Release Date: June 7, 2024/June 10, 2024
Label: Atlantic
Length: 41:23/49:46
Produced By: A.G. Cook, Cirkut, Easyfun, George Daniel, Charli XCX, Gesaffstein, Hudson Mohawke, El Guincho, Jon Shave, Linus Wiklund, Omar Fedi
Rating: 4.3
Review by: Alexander Hellene
Highlights: “I Might Say Something Stupid,” and that one part in the middle of “Mean Girls” for using a piano.
He is brat, she is brat, you is brat, I is brat, they is brat, we is brat, that tree over there is brat, everyone and everything IS brat. What does this mean?1
Brat is a state of mind, an image, a vibe. It also become instantly uncool the second it became associated with politics. But don’t tell that to the politics people. They’re somehow not embarrassed that their pop star of choice, one Charlotte Emma Aitchison, aka Charli XCX, lent her seal of approval to Kamala Harris, someone Aitchison can’t even vote for. Remember when all the Britpop bands were palling around with Tony Blair, which kind of killed the Britpop vibe? Cool Britannia became Cringe Britannia? We’re at that phase now, but because it’s super-sized American, it’s even cringier and lamer. Charli claims she wasn’t making a political endorsement with her “Kamala IS brat” tweet, but one must be seriously unintelligent to find this obvious backpedaling sincere. You touched the poop, Charli. Own it.
In other news, Charli herself has just announced that brat summer is over. On to brat autumn (brautumn?) I guess.
What does this have to do with music?
Charli XCX’s latest album is called Brat, and it represents the birth of a new zeitgeist in the popular consciousness, or so I’m told. This is club music, “n-tss, n-tss, n-tss” drum machines and synths exhorting, nay, demanding, that you dance, or at least bob your head. These are songs to get high and screw to, preferably in large late-night gatherings of sweaty young people in large urban centers. Brat, in this sense, is perfectly generic in the sense that its songs embody the trappings of a particular genre.
Lead single “Von Dutch” is an aggressive dance number about how jealous of and obsessed with Charli XCX we all are (I’m assuming “we” is the entertainment industry). Opener “360” is a sparse, melodic number about how awesome Charli XCX is.2 Supposedly, it and its accompanying video which featured many internet it-girls is both a parody and celebration of the hyper online, but given how sincerely Charli leans into the bit, it’s hard to detect any parodizing going on here. Closer “365” is an aggressive dance number about doing drugs and partying. You get the idea.
There are some variations. “Talk Talk” is about Charli’s nerves at her interactions with her now fiancé, The 1975 drummer George Daniel; in this day it’s refreshing to see a female pop star who unapologetically likes boys. Piano-led ballad “I Might Say Something Stupid” shows a sense of self-reflection, contemplating feelings that might be described as imposter syndrome, while “I Think About It All The Time” features lines about Charli perhaps maybe wanting a baby:
I was walking around in Stockholm
Seriously thinking ‘bout my future for the first time
It was ice cold, playing demos on my iPhone
I went to my friend’s place and I met their baby for the first time
How sublime
What a joy, oh my, oh my
Standing there
Same old clothes she wore before, holding her child, yeah
She's a radiant mother and he’s a beautiful father
And now they both know these things that I don’tI think about it all the time
That I might run out of time
But I finally met my baby
And a baby might be mine
‘Cause maybe one day I might
If I don't run out of time
Would it make me miss all my freedom?
I think about it all the time
I-I think about it all the time
That I might run out of time
But I finally met my baby
And a baby might be mine
‘Cause maybe one day I might
If I don’t run out of time
Would it give my life a new purpose?
I think about it all the timeAnd they're exactly the same, but they’re different now
And I'm so scared I’m missin’ out on something
So, we had a conversation on the way home
Should I stop my birth control?
‘Cause my career feels so small in the existential scheme of it all
Is this . . . maturity? But no, don’t worry. As Charli explained in an interview, wanting children is just “biological and social programming”3 for women. Truly, and I mean this sincerely, a voice of a generation, that Charli.
Other songs are more of the same. “Club Classics” and “B2b” are club bangers, while “Girl, So Confusing” is about how hard it is to be a female pop star. There’s not much to say if you’re into songcraft beyond the production touches. The only genuinely interesting musical moment comes halfway through “Mean Girls,” a treatise on our—well, “our”—fascination with mean girls: suddenly, the bed track is replaced by a busy piano riffing on what sounds like the chord progression from Yes’s “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” It’s not much, but at least it’s something.
Brat, purposely or not, brings up interesting points about celebrity culture: Is Charli even a musician? There’s so much auto tune, I don’t know if she can even sing. How much of Brat did Charli actually write? Now, Aretha Franklin didn’t write all of her own music, but she was such a singular talent in the vocal department she made those songs her own, and nobody disputes that Aretha was an artist.
Is Charli? She can perform, but so could Milli Vanilli, a group who’d probably still be around and wouldn’t have had to hide anything had they come out in the 2000s. Imagine a great British rocker, say Steve Winwood, looking into the future from 1964: he’d likely wonder, Why bother attaining mastery of the piano, guitar, singing, and songwriting, when you can get a machine to do all the hard work for you?
Yes, I know I’m not the intended audience for Brat. Still, I could find merit if at least the lyrics were interesting, but aside from “I Think About It All the Time,” there is nothing of note. For example, “Rewind” asks, wouldn’t it be, like, so cool if we could rewind our life? Is she shooting for profundity? This is the lyrical shallowness of a preteen, which would be excusable if Charli were a preteen starting to come to grips with the world and her place in it. But she’s in her 30s, a ten-year veteran of the music industry. You’d think she’d have developed more depth of insight than this. But what do I know? A quick scan of dedicated Charli XCX reddits show that her fans find her lyrics brilliant.
This music is not made for me, but I still want to understand it. I get the appeal from the perspective of Charli’s attitude, which is actually very rock n’ roll, but lyrically I couldn’t disagree more. For all the flack Taylor Swift gets, you can tell she at least puts a lot of thought and work into her lyrics. I don’t get the same sense with Charli: she paints an inner world that’s a mixture of BPD and crippling insecurity, which might be precisely why Charli resonates so much with Gen Z. This thought makes me sad about what we’re doing to our future.
So what do we expect from our pop stars, then? We do like to “get down to the sound of a singular mind,” but who is Charli XCX? What does she offer that listeners can’t get anywhere else? Is it her stage shows? Her look? Her attitude? The latter is the only thing I can imagine differentiates Charli from her contemporaries. Her “lol I’m just hanging with my bitches” and typical “look at me but don’t look at me, boys” posturing as she literally uses her crotch as a prominent feature of her promotional materials? Is this enough to elevate someone to the level of cultural icon? Don’t we at least expect our artists to provide truths about the soul, the human condition, even offering fresh takes on common themes such as love and hardship, or at least to have a transcendental voice or other instrumental talent? What’s going on here?4
With Brat’s constant repetition and incessant beats it starts to feel like MK Ultra conditioning: “You IS brat . . . you IS brat. Further instructions incoming.”
So there really is no “there” there. Brat is popular because we’re told it is. Now there’s some biological and social programming for you.
The three additional songs on the deluxe edition don’t add much. “Guess,” co-produced with indie-sleaze it-boy The Dare, he of creepy horniness who put sexualized children on an album cover, is all about Charli’s underwear color and her desire to be on the receiving end of oral sex. I’ve read this be called “flirty,” but if this the case, then flirting sure has changed since I was in the dating market. “Spring Breakers” is another aggressive club anthem, rinse, repeat. Only the pleasantly banal “Hello Goodbye,” which is not a Beatles cover, sounds like it could have slotted in on the main album.
So take your pick. You are either brat or you’re not.5 If you like dancing at clubs, doing drugs, or both, definitely give this a higher rating. Otherwise, there’s nothing here you haven’t heard before.
Brat
360
Club Classics
Sympathy Is a Knife
I Might Say Something Stupid
Talk Talk
Von Dutch
Everything is Romantic
Rewind
So I
Girl, So Confusing
Apple
B2b
Mean Girls
I Think About It All the Time
365
Hello Goodbye (deluxe edition)
Guess (deluxe edition)
Spring Breakers (deluxe edition)
The singer told the BBC’s Sidetracked podcast brat was a concept that represented a person who might have “a pack of cigs, a Bic lighter and a strappy white top with no bra”.
It is thought of by some as a rejection of the “clean girl” aesthetic—which suggested a groomed ideal of femininity.
“You’re just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes,” Charli explained on social media.
“Who feels like herself but maybe also has a breakdown. But kind of like parties through it, is very honest, very blunt.
“A little bit volatile. Like, does dumb things. But it’s brat. You’re brat. That’s brat.”
The video actually makes her look like not a brat but another four-letter word that ends in “t.”
Quoth Charli:
[A]m I less of a woman if I don’t have a kid? Will I feel like I’ve missed out on my purpose in life? I know we’re not supposed to say that, but it’s this biological and social programming.
I will say, I do like the album cover and overall low-fi aesthetic. I also am very disappointed in Brat. This is my biggest review letdown so far. I was really hoping for something new and novel and mindblowing. Alas. While I didn’t like Billie Eilish’s latest as much as
did, I did appreciate her songwriting skills and willingness to take changes musically, and to say something lyrically. With all the hype, I thought Brat would be a similarly pleasant surprise.I am not.
I gave this one a quick spin and wanted to drive my car into the swamp.
Enjoyed this review cousin. The album… not so much