“Who the fuck are you? I’m a brat when I’m bumpin’ that.”
This summer has been colored lime green and it’s all Charli xcx’s fault.
Charli xcx’s latest album BRAT (2024) has taken over the pop music scene by storm. Over the course of the last month, I have seen BRAT themed cakes, drinks, and other various commodities, the deliciously catchy “Apple” dance going viral on TikTok, and, most of all, declarations that this summer is going to be a “brat summer.” This, like many Internet colloquialisms, is a rather nebulous concept. Inspired by the album’s infectious attitude and ambitious musicianship, it is a commitment to a summer of being unapologetic, honest, and a little selfish; an invitation to dive wildly back into 2000s-style glam and messiness.
However, underneath the LP’s shiny, green exterior, there is what feels to me like weariness. As I listened through the album for the first time, I thought, “Yes! I understand the appeal of a brat summer!” These songs were glamorous, they were bass-boosted, they were danceable. A brat summer seemed to be exactly what we needed. But the more I listened, the more I noticed a certain hollowness that felt purposeful. This unique blend is something that Charli xcx maintains brilliantly by utilizing almost blind, recession-pop style club beats and sporadic lyrics that border on cynicism, yet are dripping with hesitance and vulnerability.
Beyond its rhinestone-covered melodies, this album is chock-full of meditations on the loneliness and pressure that comes with being a girl, especially one who works in the music industry. So many of Charli’s songs in BRAT feel like emotional explorations of everything that has shaped her identity, as well as the shared yet specific experiences that occur in the growth from girlhood to womanhood. “Apple” discusses generational trauma using an apple as a metaphor for mother-daughter relationships. Building on the phrase “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” the song reads and feels like a tangent, a breakdown of sorts. “I think about it all the time” is about the expectations that society projects onto women, pressuring them to become mothers,through the lens of Charli’s close friends beginning to have children. This is entwined with Charli’s own burgeoning desire to become a mother, as she starts to become curious and out of the loop when it comes to the rites of motherhood. “Girl, so confusing” is about the pitfalls and misunderstandings that come with female friendships due to the way women are socialized under the patriarchy. This is in equal parts expanded upon, clarified, and complicated in the Lorde remix, which features the very person the song was first written about. “Rewind” is about wanting to go back to a time when scrutinizing every part of yourself wasn’t the default, before your body was placed on an examination table for the public eye. BRAT is an album that captures the complexities of being a girl in a way that is introspective without being obnoxious.
It is abundantly clear with a mere glance at the lyrics that in this album, Charli xcx offers more than just songs to go clubbing to, though they have proven themselves more than worthy of that already. BRAT is an incredibly well-thought out, in-depth analysis of the ways that women have to move through the world in order to survive, the ways that they have to shapeshift and morph in order to succeed, and the insecurities that come along with that.
To be a brat is to be confident and unapologetic, yes, but it also means allowing yourself to be vulnerable, to feel all your feelings and express them in ways that can be messy, vulnerable, bratty. It means feigning nonchalance, while being all too aware of the burn scars that mar the fluffy, marshmallow bigness of girlhood.
To have a brat summer is to welcome the season, with all its warmth and vigor, as a dive back into the raw, unfiltered emotions that we may feel as we navigate our way through life. To have a brat summer is to have a summer full of dance, full of joy, full of delirious nights out. To have a brat summer is to allow yourself to finally (finally!) feel everything.
Written by Gwen Tam