pressing play on leaked BRAT music files a few hours before the release time, just too impatient to wait the five-ish hours till the official release. But the serotonin release from listening to BRAT has since faded for me, somewhere between all the “Kamala is brat” memes, the Apple dances, Boiler Room DJ sets, bright strobe lights, and the constantly obnoxious bright green color.
This isn’t all to say that I don’t care for BRAT anymore — it’s still my favorite and most streamed album this year; according to my Last.fm, I have listened to a total of 54 hours of BRAT this year. I have always been a huge Charli XCX fan through and through. It’s fascinating to me that in the world of pop music, Charli XCX is so singular. As much as Charli’s music is undeniably pop, her constant subversion of the mainstream pop conventions through her collaborations with electronic producers like SOPHIE, A.G. Cook, Dylan Brady, Hudmo, or Easyfun always leaves something to be transfixed on with her music.
Charli XCX began teasing her sixth studio album, later revealed as BRAT, in May 2023. She told fans to follow her new Instagram account “@360_brat,” which she eventually privatized, trapping any early fans and intentionally excluding those who weren’t quick enough. At the time, no one knew that the “brat” in @360_brat would be the album’s title or that “360” would become a single—the elusive 6th album would only be referred to as “xcx6.” Among the few initial posts was a picture of a toilet with a bright green light shining from the bowl, captioned, “it’s not finished. there is no release date. don’t ask me” (Posted on March 30, 2023).
‘Von Dutch’ would be the first single from “xcx6,” released on February 28, 2024, nine months after the debut of ‘@360_brat.’ On the day of the ‘Von Dutch’ release, she revealed the album title and cover, a lime green square with “brat” printed on it in slightly blurred Arial font. Obviously, in hindsight it’s easy to recognize how genius the cover is, it’s instantly iconic and always stands out; not to mention how easily replicable it is. But when Charli revealed the album artwork, the fans absolutely hated it. It’s one thing to make your artwork minimalistic or simple, but the slightly blurry Arial font on a stomach-turning neon green left most Charli fans confused.
It’s unlike any pop artist to make a cover that says so little. Album art has always been the thesis statement of a pop album, especially for Charli, and all she did this time was slap the word ‘brat’ on a green background. Many fans thought it was incredibly ugly and had a lazy “graphic design is my passion” vibe, other fans hoped the cover was a placeholder and she would eventually reveal the “real” cover of BRAT (which never happened despite Charli joking that it was a placeholder on April Fools).
Charli XCX later explained the album cover to Rolling Stone UK, “I’m not trying to give you something pretty, I’m trying to make you think. I’m trying to make you look at yourself and wonder why it bothers you so much that my face isn’t on the cover, […] what does that say about what you expect from your artists? What does that say about me as an artist? Does it make me stupid to do that? Does it make me brave to do that? Does it make me lazy to do that?”
At the core, BRAT is about being blunt and vulnerable. It’s not about actually being impossibly gorgeous or “number one,” but about using that feeling to cover up your deep rooted insecurity. On BRAT, Charli goes from songs where she says, “It’s okay to just admit that you’re jealous of me” to others where she says “I couldn’t even be her if I tried.” To be brat is to act out and be brash, almost volatile, which has become increasingly rare and more vulnerable in a world where celebrities are PR-trained to not create any drama or make explicit opinions on really anything.
Other musicians get praised for being vulnerable or deep, but to Charli, the most vulnerable thing one could do is unmask that blatant confidence and brashness into something more meaningful. Charli had been demonstrating this up to BRAT‘s release, like teasing which songs were about which celebrities or directly “feuding” with other ones, making what every pop star keeps implicit and making it as obvious and in your face as possible.
But when Charli initially released BRAT on June 7, after a few singles with “360” and “Club classics/B2b,” it didn’t really take off all that much. Charli has always had a complicated relationship with the mainstream. Her previous album, CRASH, which she called her “sell-out era,” technically became her most successful album, yet there wasn’t a major commercial hit and wasn’t a standout release of the year. And as much as Charli fans were incredibly excited by the release of BRAT, Charli hadn’t really charted or made a huge culture-altering buzz since her 2014-era hits. But then, BRAT finally took off.
Maybe it was the many music critics who said BRAT was Charli’s best work yet, maybe it was the incredibly striking cover, maybe the brat mentality had finally connected with the masses, or maybe the music was just that good, but for the first time in a while, Charli had a way into the cultural consciousness. The backlash over BRAT‘s cover had faded, almost as though the aesthetics and attitude of BRAT had slowly bled into the minds of fans. Social media timelines were flooded with neon green profile pictures and influencers started using BRAT songs in their posts which eventually led to a dance to “Apple” going viral. Finally, BRAT had gotten the commercial success that had been due to Charli since 2014.
But now that BRAT is Charli’s most successful album ever, it leaves me sort of bitter. Sure, a lot of that is due to the innate resentment of liking something underground before it becomes mainstream but it’s not as simple as that. I can’t help but feel like BRAT is constantly being shoved down my throat, like there’s always something on Instagram or Twitter about BRAT.
Three new brat vinyl variants are up on Charli’s store now, a new remix with Addison Rae, a new update to the brat wall, a new brat tour, more brat merch, Charli just dissed Taylor Swift on Twitter, another vinyl variant, a new song from brat is trending on TikTok, Camila Cabello just stole the brat aesthetic, Charli just teased a new song for the deluxe with The Dare, another vinyl variant for the deluxe version, another remix with Lorde, new brat merch now at H&M and Urban Outfitters, another brat tour, a remix with Billie Eilish, another remix with Troye Sivan, now there’s a whole remix album and a vinyl variant for that too, Taylor Swift just snubbed Charli on the UK Charts, Charli just said US presidential candidate Kamala Harris is brat — whatever that means, and it’s a brat summer, but then it’s gonna be brat autumn, and then brat winter and brat spring until you eventually die and you go to brat heaven and everyone goes to your brat funeral. Is this fun? Are you having fun yet?
Charli has always been driven by the contradiction of loving pop music while constantly feeling the need to rebel against the pop machine. In an era of relatable pop stars where billionaire titans of the music industry sing about being constantly distressed by their relationships or job, Charli XCX, a relatively niche popstar bolstered enough by her past hits to still be (somewhat) a household name, released an electronic dance-pop 2010’s-rave-revival album about how much better she is than you and it worked.
So, as much as I love BRAT, there was never a brat summer. Just because I heard the word brat, saw the brat color, and listened to the songs of BRAT during my summer does not make it a brat summer. How dare you take the title of my summer and add an advertisement at the beginning of it? Hasn’t BRAT taken enough from me already?
P.S. The correct capitalization of BRAT is kind of unclear. While the cover clearly shows ‘brat,’ all in lowercase, the album on music streaming services is entirely capitalized, ‘BRAT;’ which is similar to how Charli’s last album was titled (‘CRASH’). But both of these capitalization styles go against how each of the songs are titled, which is specifically in sentence case (i.e. ‘Sympathy is a knife’ or ‘I think about it all the time’); this style even changed how Charli XCX’s name was capitalized on music streaming services, now “Charli xcx.” This sentence case styling was eventually used in the album title when the deluxe version came out, ‘Brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not.’ I specifically chose to use the capitalization of the initial release, ‘BRAT,’ when talking about the album and then used whatever was correct when obliquely referring to the brand of ‘brat.’
