Everyone’s an it girl on Brat.
9.0
Credit: Atlantic
Welcome to 365 party girl world, baby. Everyone’s an it girl on Brat.
It’s a 9.0/10! That means it’ll be in contention for Sourhouse’s Album of the Year 2024.
The sun is shining. The vibes are hot. I’ve been wearing shorts consistently for weeks now. And as far as the eye can see, lime green fills the horizon. Lime green on posters, lime green in memes, lime green in profile pictures. Ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between, our summer soundtrack has been christened, and too fucking right is it a Brat summer.
In the annals of pop history, we’re used to delineating artists by their eras and personas. Brat is beyond that; it’s a lifestyle, it’s wardrobe inspiration, it’s flash photography in dark club rooms, trashy nights out on sweaty dancefloors. In one fell swoop, Charli has inadvertently given everyone the ability to join the newest flavour of it girl, finally breaking free of the rancid Kardashian x Love Island clean affluence aesthetic we’ve been subjected to, and giving an iconographic home to the likes of Julia Fox, Alex Consani, and Rachel Sennott. Sexy is slutty once again. It’s 90s supermodels gone indie sleaze, decked out with one of the most body-thumping sonic palettes I’ve heard in a minute.
Not just body-thumping, in fact, but a production triumph. Brat is pounding and vociferous without being overwhelming. Rich and flavourful at the far ends of the spectrum, instrumentation tapering off in the middle and leaving Charli’s voice placed dead centre, making something that pulses without overcooking it. In an interview with Billboard, she described it as “this unique minimalism that is very loud and bold”. My god have her and her producers delivered. That bass on ‘Von Dutch’ is room shaking. The staccato energy on ‘Sympathy Is A Knife’ and ‘Rewind’ rattles windows. ‘365’s beat drop wobbles the Earth’s axis. Pedestalling her vocals only doubles down on what much of the album is themed around: this new universe revolves around Charli.
“Rap beef may give us plenty of drama, but it’s dragged a load of women into fighting men’s battles. Brat in contrast, proposes mending relationships by actually being honest with each other.”
Yet this isn’t an ego trip. Not even slightly. Indeed, the deep introspection she goes into on so many cuts takes the vulnerability that has made her music so compelling and runs it closer to the surface than ever before. The Brat mindset is certainly about asking for what you want, as Fashion magazine lays out, but that also means living with yourself. Confronting your insecurities. “One foot in a normal life”.
Or, in the case of the new version of ‘Girl, So Confusing’, ending the feud with Lorde in quite possibly the biggest pop culture moment of the year. The “Treaty of Versaille for gay people” as YouTube user @tw0fangs comments. Rap beef may give us plenty of drama, but it’s dragged a load of women into fighting men’s battles. Brat, in contrast, proposes mending relationships by actually being honest with each other. Followed by an all-nighter in the club and a hefty amount of substances.
It’s within that modus operandi that the album shelters a righteous sense of inclusivity. Charli’s appeal has always been self-evident for her fans, but something about Brat’s construction reaches out further than her work has done up to this point – even more so than her chart-topping singles or the massive commercial success of Crash. In modern music, we’ve become used to albums running thick aesthetics alongside them. But whereas the result tends more towards escapism on other releases, Brat is deliberately and enthusiastically contextual. Its participation doesn’t require certain body types or to have grown up in a certain lifestyle, precisely because it doesn’t even consider them as factors. Vibe and personality rule supreme, and the euphoria I feel every time I finish a listen is tangible as a result.
“…Brat is deliberately and enthusiastically contextual. Its participation doesn’t require certain body types or to have grown up in a certain lifestyle, precisely because it doesn’t even consider them as factors.”
Unsurprisingly, it’s as a party soundtrack that the record is at its strongest musically. ‘Club Classics’ deserves to live up to its name in its own right. Frankly, however, most of the cuts on the record deserve to as well. ‘Mean Girls’, with its pulsing 140 bpm head-bopper of a beat (love that piano too, by the way), certainly ought to be. Cutting to the heart of the record, name checking the people Charli wants to see on the dancefloor – hello fellow Lana stans – and stamping that what you’re bringing to the night is more important than pretending to be something else.
It would be remiss not to champion its softer moments too. They’re inescapable, the album happily dropping off the rush of a massive beat to go careening into a stream-of-consciousness confessional on multiple occasions. The tribute to SOPHIE has been lodged in my mind ever since I found out it was in dedication. Her influence radiates across the album and across what all the producers bring on their cuts, testament to just what a talent she was. The news that we’re getting her final work later this year in many ways complements the record. She’s never gone so long as we’re cherishing the sound that she pioneered.
Few artists are in such a position to make a track like that. Most incredible, therefore, is that it feels that every element of the album has been given the same attention. So many flourishes on here feel reminiscent of her past work – something she’s more than earned the right to be called her indelible mark – and are delivered with a love for everything that has made Charli one of the most exciting and compelling artists of the poptimism age. Her energy and personality radiate effusively from every second of the album, and it’s one that everyone can share in.
“So many flourishes on here feel reminiscent of her past work … and are delivered with a love for everything that has made Charli one of the most exciting and compelling artists of the poptimism age.”
Career-defining albums for pop stars almost always require a bit of arrogance. Some selfishness to assert that they’ve earned the right to make a record this definitive. Plenty too are done with earnest and honesty from the artist, in case we forget they’re human – ‘Everytime’ on Britney’s In The Zone, Nelly Furtado’s divorce inspiring many of the songs on Loose, Gaga’s personal struggles fueling Chromatica. Brat is a record that simultaneously reveals more than Charli has let us in on before, and has her proudly – and deservedly – ennobling herself as the pop innovator that she is.
But where it goes one step further is to achieve all of that whilst making everyone who listens to it feel like an it girl. A ready-made soundtrack that complements the life you already have, instead of encouraging you to escape to one you don’t. Imagination is essential to music, yes. But with the state of the world and of cultural integrity as it is, to have the biggest album of the year asking everyone to be more themselves instead of something else is very welcome.
“It’s sexy, messy, horny, druggy and very, very sweaty. About as far west of Corporate Memphis as is conceivable.”
And this isn’t happy-clap everyone-gets-a-gold-star you’re-all-special bollocks either. It’s sexy, messy, horny, druggy and very, very sweaty. About as far west of Corporate Memphis as is conceivable. A biblical fuck you to the world of body standards, cultivated social media profiles and brand deals. A liberation of edginess against corporate forces and digital vapidity. Don’t get me wrong, we should be taking plenty of pictures of this era and sharing them however we wish. Just make sure you’re getting everyone in the selfie.
In dealing so profusely with insecurity and demanding that we all stop trying not to offend each other, the result is an album that feels urgent and essential for its time just as much as its songwriting feels invigorating and revitalising against contemporary releases. A thoroughly loud pop album with a production style that characterises the record’s themes in a remarkable way. It’s a triumph to make something so hard and attacking on paper end up leaving you as warm, fulfilled and euphoric as it does. A seminal inflection point within Charli’s career, and for the entire medium of pop music as a whole.
Welcome to 365 party girl world. The guidebook for the it girl of the 2020s. Just as fashionable, just as glamorous as before, but now, without the bullshit or the diet or the media nonsense or the bitchiness. Don’t pretend to be cool, know that you’re cool, on the inside. Get your shit together. Stop pretending with people. Work it out on the remix. Dress how you want to and speak how you want to. Then, get in that fucking crowd and dance yer tits off. Everyone’s invited.
Score: 9.0/10
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