It’s hard to be a Brat without a clique.
Charli xcx’s BRAT is a perfect album but a solitary one. Once, Charli was renowned for her collaborations. She paired kindred spirits together, featured rare gets and spotlighted artists rooted in queer culture. But on BRAT, Charli parties and flexes, cries and grieves, yearns and celebrates, and she does it all on her own. It goes without saying, but BRAT also blew the fuck up. Memeified, politicized and commodified, the internet flattened the album into a separate entity. Corporations and politicians waved their BRAT-green memes like flags to signal they were in on it too. “We understand youth culture!” they screamed desperately, taking up all the oxygen and spoiling something good.
The essence of the album got buried by a truly unbelievable list: countless memes, odd think-pieces, the 2024 Presidential Election, Deutsche Bank and, obviously, NATO. For many, BRAT became, solely, about It-Girls, being “So Julia” and bumpin’ that. And what a shame! BRAT tells the same story that Charli xcx has been telling since 2017’s Pop 2: It’s a depiction of extremes, between feeling confident and feeling like a nobody. It’s about the paradox of being both a pop star and a human: hot, adored, party-girl, obsessed over. Grieving, lonely, jealous and hurting. BRAT is her magnum opus because it communicates that paradox in the most jarring, obvious and emotional ways.
Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat is here to set the record straight. It’s got plenty of Party Girl bangers and dispatches from a raucous summer. But it takes the source material and widens its scope—twisting and subverting it. The “I don’t wanna feel feelings” acid-house track “B2b” morphs into a work-hard play-hard victory lap with Tinashe; “Everything is romantic” travels from the Bay of Naples to rainy London, tinged with Charli’s discomfort around her explosive success. Even BRAT’s brashest, most cavalier track, “Mean girls,” now includes the perspective of the broken-hearted man, narrated by Julian Casablancas. Brat and it’s completely different doubles down on what makes BRAT BRAT: not just bumps in the bathroom and Capri in the distance, but a knowing perspective on partying as a means of survival and brattiness as a means to cover up scars. It expands the original recording without tainting what made it feel so essential in the first place. Charli xcx is on a neon-green hot streak.
The sheer existence of this album is already cause for celebration. In pop music today, the remix is rarely used as an opportunity to reinterpret a song. Usually, it’s a bland promotion: stick a new verse from a hot name on a song to get it back on New Music Friday. Add some gas to an emptying tank of attention. But Brat and it’s completely different genuinely lives up to its name. It’s a top-to-bottom reinvention, existing as more of a companion album than a remix. Only a handful of tracks retain their original structure and sound. It’s a messier and riskier approach. It swings hard and only occasionally misses.
Charli follows up her landmark success with a version of the album that doesn’t make compromises. Frankly, I don’t see your bandwagon-fan co-worker who saw the Sweat tour loving the remix. Nothing here is quite as forceful and abrasive as, say, 2020’s how i’m feeling now. But it’s a denser, more experimental album that demonstrates how unconventional she can get. She puts Ariana Grande’s stylings above slicing, razor-sharp synths and links with Drain Gang figurehead Bladee. Anyone expecting a folklore-style verse from Bon Iver will be disappointed.
And, of course, there’s the guestlist. The album’s features are a gesture of true BRAT-ness. It’s a flex–and proof of Charli’s industry stature–that she pulled Ariana Grande out of Wicked promo, featured the often-MIA Lorde and even grabbed the first-ever Billie Eilish guest appearance, alongside respected peers like Shygirl, Caroline Polachek and Yung Lean.
But the novelty of star-power alone doesn’t make a good album. After the release of Pop 2, Charli xcx discussed how she approached her collaborations for the project: “This mixtape isn’t necessarily about me—it’s really about giving everybody their moment to own the song.” She turns to friends and frenemies, peers and protégés, role models and pop royalty to share the moment. Some hype her up, some share her sadness. The album makes magic when those collaborators say something interesting back.
On the Party Girl front, Brat and it’s completely different goes for maximalism with a host of fellow club rats. You’d be hard-pressed to find another pop star that understands the BRAT ethos more than Robyn, who kicks off the album on a “360” remix with Yung Lean. Robyn shows up as a bratty-godmother, and she delivers the line “Killin’ this shit since 1994 / Got everybody in the club dancing on their own” with the confidence of someone who’s met her own BRAT moment with aplomb. It’s a sweet relief to finally hear the “365 remix with shygirl” after months of teasing. Easyfun’s bass hits like a sniff of amyl nitrates, and Shygirl knows what it means to be a “365 Party Girl,” contributing a sweaty and sultry verse (“Too hot when I sweat / Just lick me”). But the “Club classics remix with bb trickz” is the true star of the album’s party tracks, as George Daniel’s beat clacks and swerves until it sends you down into the depths of club purgatory. “Who the fuck are you / I’m a brat / When I’m bumping that,” Charli’s pitched down vocals sneer in a steely menace. The message is clear: Clubbing is dead serious.
BRAT is an album about celebrity, but it pulled off a very Swiftian songwriting technique. It made the life of the famous feel relatable. The remix album doesn’t always find the same balance. “Sympathy is a knife featuring ariana grande” and “I might say something stupid featuring the 1975 and john hopkins” dip too much into a “Fame is prison”-type narrative, with complaints about journalists or saying the wrong thing in an interview. Grande surely has more to say about the perils of fame but, instead, she opts for unspecific language and kiss offs (“It’s a knife when you’re so pretty they think it must be fake”). Still, “Sympathy”’s production sells it; the piercing synths and chopped-up vocals give it a necessary anxious edge.
The best moments on Brat and it’s completely different appear when the collaborators act as foils, complicating their originals. On the stunning remix of “Everything is romantic,” Caroline Polachek plays mentor to Charli, giving the chairwoman of Brat Summer advice on finding beauty in the everyday when life looks especially bleak. Always an economical writer, Charli captures how it feels to have everything you want and still be empty: “Living that life is romantic, right?” she asks, a flicker of doubt in her voice. Bladee and Charli are sleepless and agitated on “Rewind.” They stare at the money and obligations piling up like bricks in a wall, locking them in. Bon Iver preserves the quiet sacredness of “I think about it all the time,” splicing Bonnie Raitt’s “Nick of Time” into a distorted whisper throughout the song. It’s tender and delicate.
Charli somehow supplements her already-perfect tribute to SOPHIE by paying her respects through an assemblage of little, human moments. Then, A.G. Cook sends it up to the sky with sawing synths. The fact that the duo added to “So I” without tarnishing it is astounding. And then, of course, there’s “Girl, so confusing featuring lorde.” It’s the beating heart of BRAT. Empathy and vulnerability are terms often thrown around to describe songwriters who dive into their pasts and excavate their histories. But the “Girl, so confusing” remix shakes with the anxiety of being real. Lorde’s verse is masterly: It’s all done in plain, unsubtle, even bratty language. There’s no need for imagery or poetry. She threads her fears and memories with candor. They reach an understanding together, capitulating with the heartfelt, “‘Cause I would ride for you, Charli.” And at the end, it soars with the relief of feeling seen.
A notorious workaholic, Charli xcx assembled the project throughout a hectic summer. You can feel its spontaneity: “Two days later, got the vocal cut,” she brags on “B2b featuring tinashe.” Charli’s best non-BRAT projects–Pop 2 and how i’m feeling now–share that same level of hasty creation. She thrives as a writer when she’s close to the source, reacting to things as they come. In her interview with Zane Lowe, she spoke about seeing those three works–Pop 2, how i’m feeling now and BRAT–as a trilogy of sorts. On “Backseat,” the opener to Pop 2, she confessed: “Run through the city at midnight to feel like a star.” Anything to feel like a star. Six years later, BRAT and it’s completely different but also still brat finds the artist’s hopes for recognition fulfilled. Now, she reckons with its ugliness and uncertainty. To be a Brat, you have to face it all.
Andy Steiner is a writer and musician. When he’s not reviewing albums, you can find him collecting ‘80s Rush merchandise. Follow him on Instagram or Twitter.
