Charli XCX‘s career has been incredibly fun to be a fan of for the past decade. She started as a song stealing hook performer but like a lot of artists in the pop and rap world couldn’t really figure it out on her own albums and after two misses, her label essentially tried to shelf her. It took Charli centering herself in a complete reimagination of what pop could be alongside PC Music producers like Sophie and AG Cook to string together enough excellent material for Atlantic to accept that they had one of the biggest trendsetters in the music world on the shelf.
2019s Charli and 2020s how i’m feeling right now are two of my favorite albums, and are some of the best albums to come out in recent years (HIFRN is my favorite album of 2020. It was a weak music year cause of the plague but still) regardless of genre. I was incredibly excited for the Cronenberg-inspired CRASH, a celebration of her failed first record deal, but was ultimately a bit disappointed due to how familiar it sounded to some of the other artists in the pop lane. Lots of it sounded like supercharged Dua Lipa and that’s just not a good use of Charli’s talent.
After taking some time off Charli’s return, Brat, is one of those artistic highpoints that makes following an artist for a decade worth it.
Brat isn’t a full remake or reinvention of Charli’s sound, it’s more of a celebration of everything that has made Charli special over the years with an even more heightened respect and appreciation for the genres of pop and electronic that Charli has thrived in. The plain aspects of CRASH have completely been replaced with a return to some of the hyperpop wonder that Charli helped pioneer. Beyond the normal pop and hyperpop roots in her work, Brat deeply explores Charli’s earliest days when she worked out of underground clubs in London’s rave scene. Her discography has always been club-friendly and party-inspired, but Brat takes it up to 11 and puts the raving at the center. With AG Cook, Cirkut, and a few other wonderful producers assisting to make Brat sound incredibly rich.
Leading up Brat dropping, the singles that came out were some of my favorite tracks I’ve heard all year – Charli picked two perfect table setters here. “Von dutch” has one of the best hooks Charli’s ever made. The beat races for every second of the track, and I could not think of a more energetic cut to symbolize what the album is going to be like. The follow-up single “360” is even better for me. The moment Charli’s vocals kick in and she draws out the ‘I’ is one of the most replayable couple seconds of a song I’ve ever heard. I love the remix with Robyn and Yung Lean as well (for her next career move Charli should join Drain Gang. This is not a joke.). Good news if you enjoyed “360” as much as I did, the closer “365” samples it and Charli uses the original as a means to trap herself and the listener in a never ending, coke-filled, lopping rave for the rest of eternity. No one does it like her.
It’s a deep album as well, Brat doesn’t have anything even resembling a skippable track. The tribute to Charli’s legendary former collaborator Sophie on “So I” is a wonderful exploration into grief, without making any effort to gloss over some of the flaws in their working and personal relationships. It’s especially nice that this was released after St. Vincent’s cringe-worthy attempt at something similar earlier this year. I always love when Charli knows she’s got something sonically because she will not hesitate to cram as much of it into a track as she can. “Everything is romantic” is one of her best moments of this. ‘Fall in love again and again’ is repeated about 50 times and it never misses and I love her going back to the cyclical nature she feels partying is like. “Talk talk” is one of the simplest moments on the album, it’s damn near a normal dance-pop track, but it still sounds so fucking good due to Charli’s inability to just do ordinary.
‘Always on my mind (Every day, every night)
Your star burns so bright (Why did I push you away?)
I was scared sometimes
You had a power like a lightning strike
When I’m on stage, sometimes I lie
Say that I like singing these songs you left behind
And I know you always said, ‘It’s okay to cry‘
So I know I can cry, I can cry, so I cry’
Charli is an incredible songwriter in terms of melody and making catchy ass hooks that can’t be forgotten. She’s responsible for some of the most popular tracks of the 2010s, and that was before Charli really found herself musically on Vroom Vroom, but lyrics have never necessarily been her biggest thing. She’s far from a completely vapid and soulless writer, but let’s be real, Charli likes to have a good time, likes to make music about having a good time, and wants you to have a good time listening. There are some moments here and there in her discography, like on the pandemic inspired how i’m feeling now, and the excellent self titled album, where you get some quality introspection, but the jump on Brat is massive and easily the best writing of Charli’s life.
“I might say something stupid” highlights Charli’s insecurities about playing the role of party girl and how it frequently acts as a shield for her to hide behind. It’s a short and slow track but it works exceptionally well as a detour in between some of the more energetic moments. The themes of “Rewind” are a bit familiar for Charli, it’s not dissimilar from “1999” off Charli, but this time around the fun nostalgic moments that are shared with Troye Sivan are replaced by more of a palpable anxiety about the changes that have occurred in Charli’s life. “I think about it all the time” on the other hand covers completely new ground, detailing Charli’s experience meeting friends who recently had a child and her questioning whether that was something she wanted for herself, motherhood versus career, and her stable relationship, all in just a smidge over two minutes.
It wouldn’t be a big name 2024 release if it didn’t have at least a little bitter hatred mixed in and Charli definitely gets some shit off about some of her coworkers here.
“Sympathy is a knife” is one of the funniest and meanest songs Charli has ever written. Charli spends her time over the pulsing Easyfun beat talking about how miserable she was being around Taylor Swift during her brief relationship with The 1975 frontman Matty Healy. ‘Don’t wanna see her at my boyfriend’s show, Fingers crossed behind my back, I hope they break up quick.’ Many of the album’s themes of insecurities begin here, and as clear as it is that a lot of the reason that Charli hates Taylor Swift is because of how she makes her feel more than anything else, there are several genuinely mean lines about blondie here. I don’t imagine the Swifties will take too kindly to Charli saying being around their deity made her want to blow her brains out. Not that they liked her anyway.
The much less mean but still targeted “Girl, so confusing” manages to do an even better job at highlighting Charli’s insecurities and the struggles she can feel dealing with fame. It’s a testament to the growth of Charli as a songwriter that she manages to wrap the unknowable relationship between two famous women who are frequently compared and expected to operate both as rivals at times and supporting friends while also making the core message of the track (the main issue being that she doesn’t understand the other person) feel knowable.
There are some advantages to getting a review done as quick as humanly possible but fortunately Brat chose to reward those of us that took our sweet time. There was gonna be a whole paragraph here about how obvious it was that Charli was talking about Lorde on “Girl, so confusing”, and how anyone pretending it was about Marina And The Diamonds was obviously only getting the words out through tears because their favs were fighting. Now I just get to talk about how fucking amazing the second version of the track is.
“The girl, so confusing version with lorde” is one of my favorite music moments of the decade so far. Everything I previously said about what makes Charli’s part of the song great remains true, but Lorde is a burning supernova and moves a track from excellent to generational. There’s no one currently in mainstream pop that can fuck with Lorde as a writer, and this shit right here is why.
It’s not just that the verse is magnificent and incredibly personal, it’s the way she blends herself into Brat and makes herself an integral part of the tapestry of someone else’s album. Lorde undoes the described differences in the two’s personalities for a moment to join Charli in the rave and her fit on an AG Cook beat is unlike anything she’s ever done before (‘Let’s work it out on the remix’ is going to be one of the most memorable moments of both artists careers). Lorde doesn’t just fit the lyrical themes Charli established on Brat, she elevates them by comparing her own insecurities and how the differences between her and Charli makes her feel. Feeling unwilling to join in the party initially because of her own issues with her body, insecurities of how perfect she felt Charli’s life was, and not noticing that her actions were impacting others like Charli as Lorde was struggling on her own. I can’t think of a feature that I’ve ever heard that is this meticulous at enhancing every lyrical aspect of the album it’s on. This is why Lorde albums take four years to make, and she doesn’t do features, and thank God we’re almost on year four.
‘Let’s work it out on the remix
You’d always say, ‘Let’s go out‘
But then I’d cancel last minute
I was so lost in my head
And scared to be in your pictures
‘Cause for the last couple years
I’ve been at war in my body
I tried to starve myself thinner
And then I gained all the weight back’
With Brat being immediately praised and incredibly well received, Charli did not fuck around and wait to drop some bonus tracks. She didn’t miss. “Guess” and “Spring breakers” are two raunchy as-hell club bangers that only last about five minutes combined but leave their mark, and “Spring breakers” has a lot of fun homages to Charli’s early work. “Hello goodbye” is good too but doesn’t work as well as the other lyrical moments that shine on some of Brat‘s stronger moments.
Brat is one of the biggest highs of Charli’s career. After CRASH fell flat and largely played things as safe as it could, I was unsure that there would be another album like this in there. The sound that Charli had pioneered had been oversaturated and done to death but with this reinvention of her former self, and massive growth lyrically, Charli may have made the best album of her career. 2024 has already been a big year for mainstream pop releases but as usual, no one compares to Charli at her best.
