Get in losers, our favorite car enthusiast is back. Since its release in early June, hyperpop artist Charli XCX’s “BRAT” has been making rounds around the internet, not unlike the rounds the phrase “so julia” has been making through my friends’ personal lexicons (myself included). But from the “apple” dance to Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, little did we know it would become the catalyst for a complete cultural reset. It truly has been a brat summer. But why has this neon green square of an album specifically gathered such a following? For fans of the album, the answer is clear: “BRAT” is brat. But what even is brat?
Upon listening to “BRAT” for the first time, its brashness is hard to ignore. From the obnoxious nature of the album cover to the cattiness of the actual songs, the outright party-girl, “idgaf” nature that the album exudes leaves the listener with a rush of energy. This is typical of the hyperpop genre, but Charli certainly takes it to the next level.
On “360” and “Von Dutch,” for example, raw synths and percussion closely follow unabashedly confident lyrics chock-full of aggressively British slang. Listeners can’t help but feel that they, too, are “so inspired” and “living that life.” The attitude is brought a step higher when you reach “365,” which samples the exact tune from “360” but sped up and paired with even more obnoxious percussive elements. All the while, Charli is “bumping that” seemingly every line. The album borrows and amplifies classic conventions of hyperpop: liberal use of autotune, production-compressed instrumentation, sampling, and a sound as unnatural as “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” butter (bad joke, sorry). In fact, hyperpop is probably the closest musical analogue to the definition of brat we all grew up with: someone who is annoying or ill-mannered, usually of a young age.
In “BRAT,” however, Charli’s interpretation of these hyperpop sounds are mediated and marketed as “self-assured” and “confident,” rather than “annoying” and “ill-mannered”. In other words, brattiness has gone from undesirable to coveted. At face value, it appears that to be brat is to be unequivocally brash and unapologetic 24/7 — the girl that, as Charli puts it, is “very blunt” and “a little bit volatile”. And, according to that logic, it would seem that “BRAT” IS brat… right?
If you take a look into Charli’s music, you’d find that this stereotypically brat attitude has been consistent with her music for a while now. Songs like “Vroom Vroom” and even “Speed Drive,” both of which also received a lot of traction, have the same elements portrayed in “BRAT”. However, while the album is definitely true to Charli’s music footprint, there are a few tracks within it that feel like outliers.
In particular, the track “I might say something stupid” caught me the most off guard. In comparison to the other ultra-confident and signaturely bratty songs, this one feels more like a 180 rather than a 360. The song has a much more mellow and melancholic synth in the background as Charli laments about going “so cold” as a response to the imposter syndrome she feels in the industry as someone who is “famous, but not-quite.” Throughout the song she uses various examples of embarrassing herself at a party and feeling like someone to be ignored, which is incredibly jarring compared to the feel of the other songs. Within the armor of the brat persona, we start to see a more human experience. While the idea of brat that we defined before probably wouldn’t think twice about snagging her tights on a lawn-chair, the brat that we see here certainly does. So what’s up with that?
Though I originally felt this song was tone deaf to the rest of the album, listening closer to the tracks made me realize something. What makes “BRAT” brat isn’t its “idgaf” energy. If anything, it’s the opposite. The song “Everything is romantic” paints a beautiful picture of falling in love endlessly with the tiny things in life. “Sympathy is a knife” is about dealing with insecurities and jealousy after feeling overshadowed by another woman, which is elaborated on in “Girl, so confusing”. My original definition was skewed. Brat is bold and messy, but also insecure, self-conscious, and sometimes desperate. But being those things doesn’t make brat less brat. If anything, it embraces it. Brat doesn’t have to be brazen all of the time, nor does it have to commit to being the opposite. It, simply, just is. But how do you even quantify that?
I guess the real flaw in my thinking was trying to define brat in the first place. Like most things in the world, the meaning behind brat contains multitudes. Every person who listens to the album will take away something different from their peers. According to Charli, brat is a girl with a lighter and a “strappy white top,” who likes to party and also sometimes makes mistakes. To throw my own interpretation out there, I personally think that brat is first and foremost an attitude, rather than a way of acting. It’s total acceptance of yourself. Acceptance of being loud and “out-there,” as well as acceptance of feeling like total trash and being a little jealous. In the end, the word carries a lot of interpretations; it’s up to the listener to choose what they want to unpack.
To answer the original question, the main reason why “BRAT” became the album of the summer is because it’s fun, catchy, and camp… and that’s all there is to it. But I think the reason why we love “BRAT” is because it speaks to both the “365 party girl” as well as the “I guess I’m a mess and play the part” girl in all of us.
