SAVANNAH STOWERS

BRAT by Charli XCX, 2024 – Album Review

Genre: Hyperpop, Euro club, Post-pop

Charli XCX’s 6th album, BRAT, boils down to a long-form diary entry over some gay little club beats and, as a party woman of the 21st century raised on Tumblr and caffeine, I celebrate that.

In a succinct 41 minutes, the album manages to seamlessly combine all previous stages of Charli’s career while still propelling listeners into a new stage of her music and the larger landscape of what it means to be a “pop” artist in 2024. I consider this project a truly “post-pop” endeavor, a type of sound that would easily be considered popular by today’s standards but not by traditional pop conventions or metrics.

Centering around the themes of celebrityhood in the 2020s, BRAT questions how artists – especially female artists – contend within the different ranks of celebrity status, asking what it means to be at the top of your niche but still not be fully recognized by the larger population. BRAT may not directly answer the questions it posits, but by asking them through its lyrics and production, the album blurs the lines in the relationship between popularity and popular or “pop” music.

Production wise, the AG Cook influence courses through the album and it feels like a genuine collaborative effort of equals, contributing to the sense of cohesiveness that BRAT has and which hasn’t always been present in Charli’s previous long form projects.

Despite not being my favorite album of hers (how i’m feeling now just holds a special place in my heart), I consider BRAT to be Charli’s best to date. As with most of her albums, I’ve grown to love it a lot more since its initial release, but in a patient parent who loves unconditionally and chooses to look past its faults type of way. Charli’s music is experimental, most recognizably by its production, but also through lyricism, song structure, and vocal performance, which can take some time adjusting to. When someone pushes the boundaries of genre, bending them here and weaving them together there without any warning or easing into, it can take time to fully immerse your ears into the sonic environment being established.

Unfortunately, the album’s writing presents the highest hurdle for listeners to overcome in this adjustment process. The lyrics often feel like a lightly edited journal entry with little attention to detail and overly simplistic, on-the-nose metaphors, making it difficult to calibrate to the already obscure and hard to navigate waters of her experimental sound. While I think BRAT gets away with it more simply for being the 6th entry in an already established and distinct XCX soundscape, it’s hard to ignore when an artist rhymes “time” with “time” and says “I’m everywhere I’m so Julia,” in reference to Julia Fox, another example of a top-of-the-niche internet celebrity (“Rewind,” “360”). There are additional semi-obscure cult references found on “360,” the albums second single, and “Mean girls,” a song which felt like a throwback to Charli’s “Break the Rules,” “Boom Clap,” “I Love It” days. Unfortunately, these specific allusions tie this project to the 2020’s in a way that greatly hinders its lasting power and legacy potential. While there’s something to commend about the album’s success in capturing this distinct aesthetic moment in time and acknowledging its fanbase’s scope, it consequently solidifies the temporary nature of Charli’s cultural presence. The lyrics don’t seem to consider how we’re meant to enjoy the songs after this moment in time inevitably disappears, solidifying that one day, even Charli’s experimental and forward-thinking music will fall out of style and sound obsolete.

Standout Tracks

Despite the shortcomings of the dated lyricism, the lack of attention to detail in the stream of consciousness style of writing (“Rewind” being the worst offender but more successful on tracks like “Girl, so confusing,” and “I think about it all the time”), and the heavy-handed, surface-level metaphors in songs like “Sympathy is a knife,” and “Apple,” the writing still offers sentimental value and a glimpse into Charli’s artistic persona. The lyrics are raw, and I much prefer an unrefined rawness to a potentially more polished output that could detract from the sincerity behind the words. I expect honesty from artistry, so even if I don’t particularly enjoy the simplicity of Charli’s pen at time, I respect the truth behind her writing style: There’s a beauty to this artist that lies in her ability to speak so earnestly, something that I fear is lacking in many of her contemporaries who are “all about writing poems” and a gift I hope she sees as a strength in herself and the music she shares with the world (“Girl, so confusing”). Poems are pretty but often not realistic and conversations are realistic, but often not pretty; so, although Charli’s conversational lyrics may be clunky and literal, they contain a genuineness that provides a therapeutic release for the themes she’s grappling with.

This writing style in combination with Charli’s signature experimental production style allows the album to thoroughly examine what it means to be successful in the increasingly niching world of the music industry, essentially questioning what “pop” as a genre even is anymore. What does it mean to be a celebrity online but not traditionally? What does it mean to be a cult phenomenon, recognized critically and dominating in internet circles, but not publicly in real life? BRAT greatly acknowledges Charli’s relationship to fame and what it feels like to be “famous but not quite,” to be “let in but still outside” (“I might say something stupid”), and I resonate with this unique, phantom-like perspective on fame where your presence is felt but not seen. I hope that the predictive nature of Charli’s art suggests that other artists will soon admit to and explore how the music industry and celebrity culture’s landscapes have changed in the 2020s. Most importantly, I believe that the year of the BRAT will serve as a marker for what’s to come from the middle stages of this decade.

Rating: 7/10

If you like BRAT, I’d recommend listening to how i’m feeling now by Charli XCX, Suddenly by Caribou, and Palaces by Flume