Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know we’re having a ‘Brat’ summer. Although it’s far from over, it’s already been an iconic season – one where it feels like both Charli XCX and the very colour lime green have taken over the world (and, weirdly, the US presidential election).
READ MORE: Charli XCX – ‘Brat’ review: pop pioneer fully embraces the dancefloor
And, excitingly, there’s still plenty of ‘Brat’ action left to come, with Charli in the running for the 2024 Mercury Prize and soon to embark on her Sweat tour with Troye Sivan and, later, the arena dates in the UK. As ‘Brat’ summer shows no signs of letting up, NME charts how we got here in the first place – and judges how ‘brat’ these milestones and moments have actually been.
Words: Rhian Daly, Karen Gwee
Early singles, and instant-classic catchphrases, hint at viral success
The ‘Brat’ era got off to a massive start in February when Charli XCX shared a snippet of ‘Von Dutch’ on TikTok. Understandably, the reaction to it was huge, proving that the star wasn’t misguided in her insistence that she was “your number one” and “cult classic, but I still pop”. An Addison Rae remix built on that fervour before, in May, Charli added to her catchphrase-coining catalogue with ‘360’ and its lines “I’m so Julia” and “bumpin’ that”.
As if the song wasn’t enough, then came the video – a who’s who of it girls of the digital age, from Chloë Sevigny and Julia Fox to Rachel Sennott, Hari Nef, Gabriette and Chloe Cherry (plus an honorary moment for A.G. Cook). Some likened it to Taylor Swift’s squad assembling in the ‘Bad Blood’ video – but it felt so much more cutting-edge and exciting. RD
How brat is it?: Effortlessly sliding new phrases into a whole corner of society’s lexicon, taking over TikTok with your music, and showing off how cool your friends are in the video? Ultra brat.
Pop-up DJ sets build hype for the album
You could sense ‘Brat’ was going to be big back in February when Charli’s Boiler Room event broke its record for most RSVPs. Those who were lucky enough to get into the Brooklyn set can now boast for the rest of their lives about witnessing a true moment – one that caused severe FOMO the world over and boasted appearances from Addison Rae, Julia Fox, A.G. Cook and George Daniel.
Brats elsewhere would soon get their chance to party with Charli. As the album rollout picked up pace, she held pop-up DJ sets in Ibiza and on a Barcelona beach ahead of her Primavera performance. Weeks after the album had gripped fans, she DJed on Glastonbury’s The Levels stage, the anticipation around her set buzzing harder than for all three Pyramid headliners combined. A mammoth queue formed outside the arena, with fans creating their own party outside the security fence while, inside, Queen Brat invited out Robyn and The xx’s Romy for a euphoric set that lived up to the hype. RD
How brat is it?: It’s incredibly brat to be wanted by everyone, everywhere.
Charli drops the controversial album cover – and claims a colour
In March, Charli unveiled the album artwork for ‘Brat’: a lime green square and the title in lowercase, in pixelated Arial font. Pop stans recoiled from their Twitter perches, one sighing that “art directors must be on strike”. Charli hit back, declaring “the constant demand for access to women’s bodies and faces in our album artwork” to be “misogynistic and boring”.
And Charli would be thoroughly validated in the weeks and months to come. The album’s design became a meme, partly thanks to canny marketing moves by her and her team: they rushed to create an image generator, ‘Brattified’ all her past album art on streaming services and erected a massive ‘Brat’ wall in Brooklyn, which became a meeting spot for fans and a billboard for album-related announcements like the deluxe edition (one has popped up in Melbourne, too). The bigger triumph, though, was that Charli practically made the album’s colour her own: from acrylic nails to Stanley cups to luxury bags, everyone wanted it in ‘Brat’ green. KG
How brat is it?: Effortlessly having the last laugh over shortsighted naysayers is highly brat.
‘Brat’ drops – and social media goes wild
June 7, 2024: Charli XCX finally releases ‘Brat’ to fan euphoria, critical acclaim – and rampant social media speculation. The rumour mill worked overtime as listeners pored over the lyrics of, in particular, ‘Sympathy is a Knife’ and ‘Girl, So Confusing’ – autobiographical songs where Charli peels back veneers of niceness to openly acknowledge difficult feelings and anxieties about some specific women in the pop world.
Things reached a fever pitch on June 14 when ‘Brat’ debuted at Number Two on the UK albums chart, pipped by Taylor Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’, which had had six deluxe UK-exclusive reissues released just days before the end of the chart tracking week. Fans went wild with speculation: was it a deliberate move by Swift – heavily rumoured to be the subject of ‘Sympathy is a Knife’ – defending her position at the top with yet another tranche of album variants? KG
How brat is it?: Charli herself has acknowledged the fun in decoding pop songs and their specific inspirations – but righteous yapping on social media and working yourself up about chart placements is not brat (see: ‘Rewind’). You should have been at the club.
Lorde works it out with Charli on the remix
Remixes were essential to the ‘Brat’ rollout from the off, from the aforementioned Addison Rae moment to Skream and Benga’s underrated ‘Von Dutch’ rework to Robyn and Yung Lean’s showcase of Swedish excellence on ‘360’. And unofficial ones have helped ‘Brat’ further permeate culture, from junglist Nia Archives’ frenetic take on ‘360’ aired at Glasto to TikTok-approved mashups with the Challengers soundtrack.
But no one was prepared when, two weeks after the album release, Lorde gave her side of the story on a fresh version of ‘Girl, So Confusing’, where Charli sings about an ambivalent, stop-start friendship with another pop star. Not only did they “work it out on the remix”, as Lorde so precisely put it, she matched Charli’s nervous vulnerability and plainspoken poetics (“It’s you and me on the coin / The industry loves to spend”), turning a great song into a stunning one. KG
How brat is it?: An undeniable pop banger that remains heart-wrenchingly human is very Charli, and extremely brat (see: ‘I think about it all the time’). And the fact that the remix came together in a mere three days, per Billboard? So brat.
TikTok sends ‘Apple’ viral
‘Apple’ has joined the likes of ‘360’ and ‘Von Dutch’ in the viral hall of fame in recent weeks, but in another timeline, we might never have heard it. “‘Apple’ nearly didn’t make the cut on the final tracklist,” Charli shared on Instagram in July. “Anyways it’s her world and we’re just living in it!”
She’s not wrong – since TikToker Kelley Heyer created choreography to the track in June, the song has been taking over social media and is becoming one of the album’s bigger streaming hits. Although the trend has seen the participation of the usual celebs and influencers, its most poignant performers are those that reflect the song’s meaning, which relates to family and even heritage. RD
How brat is it?: ‘Apple’ is an underdog story and scrapping your way to success is quite brat.
POTUS candidate Kamala Harris leans into ‘Brat’
‘Brat’ summer wouldn’t be a bona fide cultural movement if the establishment didn’t try and co-opt it for their own gain. So after Charli XCX tweeted, “Kamala IS brat”, following Joe Biden endorsing Kamala Harris as his successor in the 2024 US presidential race, the vice president’s social media being rebranded in the ‘Brat’ aesthetic wasn’t surprising so much as it was inevitable.
The internet was divided by the move: is it the genius work of chronically online political aides or a cringe attempt to be down with the youth and distance Harris from Biden’s fuddy-duddy image? The tactic also sparked an embarrassing wave of serious political pundits trying and failing to explain the ‘Brat’ phenomenon. RD
How brat is it?: It’s pretty brat to confound Serious Journalists, but the sheer unbrattiness of being co-opted by The Man negates that. The final verdict? So not brat.