It was everywhere — and it was so Julia. It seemed inescapable: clips of Billie Eilish and Lorde “working it out on the remix” were on everyone’s timeline. That fails to mention the striking music videos, the DJ sets hosted by Boiler Room and the star-studded cast of remix collaborators. It also claimed an entire color family: any shade of bright green — chartreuse, neon and key-lime — was adopted as an extension of the album’s aesthetic. Undoubtedly, for many of us, it defined summer 2024. I am of course talking about Charli xcx’s sixth album, “BRAT.”
Indeed, a significant portion of the album’s success was its genius marketing; I think of folks swarming Charli, dancing on top of a car to her own leaked tracks in New York City and Los Angeles. I am also reminded of her private Instagram, @360_brat, where she teased snippets and visuals from the project long before it was released. Her command of these shifting spectacles ignited curiosity not only from the Angels (her fan base), but also from outsiders. What the hell was going on with “BRAT” — and how could new listeners get a piece of its bodacious, cigarette-smoking and Instagram-privated goodness? Truly, the thrill was in the details.
As we approach its first lap around the sun, I want to return to the meat on the bone — the music. Stripped of its celebrity, how do the songs off “BRAT” hold up?
Lead single “Von dutch” was released long before the summer, on Leap Day 2024. Its vocoded melodies were not strange territory for Charli: for listeners of her previous projects — the COVID-19 staple “how i’m feeling now” and the admittedly basic “CRASH” — the single marked a return to her hyper-pop form. Note the lyrical edge, though: she declares in the first three seconds of the track that “it’s okay to just admit that you’re jealous of me.” In tandem with its arena-sized synthesizers and crystalline hi-hats, “Von dutch” is a track concerned with fame — and its repercussions.
Following singles “Club classics” and “B2b” similarly see Charli embracing the kitsch of her fame — “I want to dance to me / When I go to the club” — and its impact on her mental state — “I don’t wanna feel feelings.” Aptly, she’s “want”-ing quite a lot here. That kitsch is supported by the sleek production she raps and sings on top of — particularly in “B2b.” Through hypnotic repetition and a triplet-infused bass line, Charli captures the sheer amount of desire that pulses through the club’s walls — all the while delivering a hit!\
However, this dynamic reverses on “360” with its infectious one-liner “I’m your favorite reference, baby.” As the most successful single and first track of “BRAT,” the song is distinctly lighter than the previous cuts I mentioned. Without percussion, its bubbly synths complement lithe melodic lines that muse on Charli’s position in the pop sphere: in short, everybody wants to be her. And how could they not? “360” is arguably the catchiest moment on the record; even Charli herself goes on to remix it as a final track.
Speaking of this remix, “365” — my second-most streamed song of 2024 — takes the effortless post-chorus of “360” and mutates it into a filmic, sleazy dystopia of an outro. It begins with Charli effortlessly listing off all the instances where she’s “bumping that” — in the club, at home, when she pushes her hair back, when she looks hot… practically everywhere. Once the liquid bass patch kicks in, the production devolves into a wildly cathartic nightmare. Charli described in an interview how the song maps a night of sprawling dance floors and narrow hallways of a never-ending club, the sound burrowing further and further into a drug-induced hysteria. Yet it’s impossible not to dance to the song’s angular synths and thrumming headache of a drop. If anything, the delirium crosses the T of “BRAT.”
Another emotionally and sonically jarring track is “Everything is romantic” — undoubtedly, my favorite cut off the record. My oh my: across the track’s symphonic intro, bombastic percussion and cerebral lyrics about Italian cityscapes, the tonal shifts at play here leave me floundering. That fails to mention the ambient heaven of its outro, where Charli delivers some of the best vocals of her entire career over a looped “fall in love again and again.” Not only does “BRAT” sink its teeth into the sleazy club, it also pans out to the sheer musical prowess surrounding its mythos; certainly, I can’t help but fall in love again and again!
The deeper cuts off “BRAT” are as entrancing as their teasers — and at points, highlight some of Charli’s strongest songwriting to date. “So I” is a tribute to the late SOPHIE, a pioneer in the experimental music landscape. She contrasted earworms with unorthodox production, perhaps most evident on her collaborations with Charli — the “Vroom Vroom” EP, for one. “So I” borrows this sensibility, but instead of braggadocious car puns, the lyrics mourn how distant they became before SOPHIE’s too-soon passing: “You would say, ‘Come on, stay for dinner’ / I’d say, ‘No, I’m fine.’” It acts as “BRAT”’s emotional centerpiece: behind every celebrity lies not only “a hero,” but also “a human.”
Perhaps it’s an impossible task to extricate “BRAT” from its success, then. Charli oscillates between her performative persona and unshackled vulnerability across its 41-minute runtime to an extreme. Bonus track “Guess” even satirizes fans’ attempts to pick apart the public versus the private themes of the record: “You wanna guess the password to my Google Drive.” It’s whiplash. It’s vertigo. It’s alchemical. It’s “BRAT.”
Highlights: “360”, “Von dutch”, “Everything is romantic”, “So I”, “B2b”, “365”, “Guess.”