intro
I’ve listened to this project many times now and I’ll definitely be listening more. Normally, I’d review a project when I’ve heard it so much that I feel all my ideas have settled down and solidified — but I’m going to try it a little differently here. Even on my first listen, I’ve wanted to immediately start sharing my thoughts.
Another way this review will be different from other reviews I’ve written is that I haven’t heard Charli’s last few projects. Usually I’d restrict myself to only reviewing once I’ve “caught up” and have the full context, but since Charli XCX is an artist I was a huge fan of back during her earlier years, I think there’s actually a value in me reviewing it right now, without that context to bridge the gap between who I knew her as and where she is now. So my review will pretty much take that form: I’ll talk about: who she was back then and the lane she filled in the landscape of music and within my own journey as someone deeply into music; when I stopped following her and what I generally heard about her through the grapevine during that time; and finally, my opinion of brat and her current stardom. So strap in, because I’m going to go way back in time for this record, and make a long tangent to finally loop back around to the record we’re reviewing.
who was charli?
I first came across Charli XCX when I was a sophomore in high school I think. At the time, I was mainly into rap, rock, and metal — you could’ve chalked me down as a typical “lyrics are king” “pop music is meaningless” kind of chud during that time haha. To me, I really did value lyrics above everything, and whether it was preconceived and incorrect, or it was truly an indictment of pop music at the time, or my taste was one dimensional — I wasn’t into pop music.
That changed the very moment I heard a certain song that year. Take a guess? It was “Royals” by Lorde. It was the first moment where I heard a pop song that felt like there was a lot of thought behind the lyrics beyond simplistic lovey-dovey party lyrics that would fit on a commercial. More than that, it felt like it was the first time I realized pop music could be introverted. I’m gonna leave the full spiel about this revelation to my eventual review of Pure Heroine, but basically after hearing that song, I became deeply obsessed with Lorde’s music for a month or so, to the point where it was all I was listening to.
From following her on social media, she eventually shouted out Charli XCX after a journalist accidentally called her album “True Heroine”, which Lorde clowned as a funny mashup of her album and Charli’s True Romance. But this was the first I’d heard of Charli, and if Lorde was a fan, I figured I’d check her out too.
So True Romance was the first Charli album I came across, and the first song I heard was the intro, “Nuclear Seasons”. And GODDAMN is that song a hell of an intro. She delivered the same lyrical writing that I loved Lorde for, but instead of the minimalistic introversion, Charli was loud, boisterous, and in-your-face. The song straight up sounds apocalyptic, like the whole world was ending with this blown-out everything-at-once pop barrage, dripping in pink acid and enunciated with glamour and bombast — if the world was truly ending, this song sounded like going out with a bang.
From there, I checked out her earlier Super Ultra mixtape. I gotta say, it’s a sound I hadn’t heard before, and still haven’t heard more of.
I’d say Charli in that era sounded like the bratty pop of Britney Spears meets the murky, washed-out Memphis aesthetic of a Chris Travis or an Xavier Wulf. That’s a wild comparison! I know! But listen to Super Ultra, and tell me it doesn’t sound like Chris Travis from 2012 with a snobby pop voice singing over it instead of rap. Even the idea to call it a “mixtape” and to have an intentionally low-res and amateurish cover art made me think back to underground rap tapes which weren’t meant to be commercial and instead served as an artist’s green light to go ahead and show their talent unfettered and unfiltered.
I think where it felt like Lorde brought indie sensibilities to pop, Charli brought pop sensibilities to the underground scene. Where Lorde was introverted, shy, and smart, Charli felt like the coolest person on the planet. Unabashedly confident, unapologetically maximal. Where Lorde’s music was clean, concise, and mixed perfectly, Charli’s had sharp edges, lo-fi production, and colliding samples. Lorde’s music felt like it was for the people standing in the corner at parties, and Charli’s felt like it captured the center of the party.
PC Music
So from there, I’d say it’s after that that Charli made her biggest artistic move: PC Music. Whatever it’s called today (hyperpop?), at the time, there was a new scene bubbling up in the underground of pop, spear-headed by the PC Music record label. This scene had a distinct ethos to it. What if we took the most bubblegum pop, in all of its saccharine simplistic catchiness, and pushed it to the limit, damn near the point of being robotic and annoying, but stopping just short of it?
Seriously, this was a real philosophical moment for pop music. IMO pop reached a certain dryness around 2014 and was confronted with needing to pick a path for the future. Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Rihanna had all already hit their peaks, and anyone who tried to emulate those artists would just come across like knockoffs. So, do we rebel against pop by injecting irony, introversion, minimalism, and subversion? Or do we stick to the game-plan and just follow the autotune-heavy electro-pop of the time until the sound burns out? I would say Lorde, Chvrches, Broods etc. symbolized the former, while the mainstream in large part kept pushing the latter, with pop fizzling out with each EDM-pop track farted out by the Chainsmokers of the world.
But PC Music decided to be the Hegelian synthesis in a way. Let’s rebel against pop, but by flooring it at 900 miles per hour to that hyper-electronic auto-tuned destination. Let’s make it sound SO POP that it doesn’t even sound human anymore. I think it’s best represented by 2014’s “Hey QT”, a truly synthetic-sounding pop song — if this came out today you’d think it was made by ChatGPT being fed “Still Alive” from the Portal soundtrack. Quite the contrary, this is the very intentional brain-child of the architects of this sound: AG Cook and SOPHIE (rest in peace, “Ponyboy” will always be an experience, I could write a paragraph on that song/video alone).
There was something so futuristic, shimmery, and drenched-in-irony about hearing pop distilled to its essence and then delivered in its extremities like this. I feel like it really requires a DEEP understanding of what makes pop music pop in order to be able to essentially take the latte that is pop and return you pure espresso. Throw in Hannah Diamond’s “Hi”, and we start to see an aesthetic forming over at PC Music. I’m still struggling to come up with the perfect analogy, the perfect description to fully encompass the aesthetic I feel PC Music captures. It feels like a Barbie dreamhouse but entirely run by androids. Or it feels like a sparkling pink disco club in outer space.
I think maybe The Listening-era Lights (my GOAT, btw) had a somewhat similar vibe with the outer-space-but-purple aesthetic going in her 2009 videos, but where Lights’ vision was warmer and nostalgic, PC Music’s feels spotless, robotic, and almost soulless.
Anyways, this was the scene bubbling up, and it seemed like an interesting novelty at the time — a thought experiment on what pop is and what it could be. I never thought it’d be something that would infiltrate the mainstream in any way. But that started to change with the release of one song: vroom vroom.
PC XCX
I think this was a match made in heaven. PC Music until this point brought the question, the interesting thought, something to bounce around in your head. But I think Charli XCX brought true star-power to their sound. This felt like Lebron when he came back to the Cavs LOL. A team that was pretty solid and making moves, a young star showing off their experimental, flashy style (Kyrie Irving, AG Cook), but yet to make any moves that would make the ground shake and leave an undeniable impact.
Charli was definitely the piece to complete the sound. I think PC Music was spot-on in distilling pop — catchiness, high BPM, synthetic sheen, spotless overmixing, major keys and high notes — but what’s the BIGGEST part of pop music, the piece without which the whole project falls apart? The singer, the star, the face, the charisma. Charli fills that role perfectly.
And likewise, I feel this was perfect for Charli as well. Up until now, Charli had already delivered her unmistakably confident personality in each record, over unique production no less — but being part of a movement to define pop music, being part of THE conversation — this was new. Where artists like Lorde shot straight into the mainstream, Charli had been grinding in the underground for a long time, with moments of fame here and there like “Fancy” and “Boom Clap”, but with PC Music, it felt like Charli was establishing her name through her artistic movement, rather than her chart movement.
The whole ensuing EP was great. The title track was still my favorite, but it’s worth listening to the whole project. I feel from here, Charli XCX had forces behind her. She went from being a bedroom mixtape pop if-you-know-you-know artist, to a radio-hit singer not once but twice, to now being part of a movement genuinely at the forefront of art-pop discourse. Very few artists have been able to make mainstream hits, and very few have been experimental indie darlings. Even fewer have been able to do both.
After this, she released Number 1 Angel, her next album. I don’t have much in particular to say about it, but I’ll just say that it was a quality album that I played a bunch that year. This was the last Charli project I heard before brat this year.
While I Was Away…
For some reason, I wasn’t listening to pop music much for the last 6-7 years outside of the occasional Carly Rae Jepsen release. At some point, I just decided I didn’t want to listen to music by white people anymore lmaoo so the last few years were mainly rap music. It wasn’t entirely that, obviously — I also felt some random need to be a little more “normie” with my taste and a little less eclectic. It was something of an experiment for me, a personal development thing, where I wanted to see what I would be like if something that defines me so much, like music, were to be intentionally changed and curtailed. I wanted to see if I could change myself by changing my music consumption and tastes. Also, just getting older, I felt like I had less time to explore random music each day, and kind of just sunk into my comfortable tastes of cycling through Griselda, Curren$y, Freddie Gibbs and Lupe Fiasco. Around this time, I also pretty much stopped following /r/popheads, which had a lot to do with my pop consumption before and after.
Anyways, as a result of all those things, I wasn’t keeping up with Charli XCX much from 2018 to 2024. In that time though, I’d occasionally hear about her through the grapevine, either music or cultural moments related to her, sifting up from below the surface and washing up on my shores.
I’d hear friends who never really were in that “popheads” community mention her all of a sudden. I’d see her name come up in articles and headlines. I’d see her even mentioned as part of Kamala Harris’ campaign once “brat” as a cultural idea projected Charli into the mainstream discourse.
It was odd — I was like, wait, since when do you know Charli? It felt like finding out an old friend of mine suddenly became really famous or something. It was great, I was happy to hear that she was making moves and finally getting some of that recognition industry-wide. So all of that “bubbling up” eventually led to me listening to brat at the end of this year.
Okay, the actual brat review lol
brat feels like Charli’s calling card going forward. All her past musical exploration seems to come to a head here, and on top of that, I feel like she enters new realms on this project lyrically.
I think I want to start by calling forth the contrast that this project entails within the context of the last decade of pop. I feel like “anti-pop” has been the trend in this era, truly the impact of Lorde is still echoing and resounding. This has been the era of minimalistic, quiet, introverted pop music — at times even being predominantly insecure and whispery. Though Lorde isn’t at the forefront now, you can still hear her influence prominently in artists like Billie Eilish, Clairo, Banks etc whose aesthetic largely seems to be the lo-fi, cozy aspects of bedroom pop styled over with the production qualities we’d otherwise expect from mainstream pop music. A lot of pop music now opts for hip hop features or trap beats, taking from EDM for its structure, or taking from dancehall for its texture.
Meanwhile, brat is the opposite of all those things, in all the same ways Charli herself is. The party is the setting, confidence and glitz the color, in your face, up-tempo. Outside of the PC Music dance influence, this album is pop through and through, and doesn’t really take its sound from an outside genre. I also would note one thing about Charli I could’ve mentioned earlier — usually most non-American artists don’t let their accent shine through, but Charli always sounds obviously from the UK. I love that, I think her accent really adds to the character and aesthetic of her music.
Not only do I think this project represents Charli perfectly, I also think it’s the magnum opus for PC Music. AG Cook is on almost every song as producer, and I feel with “You gon’ jump if AG made it”, Charli and AG really have the chemistry and synergy you’d find between a rapper and producer on a collaboration album. I’d love to see a lot more of this in pop — collaborations between an artist and a single producer. I think it brings a cohesion to albums when a single producer is present on all the songs.
And cohesive is just the word I’d stamp on this album. I think every song touches on its own emotions and topics, yet they all roll back into the same package sonically. It feels like one piece of musical play-doh being stretched in different directions and molded into different shapes, yet all being composed of the same material.
In the same way, I think Charli XCX comes across as a complete person on this project. Each song sounds undeniably like her, but as I mentioned before, her previous projects (that I’ve heard) largely had her always come across like “the coolest person you know” — always confident, in control, in charge. I feel on brat, I’m hearing her being open about other sides of her — insecurity, jealousy, nostalgia, admiration for her idols, confusion about her peers, contemplation about motherhood — this project really presents many more aspects of Charli and I think that’s my biggest positive here.
Track By Track
I’ll cover my thoughts on each track here, in a less structured way, half capturing my first impressions, half my reflections.
- 360
I think this is the perfect intro, encapsulating the whole project in its purest form, all the parts are at work here. First, there’s the confidence, the lyrics are unabashedly confident and centering Charli as the star. I think at a time when the popular thing in pop is to break down the barrier that separates the artist from the listener, Charli makes a point to keep that barrier up and reinforce it. It’s not about relatability; she’s the star and the listener is here to witness her. Second, the PC Music affiliation is at the front, “You gon jump if AG made it”, and the production almost establishes AG Cook as a co-star here, or at least a supporting actor. Last, the cultural entrenchedness of this project. Charli is fully immersed in the ongoings of the terminally online pop listener, and this album has a pop culture self-referentiality to it that I feel directly corresponds to how much of a cultural impact “brat” became. “I’m so Julia” sounds straight out of /r/popheads, and it feels like this album more than any other sounds like it’s entirely within that community in its sound, references, humor, and intent.
- Club Classics
I’ll say this hasn’t grown on me. I don’t like it that much and I wish it was later in the project. Going from 360 to this is a little bit of a jump off the deep end. I do have elements I appreciate though — in what starts as a majorly synthetic club song, the little guitar that swells up slowly throughout gives it a warmth I don’t usually hear in club songs like this. I think maybe “Club Classics” is reflected there, there’s the warm nostalgia in that element of the song that, while the song is just about clubbing, it’s also reflective on how those classics make people feel. I think the mix and delivery on the “put your hands to the sky, I’m gonna dance all night” part makes her sound kinda like a teenage girl, which to me also feels like a callback, looking back at younger years of partying to said club classics. I also think the amount of purely instrumental parts in this song set the listener up to know this isn’t merely a pop album – there’s plenty of dance focus. It won’t just be about Charli but also a love letter from her to the music she loves, in many ways.
- Sympathy is a knife
This song is the first look into what I feel is new on this project — Charli putting aside her confident veneer and opening up. “Why I, wanna buy a gun? Why I, wanna shoot myself?” isn’t something you’d expect on a pop album at all. I like her showing this side — as much as I mentioned earlier this album contrasts against introverted pop — I think it also is her getting as introspective as she’s ever been, interestingly.
- I might say something stupid
Charli songs usually don’t get this slow. Honestly, this is giving me Lights – The Listening vibes. I didn’t expect to feel that! Easy way to hit me in the heart tbh, cheap shot Charli haha. In a way, if the album is a concept album of a party, this song feels like the hungover next-day regret. It’s just short enough to not drag on, so though it slows the album down, I think it’s done tastefully.
- Talk talk
I think on first listen, reaching this song got me fully on-board. It’s got all the parts working together. Catchy, good hook, good production. I knew I’d play it again. Although, since then, other songs have surpassed it for me, this is still a great song. I don’t have as much to say here, it’s just straight-forward good. I do think there’s something unique in the production here that I can’t yet gather my thoughts on. I like how it’s got this pounding, driving beat, but still somehow sounds soft enough to not be a clubbing song. I really like the part in the ending where her voice is more autotuned.
- Von Dutch
This is one of my favorite songs on the album. It definitely displays that confidence I mentioned, “it’s okay to admit you’re jealous of me, I’m your number one” haha. I also love the production, how the synth churns, escalates and escalates to match Charli’s singing. I think one thing this album does overall is make me like dance music haha, I admit fully it’s not something I usually gravitate to but this album has me dancing in my bedroom alone LOL especially another song later in this tracklist. I think the video is also apt for it, just as chaotic and the song itself.
- Everything is romantic
Really love the intro on this. After the frenetic, feverish club vibes on Von Dutch, the intro here is very organic, and going into the “Jesus Christ on a plastic sign” lyrics, it feels deeper thematically. Of course the song then goes into the four-on-the-floor beats without delay and turns into a banger.
I like how dynamic this song is, it switches rhythms so often, and keeps you on your toes. I love the acapella part in the middle that slowly crescendos with the backing vocals joining in, which then again gets deep-fried into a vocoder with “Fall in love again and again” repeated ad nauseum — Oh, hey, PC Music influence! If you managed to forget this is a PC Music collaboration, this song makes it so clear doesn’t it? It’s when I got here that I remembered what it was on “talk talk” that sounded unique to me — its the PC music influence, the swelling is very “Hey QT”-esque in how it builds and builds yet the volume is limited to give it that soft plodding aesthetic.
- Rewind
I like this nostalgic look back to a simpler time. I’d make the comparison to “Pretend” by Lights which has a similar idea, but they sound totally different, and reminiscing to a different point in time. Where Lights is reflecting on childhood, Charli is more focused on her earlier music career. Which is cool, because the time she’s talking about is about when I was listening to her back then!
I like how robotic her voice gets in the second half, the “Rewiiiiiiiiiiind” highkey sounds like an audio device glitching and grinding to a stop. There’s a lot of sonic textures throughout this album that are so intentional and so interesting. I think “rewind” as a title and theme is reflected in how this song makes use of literal physical music mechanisms — like the voice glitches, the record scratches here and there, and literal rewinding tape noises. I love it the more I listen, it’s dope when the actual music decisions in a song reinforce the concepts in the writing.
- So I:
This is really emotional because its about Sophie, who sadly passed away a while back. Charli gets very vulnerable here, very open about her admiration of Sophie while also talking about how she felt insecure in her presence — her own artistry seeming to pale in front of Sophie’s musical ability. I think the song speaks louder than the words I could write for it. “Your thoughts, your words, live on, endless. When I make songs, I remember”. The delivery on those lines is just perfect to me, a very emotional song.
- Girl, so confusing
This is the song of the year isn’t it? It’s like Let Nas Down for pop music. I’ve spent half the review comparing Charli and Lorde for good reason. This is the song where Charli airs out her grievances. Even saying she’d invite Lorde to parties which she’d accept and then flake. It’s genuinely a good song too, and it feels like Charli didn’t pull her punches, even saying she thinks Lorde wanted her to fail. I think Lorde hopping on the remix is fire, just like Let Nas Down, where they reconcile through music, through a collab.
- Apple
I think going from just a serious song to this is a good move. It immediately lifts up the mood. It’s such a purely catchy, bouncy pop song. The lyrics are really cryptic though? Like I don’t get what the song is about. What’s an airport got to do with any of this haha? I like the song though. And the title — the first verse is about the apple not falling far from the tree, the second is saying she thinks the apple is rotten to the core. I don’t know what’s going on. But I love having to work to figure out a song, so I love this song. I’ll pay more attention on each listen. I love the outro, yeah yeah yeah.
- B2b
This might be my favorite song on the album, or at least the most played. I love how repetitive it is, the beat is so fire, the changeups are delicious. This is easily the most danceable song on this. It has me in the zone every time it comes on. I love the siren that plays throughout. I love the breakdown midway, BACK BACK BACK BACK BACK BACK BACK back back back. It’s just sonic perfection. So fire omg. The part right after sounds SO much like early Lady Gaga, I love it!!
- Mean girls
Not as much into this song. Idk it doesn’t do as much for me. I could skip this one, but that’s not to say there’s not value to it. That piano that comes in halfway always surprises me. It’s so surprisingly organic and wholesome in the middle of the song. Lyrically it feels to me she’s in half talking about herself from the perspective of a half-informed onlooker; at times though, it also feels like she’s talking about someone else. Maybe Taylor Swift? Idk. This song isn’t bad at all, on another album it would be among the better songs. If that piano part wasn’t there, I think I wouldn’t go back to it.
- I think about it all the time
I like how her vocals are on here. It sounds intentionally sung imperfectly, like an innocence of a young girl singing on her own with no audience. Also, it sounds a lot like Hannah Diamond! PC Music influence again. Lyrically, this is really deep. It’s a reflection on potential motherhood, a party girl and superstar pondering what missing out on motherhood might feel like, a rambling of thoughts. I really like the lines “She’s a radiant mother and he’s a beautiful father And now they both know these things that I don’t”. Part of why I like the album a lot is I feel it also gives me feelings Lights’ music does often — this one reminds me of “Child” from Little Machines, which also reflected on motherhood but from the perspective of a woman about to have a kid and wondering whether she’s ready to raise it.
- 365
I like this. The album comes full circle, 360, haha. Calling back to the first song, “Who the fuck are you, I’m a brat when I’m bumping that” gives us the “They said the name of the movie!!” moment. I think this also sounds more like a PC-Music-ified version of 360. The “bumpin that” pitched up throughout does that for me too.
BRAT BRAT BRAT
I think this is the album of the year in any objective sense. No other album culturally took over like brat summer, no other album so decisively stamps its foot down as a statement on what pop music should be, and no other album executes so cleanly and firmly on its exigence. I believe this album will stand the test of time, finding itself among the pantheon of era-defining pop records, like Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love, Lorde’s Pure Heroine, Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream, and Lady Gaga’s The Fame. The story of pop music would need to include a chapter on Charli and it is this album that will be the crux of it.
While albums like Siberia by Lights will always rank higher for me personally as a favorite, objectively speaking I think Charli deserves her roses for this album, and she is getting them. Even Fantano had this as his #1 album of the year, and from what I saw, his review was a more condensed version of what I’ve said here in so many words.
What I find especially cogent in this project is how you really don’t need to read a review like this to appreciate it. The beats make you dance, the hooks bounce around in your head long after, and Charli’s charisma shines through even when the album is vulnerable. Like any perfectly crafted dish, you don’t need to think in order to enjoy its tastes, but if you so choose to understand what makes it tick, you’ll find an endless list of decisions, tastes, and efforts which came before it.
I think brat is worth your time. I think it shows what pop music can be in 2024. And I think, more than anything, brat is going to stick around and influence pop music to come.