Charli XCX is the ultimate party girl on “BRAT”
Graphic by Sofia Giarrusso
By Bennett Himmel
If you’re anything like me, for the last week, your Twitter feed has been overrun with garish chartreuse profile pictures and blurry, eye-straining arial text. People all over the world are talking about what it means to be a pop star and what it means to be underground. XCX must be in the air. Charli XCX has spent the last decade straddling the mainstream and the underground like a mechanical bull, whipping back and forth until you can’t tell where she is anymore. On her last record, 2022’s CRASH, Charli went her version of full mainstream: There she was, flanked by two muscular backup dancers, in a Gaultier corset top, stamping her foot into the SNL stage singing the Janet Jackson-inflected “Baby.” The album was a triumphant exploration of mainstream pop sounds, getting her her first top 10 placement on the Billboard 200, but it failed to get her the full “main pop girl” treatment. On top of that, she lost some core fans who felt that she had lost her unapologetically abrasive edge. Even Charli seemed to acknowledge this, telling The Face that “There were songs on Crash that I would never listen to…I needed to switch after Crash – I wasn’t born to do radio liners.” On her newest album BRAT, the mechanical bull thrashes back, and Charli gives us her most abrasive, vulnerable, and most her body of work to date.
On the surface, BRAT may come off as a very simple, unfussy album. The album title paired with the delightful lead single “Von Dutch,” made it seem like BRAT would be Charli’s attempt at deliciously smooth-brained hyperpop. “Von Dutch” showed Charli in a feral, claws-out mode, charging up to two-faced haters, yowling at them to put their hands up in surrender. The track also has one of Charli’s most self-aware lyrics in a while: “Cult classic, but I still pop.” But the nonchalant bad bitch Charli displayed on “Von Dutch” is not the Charli we see on other tracks on this album–much of BRAT is Charli wearing her heart on her sleeve. There’s already been endless chatter about “Girl, So Confusing,” a song about a fraught relationship with an unnamed female peer (I’m sure I have the same guess as most people, but I’m not gonna say it). A lot of people see this song as mean and bitter, but I see it as Charli’s most honest song to date. On the prechorus, she’s entirely in her head, delivering lines like “Can’t tell if you want to see me / Falling over and failing / And I can’t tell what you’re feeling / I think I know how you feel” in a spoken word affect reminiscent of electroclash pioneer Uffie. She admits she doesn’t know the truth as to how her peer sees her–she only has a vague idea in her head. The song is not a “diss track,” it’s a frustrated rant to a friend.
In the months leading up to the album’s release, Charli has been teasing this as her “club record,” and there are endless bangers that make good on this promise. Production-wise, “Sympathy is a Knife” is a complete dance floor anthem reminiscent of some of her best club hits. However, lyrically, the song is for when you’re spiraling on molly staring in the mirror in the club bathroom. Who else but Charli would put the lyrics “Why I wanna buy a gun / Why I wanna shoot myself” in a pop song? The effect is both disarming and enchanting. “Talk Talk” calls back to the French electro that Charli grew up on. The song feels like the closest thing to a radio hit on the album, but unlike any of the songs on CRASH, it doesn’t feel like Charli is compromising any of her unique qualities. “Mean Girls” has whispers of 2010s David Guetta radio pop (And I mean that as the highest compliment). I do have to admit that a small part of me cringes at the Red Scare podcast inspired verses, (“Yeah, she's in her mid-twenties, real intelligent / And you hate the fact she's New York City's darling / You said she's problematic and the way you say it, so fanatic,") but the sudden piano breakdown during the bridge makes up for it.
The more downtempo songs on BRAT are no less stunning. “So I” is a chilling tribute to the late electronic music producer and hyperpop pioneer SOPHIE. Many of the songs written about SOPHIE’s death have been beautiful, but pointedly hyperfocused on her death. This one, instead, is a vulnerable admission that Charli wishes their relationship was different. It is a mourning of things left unsaid (“Got a phone call after Christmas / Didn’t know how I should act / I watched you dance online”). “I Might Say Something Stupid” has a tumbling synth melody that completely matches the lyrics about being the least-famous, most-hammered person at an industry party.
With this album, it feels like Charli has completely found her footing. She is a pop star who very few people’s parents have heard of, but every gay son and thot daughter are obsessed with. She may not get radio play with this album, but she will still sell out arenas. Despite it’s abrasive production and honest lyricism, it somehow feels like one of Charli’s most accessible, on-trend albums. It is endlessly catchy and entertaining yet incredibly complicated and vulnerable. It feels decadently trashy and yet deeply high-brow. If CRASH introduced Charli to a few more people, BRAT cements Charli’s place as one of 21st century pop’s only true iconoclasts. The first lyric on this thing is “I went my own way and I made it.” She’s not wrong.