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Glitzy. Gaudy. Iconic. BRAT. Charli XCX’s sixth studio album was everywhere this past summer, igniting a BRAT revolution to be a little messier, a little more pretentious, and certainly a lot less bland. Found towards the top of many of the year-end lists for 2024, BRAT is a master class in breaking barriers. With some of the wildest production and most merciless lyrics in the game, BRAT is an incredibly executed understated concept album about how just how hard it is to crack a hard exterior.
Stand-out tracks: '360' 'Von dutch' 'Apple'
My favorites: 'Sympathy is a knife' 'Talk talk' 'So I'
Kicking off with slick '360,' this is the energy that made BRAT a cultural phenomenon. Charli XCX’s whole brand is quite simply, "666 with a princess streak." Effectively simplistic and addictively bouncy, this is the pop hook that makes me want to channel my own BRAT and buy a convertible just to put the top down and listen to this song, so I too can be 'So stylish/Baby tears all gone.'
Charli XCX has been in the industry for over a decade, finding her niche in the world of amped-up club music. BRAT is all about telling it how it is with about as much cheek as is possible to cram into 42 minutes, and 'Club Classics' is no different. Outrageously synthy and perfectly cliche, it's a nod to her past while making it very clear that she's nowhere close to letting you forget about her, as she sings,"When I get to the club/I wanna to dance me." Cruising 'Von dutch' is dripping in BRAT to the point that you can nearly taste it. It's deliciously pretentious while remaining effortlessly cool. Look at that - I'm right back in my BRAT convertible with this one, but this time we're putting it in pedal-to-the-metal speed drive and headbanging to iconic lines like, 'It's okay to just admit that you're jealous of me/You're obsessin', just confess it 'cause it's obvious.'
But Charli isn't always calm, cool, and collected - 'Sympathy is a knife' is a ruthless ode to her ex's new girl who's everything she isn't. We've heard that tale before, but Charli's execution quite literally cuts through the bullshit lyrically and sonically. With a gut-punching drop and power vocals, Charli belts out "I couldn't even be her if I tried/I'm oppostite, I'm on the other side." But yet again, Charli is BRAT, so can you please cut it out with the sympathy? It's "just a knife, all this sympathy is just a lie."
BRAT is completely unconventional in so many ways, taking risks across the record with the make up of its tracklisting. Autotune-ballad 'I might say something stupid' and strings-heavy hip-hop track 'Everything is romantic' break up the star-studded electro-dance tracks. 'Talk talk' is classically 2000s club-pop, complete with sparkly production and a pounding bass synth. 'B2b' might take the cake for the trippiest track on the record, finding Charli in a neon-studded emotional tailspin.
The back half of BRAT kicks off with 'Rewind,' which takes the thematic motifs of the album and plugs them even deeper into Charli's world. This track is aching for the messiness of 2000s club pop when main pop girlies were untouchable divas and club pop music was an intentional cacophony to get lost in. She sings, "I just wanna rewind/Used to burn CDs full of songs I didn't know/Used to sit in my bedroom, puttin' polish on my toes."
Shining above the rest on the B-side of BRAT are 'Apple' and 'Mean girls.' While the former may have gone viral for its fresh sound and thrumming beat, it's actually sort of an ingenious build on the idea of "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree" and generational patterns. This is definitely still BRAT, but a softer iteration of it. Of course it still has to stay dramatic with lines like, "Feels like you never understand me, so I just wanna drive/To the airport, the airport," but ultimately this song at it’s core (pun intended) is about just how freaking frustrating it can be sometimes to face your fears.
'Mean girls' is for the brattiest of brats. This one goes out to those girls who are "break-your-boyfriend's-heart girls" and "tearing-shit-apart girls" who "worship Lana Del Rey in [their] AirPods" and have "razor-sharp tongue[s] stuck to skinny cigarettes." But despite all the cliche Tumblr-grunge imagery and beamish piano production, it does also pose the question of why are we so innately threatened by the idea of a confident, powerful, messy, disagreeable woman?
As BRAT takes its final bow, Charli takes one second to let her facade crumble on 'I think about it all the time' before she places that "365 party girl" crown back on her head in '365.' BRAT ends just the way it should, with a crazy whiplash of club-production styles and an brash indifference to the opinions of those in the outside world who don't know what it means to be BRAT.
GRAMMY for Album of the Year
BRAT is many, many things. Completely unexpected. Addictive. A marketing revolution that rocked pop culture. It has stand-out hits that have had multi-week success on the Billboard charts while remaining completely original and unconventional. This actually is an album that the more you listen to it, the more you just get it. Am I BRAT? Are you BRAT? Are the Grammys BRAT enough to see just how ingenious this record is? It may not take the title for Album of the Year in a pool of astronomical albums, but this record undoubtedly deserves to take home something.
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