BRAT by Charli XCX

Released on 07/06/2024 by Atlantic Records
Main artists: Charli XCX
Genre: Electronic
Distinctions: Pitchfork: Best New Music

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As a follow-up to the release of her most commercially successful album to date, 2022's Crash, Charli XCX could've easily followed the perfect-pop-pipeline, but instead she ended her contract and returned to her roots. With a sigh of relief from the hoard of fans she amassed over a 16-year career, the queen of MySpace and indie sleaze gave a middle finger to the execs and birthed brat. The era of chronically-online relatability has stars trying to prove they're just like their fans (despite obvious fame and fortune) but Charli XCX has embraced her pop icon status. She's not like you; she's a star, and she's earned it.

brat was made for the pre-party, the club, and the stumble home. The mix of distorted bass, crunching percussion, pulsating beats, and frequent Auto-Tune transports you to the sticky, moist bathrooms of an East London venue, where music blares through paper-thin walls as groups of girls cram into single cubicles.

Beyond the plaster walls of Charli's party palace lies a soft and vulnerable monarch at its centre. Tracks like "Sympathy is a knife," "I might say something stupid," and "Girl, so confusing" tackle surprisingly deep topics like the nuances of being a woman in a music industry where artists are frequently pitted against each other, the biological clock of motherhood ticking away, and the deep insecurities we all contemplate on the 5 a.m. bus ride home from the club with echoes of a 4/4 kick drum still throbbing in our head. brat's most touching moment comes on "So I," a heartbreaking track dedicated to the late artist SOPHIE, whose influence on Charli is evident throughout the album. (Cue the tears on the dancefloor.)

In true party girl fashion, Charli ends on an upbeat note with "Mean girls" (sure to be a fan favourite) and "365," a propulsive, rave-ready take on the opening track "360," signalling that despite the tears, the party must go on.

Charli XCX is a true tastemaker, as any It Girl should be, and the list of producers on brat should be enough to intrigue. At the helm of the project is her longtime collaborator A.G. Cook, the founder of the iconic PC Music label who is synonymous with hyperpop's popularity. Also in Charli's inner circle are UK producers Hudson Mohawke and Easyfun, as well as Gesaffelstein and Cirkut (who frequently works with Max Martin), who bring their unique presence to tie all of her intimate thoughts together with experimental flair in a perfectly underground-pop way that can only now be described as "so Charli." Her creative world has always centered around a tight-knit circle of boundary-pushing artists; early collaborations have elevated future stars like Troye Sivan, Rina Sawayama, Kim Petras, Caroline Polachek, SOPHIE and MØ. That communal feeling takes brat from a 9 to a 10.

Making the album "the Charli Show" would've been easy—predictable of a popstar even—but instead brat feels like an intimate creative exchange among those shaping the future of music, a real insight into the minds of artists who are refreshingly on the same wavelength.

brat is subversive; it's relevant; it's culturally "now." It exemplifies what happens when artists are allowed to thrive in their own world, free from decisions made by suits in boardrooms. Charli XCX has reclaimed her music. She's relatable. She's everywhere. (She's so Julia.) © Jess Porter-Langson/Qobuz

Charli XCX

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