As Fall Approaches, Brat Summer Readies Its Exit

It takes a certain je ne sais quoi to be the driving force of a cultural moment and having your album cycle’s visuals co-opted by every brand, organization and Trader Joe’s chalk art in the West. The age of monoculture has become fleeting over the past 10 years, as state-of-the-art social media algorithms have turned the wet dreams of shareholders into reality. Not only does this reality incentivize artists to extract their niche from the context of elemental consumer culture they feel would best accompany their music, but it also requires a self-awareness and internet savviness that not everyone wields. So what happens when that new status quo is flipped on its head, spit on and satirized? The green tinge of the dollar bill becomes neon and fluorescent.

Charli xcx’s BRAT has become the most critically acclaimed album of the year thus far (it has a Metascore of 95, four points higher than the next closest mainstream album, COWBOY CARTER), and just two months removed from its release, it has already become a defining moment in Charli’s 15+ year long career. BRAT is the culmination of several years of passion, dedication and artistry that could truly not be pulled off by any other artist. Charli says it herself on the opening line of the record: “I went my own way and I made it.”

A 14 year-old Charlotte Atchinson begged her parents to loan her money to record an album, which she aptly titled 14 and never properly released. Her teenage years were spent posting demos to MySpace and performing at illegal warehouse raves in London. Her roots are grounded in haze-inducing strobes and people in the bathroom, as she succinctly puts it, “bumpin’ that.” Now at 32, she has seemingly come full circle, playing boiler room sets in Ibiza, Brooklyn and London with BRAT’s vital players (fiancé and muse George Daniel, producers AG Cook and Eazyfun) alongside her.

Up until the BRAT album cycle, much of the general public still only knew Charli xcx as the voice behind her 2014 hits (Icona Pop’s “I Love It,” Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy,” and “Boom Clap”), only one of which she is credited as the main artist on. “What the fuck!? I thought this fucking song was big in Germany,” she yelled in frustration to an unenthused 2013 Melt festival crowd. Charli’s stardom was precarious and, at times, outrunning her. She was 21 then, working with some of the industry’s biggest names—on tracks written both for other artists and her sophomore record SUCKER, the creative hands of Rostam Batmanglij (Vampire Weekend, Frank Ocean, HAIM), Ariel Rechtshaid (Adele, Sky Ferriera, Carly Rae Jepsen), Benny Blanco (Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber, Rihanna) and Rivers Cuomo of Weezer. Cuomo in particular seemed to inspire Charli the most, as she gushed about their time in the studio together in a now archived interview with DIY.

The track “Hanging Around” from SUCKER was cited to be directly inspired by Weezer’s 2005 hit “Beverly Hills,” which seemed to align with her M.O. at the time: She wanted to be this brash, feminist figure, albeit boxed within the restrictions that lie in pop stardom. Ultimately, this landed her in the good graces of Tumblr while the site was in its heyday. She wrote SUCKER for “everyone on the planet with a pussy.” While the record didn’t quite hit the mark for the general public, the devout, cult fanbase she’d garner from being a Tumblr “It Girl” granted her an asset that would long follow her.

Charli xcx had a legion of people that would go to bat for her when prompted, and this isn’t unique to just her. The artists that Tumblr users would wax poetic (and write copious amounts of fan-fiction) about would ultimately become some of the biggest names of the streaming age: Lana Del Ray, Arctic Monkeys, Troye Sivan and The 1975 would arguably not be where they are today if not for that initial Tumblr-led cult following they found. Charli in particular, though, was in the right place at the right time in a way that would inhibit the setup and payoff that would inevitably span throughout the next decade of her career. Knowing the internet and having the backing of the internet is an invaluable asset, even if nobody knew to what extent at the time.

In 2015, Charli xcx’s then-boyfriend Huck Kwong put her on up-and-coming UK producer SOPHIE, who she’d enlist to help her make her initially misunderstood 2016 EP Vroom Vroom. The lyrics on the EP are sassy, narcissistic and braggadocious in a candor that would become synonymous with much of Charli’s discography going forward. It was (and still is) quite taboo for female artists to be boastful in their music, as it continues to be considered by many as “unladylike.” Charli doubled down on the persona she was creating: “Bitches know they can’t catch me / Cute, sexy, and my ride’s sporty” she raps over a garish beat complete with a driving, futuristic synth bassline. The rapped verses of Vroom Vroom’s title track are industrial, brash, unforgiving and whiplash-inducing, but before you can even process it, Charli’s upper register is delivering a sugary-sweet, earwormy pop hook accompanied by MIDI glockenspiel, snaps drowned in reverb and a much gentler bassline. The track—and SOPHIE’s production prowess as a whole—became so seminal to pop music that it caused Pitchfork to retcon their initial negative review of the EP.

SOPHIE’s approach to making music, and the cult of celebrity, left a significant and lasting impact on Charli xcx. The ethos of PC Music, the label/creative collective founded by BRAT’s primary producer A.G. Cook in 2013, promotes disregard to commercialism and commercial viability. However, this is not to be confused with a complete dismissal of consumerism. In her profile with Vulture, SOPHIE explained that “if you can do two things with it [music], give it meaning for yourself according to the perspectives you want to share and also have it function on the mass market, and therefore expose your message to more people in a less elitist context, then that is an ideal place to be. An experimental idea doesn’t have to be separated from a mainstream context. The really exciting thing is where those two things are together. That’s where you can get real change.” Experimentation and authenticity should not always have to be inaccessible, and that’s the cause that SOPHIE championed with her music and production throughout her tragically short life. This sentiment is what BRAT became, as it continued to find its way to new listeners and found Charli in a career renaissance. The stream of consciousness absurdity of “I think about it all the time” does not exist on a charting album without the philosophies that SOPHIE championed and instilled onto those she worked with.

Charli xcx’s consistent collaborations with the PC music camp in the years following Vroom Vroom have allowed her to nurture avant-garde pop soundscapes near the precipice of the mainstream while simultaneously impressing critics and lifting up her peers. The cancellation of her third studio album after getting leaked online really ended up being a blessing in disguise. What she’d return with was a complete and utter paradigm shift. Charli’s career is split into two time periods: before Pop 2 and after Pop 2. That mixtape and Charli, the album that followed it, featured a litany of collaborations from the likes of Caroline Polachek, Dorian Electra and Clairo during times where they were experiencing vital turning points of their own careers.

More than five years out from those releases, Charli xcx’s influence on pop music has begun to meet the current moment where it’s at without forgoing her signature penchant for experimentation, garishness and bombast. The pop landscape is returning to a place where excess is celebrated, as opposed to the understated melancholia of the front-half of this decade (à la Phoebe Bridgers and her legion of soundalikes/contemporaries finding themselves sprinkled throughout Spotify’s editorial playlists). The tide is turning, and it’s up to the rest of the pop girls to catch up. It’s not often that bars and clubs are putting on nights dedicated to playing a single album top to bottom multiple times (except for Taylor Swift). While there is certainly a place for the hushed sincerity from the Billie Eilishes and the Olivia Rodrigos of the world, the public wants magniloquence and excess in their lives again.

The end of the pandemic and the economic strife that has plagued America in its aftermath has found audiences yearning for the club pop sound of the late aughts and early 2010’s. People want to dance their troubles away again because we couldn’t for the first two or three years of the decade—we were forced to ponder our own solitude. I’d argue this paradigm shift was brought upon pop music by Beyoncé’s RENAISSANCE (if anyone’s ever responsible for a paradigm shift, it’s Beyoncé), but the meteoric rise of Chappell Roan has cemented it. While her longevity has come into question as of late, one does not pull a festival’s largest crowd of the day at 5 PM with nothing to show for it. People are welcoming “fugly” back into the lexicon; one of the biggest songs in the world is about compulsory heterosexuality. The tide has undeniably shifted.

Regardless of cultural shifts outside of her control, Charli xcx has what turns a good pop star into a great pop star: undeniable charisma. Her sass and “cool girl” persona bleed through the tracks of songs like “Vroom Vroom” and “Gone.” “Vroom Vroom”’s second verse (“Bubblegum pink Ferrari, yeah, I’m so bossy / Speedin’ like Alonso just to crash your party / People are going loco when I’m pullin’ up, takin’ your papi / Don’t think about consequences ‘cause they’re never gonna stop me”) is delivered with such sass and nonchalance that the track can slap you back into the glitzy chorus, and you’ll be bowing at her feet thanking her for it. Charli doesn’t need to convince you she can do all of that, she just simply goes ahead and does it.

That theme of braggadocio is a throughline on BRAT, but it becomes even more earned when interwoven with songs in which Charli earnestly chronicles her insecurities and reckonings. The name-dropping and allusions towards producers, friends and peers does not work without the confessionality of “I might say something stupid” or the heartbreaking SOPHIE tribute “So I.” We are reminded of Charli’s humanity outside of the immovable brick wall of her image; the implementation of this vulnerability is simultaneously strategic and imperative to the interpretation of what exactly it means to be “Brat.” One must shoulder the strife of adult life’s complexities to earn the authority of saying “It’s O.K. to just admit that you’re jealous of me.”

The mystique of celebrity is something that BRAT simultaneously satirizes and allows a peek behind the curtain of, creating a meta-dialogue of what it truly means to be a pop girl. It’s not overt in its themes of empowerment; it treats a feminist mindset how it should be: as a normal part of everyday life and being confident enough in your sense of self to comfortably display genuine insecurity and internal dilemma. The remix of “Girl, so confusing” with Lorde, a woman who is known for shrouding herself in layers of charm and elusiveness, opens a dialogue over a beat that can still be danced to at the club. The narrative displayed comes off as strikingly genuine, as the two musicians “work it out on the remix.” The classic tale of two women thinking the other hates them due to miscommunication and respective internal struggle is something that is not eradicated with artistic praise and cult pop stardom. “Forgot that inside the icon there’s still a young girl from Essex,” Lorde confesses.

Nobody understands the internet quite like the people raised by it. Charli xcx grew up with a version of the world wide web that took far more dedication and savviness to navigate in comparison to what it is today. The internet in the mid- to late-aughts was still largely decentralized, with much of its culture being housed on message boards, forums and soon-to-be-defunct websites. Much of that is now lost to time, but not necessarily for a lack of pride or effort. Charli surrounding herself with chronically online undercurrents like Cook and SOPHIE have simultaneously (whether intentional or not) made her music cutting edge in a way that has not only made it appealing to tastemakers and a newfound cult fanbase, but it has allowed her to cultivate that unshakable “cool grl” persona. This has been executed so effectively that accusations of imitation have been levied at her contemporaries any time something smells off-kilter, especially toward Camila Cabello and Katy Perry.

With the BRAT album cycle, the culture has finally caught up to Charli xcx, and she’s in on the joke. The “360” music video proves that with conviction. “You have to be known, but at the same time unknowable,” model Richie Shazam explains as a requirement for a new, hot internet girl. Much of Charli’s fanbase exists in an online echo chamber, and both the song and its accompanying video acknowledge and cater to them with a wink and a chuckle. “Call me Gabbriette, you’re so inspired” only really means something to that subset of people, but in the context of “360” as a pop song, it is effectively no different than the “I know I Mountain Dew it for ya” line in Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso.”

Charli herself has cultivated a pseudo “in-circle” for her fanbase over the past couple years via her private Instagram account, @360_brat. Once an account for Charli to shitpost to her heart’s content, @360_brat would go public every so often to allow new fans in, and it’s become a vehicle for her to remain connected with her core fanbase. Whether it was leaking snippets of songs on BRAT or casually announcing her engagement to producer and 1975 drummer George Daniel with a selfie showing off her ring in the car, she was making a concerted effort to be simultaneously elusive and candid. Known but, at the same time, unknowable.

The visuals presented a perfect storm of adaptability that spiraled beyond Charli xcx’s control. Whether her “Kamala IS Brat” tweet was ironic or not, it functioned as a signal for the marketing teams of the Democratic Party to co-opt the Gen-Z appeal of “Brat Summer.” This is nowhere near the first time a U.S. electoral campaign used the cultural zeitgeist in an attempt to appeal to young voters (we all remember “Pokémon Go To The Polls”), but many treated something that was almost certainly said in jest as some kind of surrender to the establishment at large—which is ironic, considering how this is pop music we’re talking about. If you want consistent and genuine denouncement of the powers that be in your playlist, I don’t think an artist signed to Atlantic Records is where you should be looking. The integrity of the record as an artistic work remains the same as it was upon arrival. The only thing this changes is how the public may perceive Charli as a cultural figure from here on out.

If anything, the imagery surrounding BRAT is a perfect storm of simplicity, instant recognition and innate unseriousness that both encourages and incentivizes riffing upon it. The album cover is garish, but that’s how a moment is made. It doesn’t take up more space physically, but it takes up space visually. Despite its simplicity, it’s recognizable at first glance. We have found ourselves in what very well may be a post-modern monoculture. Seeing internet fads explained to the 40+ crowd via The Today Show invokes a distinct feeling of intrigue, begging to ponder the overuse and concurrent bastardization of the fad that lies before us. Do I want Lena Dunham to give me a “Guide to Brat Summer?” How long will I see lime green cats and instinctively whisper “Bratmobile” under my breath? What the fuck does West Virginia senator Joe Manchin know about Charli xcx? It leads me to fear the longevity of BRAT as an album in a vacuum, tainted by the litany of misinterpretations and uncomfortable adaptations as we reach a moment where every possible joke has been made.

Only time will tell how we look back upon this album and its role in culture in five or 10 years, but if I had to guess, it will be with fondness. If the record didn’t stand tall on its own upon arrival before all the madness, it would end up in the ever-growing landfill of things that were funny to talk about for a couple weeks. Many young people will associate this album with a time where they let themselves exit their comfort zones and be brazen and alive like all the seminal pop albums that came before BRAT. In a sea of blockbuster pop records being released within a few months of each other, Charli xcx was able to poke her head out among the crowd and change the zeitgeist.

In another universe, we’re living in a Tortured Poets Department Summer with teenagers across the world writing “mine” on their upper thighs in Sharpie—there’s a reason that’s not the reality we live in. No viral cultural moment like this is eternal, but it will remain a living and breathing documentation of BRAT’s explosion from our streaming libraries into the forefront of our social media feeds. Now, the fluorescent neon green leaves of “Brat Summer” have no choice but to begin to brown.