Charli xcx has embraced the high energy of “Brat” through her live performances. Photo courtesy of leagarn.

ALEX MCCARTY | STAFF REPORTER | armccarty@butler.edu

For pop and dance music fans alike, Charli xcx has been a prominent artist since her explosion into the mainstream over a decade ago. Many still remember hit songs like “Boom Clap” and “I Love It”, which dominated the billboard charts and radio stations of the early 2010s. Since then, she has continued to grow as an artist and experiment with new sounds all while maintaining a loyal fanbase. Still, her popularity never quite reached the same peak it did at the beginning of her career until this summer, when Charli released her brand new album “Brat”.

On the surface, “Brat” looks to be a back-to-basics album for Charli xcx. It invokes a lot of the same energy that her older hits did, as a majority of the songs are catchy club bangers that are made to be danced to. 

Junior health sciences major Andon Belleville explained why he loves the throwback style of the album so much.

“Especially this year, pop music has really gone back to 2000s [and] 2010s sounds and vibes,” Belleville said. “I just think it’s so nostalgic, right? It sounds like it should be on an iPod and I love that.”

That doesn’t mean that “Brat” sounds exactly the same as her early work, though. Charli is known as an artist who keeps reinventing her sound and style of music, and “Brat” is no different. The album has a raw and hard-hitting aesthetic that fits Charli’s often aggressively personal lyrics. 

For example, the song “Von Dutch” is as confident as any pop song will get in 2024. Charli spends most of the song boasting and confronting anyone who looks down on her with her repetition of the phrase “I’m your number one”. She wouldn’t be wrong in saying that, as it was hard to escape the influence of “Brat” during the summer months.

The album was released on June 7 and instantly became a hit. Dropping “Brat” at the beginning of the summer was a strategic career choice, as it started the season with a bang and left plenty of room for expanding the album further. 

Another aspect of “Brat” that made a big impact was the album cover. Instead of using a picture of herself or something more conventional, Charli picked a neon green background with Arial text spelling out the album’s name. Nothing more, nothing less. The choice may seem lazy to some, but the art quickly became iconic and immediately recognizable. This same style was later used in countless memes and TikToks and even the banner of the Kamala Harris HQ campaign account. 

Ian Eldridge, a sophomore creative media and entertainment major, offered his opinion on the style of the “Brat” album cover.

“I actually do like it because it’s minimalistic in a good way,” Eldridge said. “The bright green contrasts the black [and] it also fits her theme of being minimalistic.”

The popularity of “Brat” could have lasted the whole summer in its original state. However, Charli was far from done. Three days after the release of “Brat”, she quickly released a deluxe version of the album with three bonus songs that were humorously named “Brat and it’s the same but there’s three more songs so it’s not.” It was clear that Charli and her team were having fun with marketing the album. 

Following this, a series of remixes were released that took songs off the album and added collaborations with other popular artists. The song “Girl, so confusing” received a remix with Lorde while the remix of “Guess” saw Charli xcx and Billie Eilish team up for the first time. The “Guess” remix in particular was a huge hit, as it became Charli’s second No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot Dance/Electronic songs.

Senior dance major Emma Young commented on the “Brat” culture and its connection to queer culture specifically. 

“Miss Charli is not necessarily queer, but she definitely plays into that because a large part of her audience is queer,” Young said. “I feel like any queer culture could be seen as Brat. Partying in the summer, old makeup, sweat, all that stuff.”

Just because Charli was releasing remixes and deluxe versions of her album didn’t mean the original 15 songs were now irrelevant. The song “Apple” quickly blew up in popularity after a viral TikTok dance trend used the track. The trend started with the TikTok user Kelley Heyer and grew to include big names like Glen Powell and even Charli xcx herself. The song almost didn’t make it on the album according to Charli, as she said in an Instagram post “a little secret apple nearly didn’t make the cut on the final tracklist.. imagine lol. anyways it’s her world and we’re just living in it!!”

Belleville reflected on the Brat Summer trend and how its legacy may look. 

“I don’t think it’s possible for it to be judged as an album at this point, it is a whole cultural phenomenon,” Belleville said. “It is a very sonically cohesive album, but the way that people have been able to connect to it and continue to stream it today really shows how strong the project is for her.”

For an album that mostly focuses on partying and having a good time, some of Charli xcx’s most revealing songs to date can be found on “Brat”. The track “I might say something stupid” sounds like Charli is stepping out of the “party” the album represents to reflect on her fame and place in the world. “I think about it all the time” carries a similar uneasy tone, but instead focuses on her desire to have a child that can give purpose to her seemingly vapid life. 

The biggest personal confession on the album can be found in the song “So I”. The song is a tribute to the late music producer SOPHIE, who worked on several songs with Charli xcx before passing away in 2021. The lyrics read as more of a confession than anything. Charli sings about distancing herself from SOPHIE while she was still alive and how that guilt is affecting her now that she is gone. For Charli to get this contemplative on an album with such an assertive tone and trend attached to it shows her values as an artist and as a person. 

“Brat” is more than just the sixth studio album released by Charli xcx. Charli and her fans took this project and turned it into a worldwide phenomenon that swept the summer months. From the trends and the memes to the music itself, every aspect of “Brat” fed into this idea of freedom, chaos and fun. The album is an extension of Charli xcx herself. As she put it in her Instagram post the day the album dropped,  “… and at the end of the day, that’s exactly what brat is all about: me, my flaws, my f*ck ups, my ego all rolled into one.”