Partying can be a dissociative experience. The environment is an escapist’s fantasy: dim lighting, stuffy rooms and nothing to do but sway to the music with sweaty bodies on sweaty bodies. It produces a certain liminality — can you be sure that the silhouette next to you is real? — that feels inebriating, even for the sober among us. My friend often carries a flask of scotch. Sometimes there’s a specific theme that offers the chance to be someone else. And who could miss the faint clouds of smoke polluting the air? But parties are also ideal environments for pondering; it’s much easier to confront the impending realities of post-grad life in a room with my friends and randos, collectively losing ourselves to the buzzing synths of “Bad Romance.”
For the UK’s greatest Tumblr-era-queen turned bubbling-under-pop-diva Charli XCX, parties have functioned as creative inspiration since the early days when her parents took the 16 year old to perform at underground raves and many other career-long partying experiences, which led her to later be described as a “party anthropologist” in 2019. Her shows, venues notwithstanding, are less like conventional concerts and more like elevated dance parties. In March 2024, she hosted “PARTYGIRL,” her debut Boiler Room DJ set, in New York City, and previewed her new album. On Brat, the club becomes Charli’s own reflection room, while she remains as effortlessly cool as ever, enveloped by glossy dance music.
Brat opens with “360,” an electropop banger steered simply by a chirping synth loop and a springy bassline in what feels like a revamped “Boom Boom Pow.” Charli also opts for minimalism on the vocal front, employing a fairly monotone melody. The song’s perfect for runway strutting and gloating, as she flexes her influence on pop music (“I set the tone, it’s my design / And it’s stuck in your mind”) and namedrops her famous friends (“Call me Gabbriette, you’re so inspired”).
“360” sets the tone for the rest of the album through that very self-referentiality. There’s no way to understand the song without some investment in the myth of Charli XCX (“I’m everywhere, I’m so Julia (Fox)” makes little sense to an outsider). While that may alienate casual listeners, it becomes the catalyst for Charli’s most vulnerable album. Songs are diaristic, tapping into insecurities, relationships and, well, parties. Whether it’s her romantic uncertainties with fiancée George Daniel on “Talk Talk” or friendship troubles with an unnamed pop star on “Girl, so confusing,” speculated to be about Lorde (as evidenced by the recently released remix featuring her), Brat departs from conventional pop vagueness in its confessionality.
The emotional apex of the album, though, is “So I,” a moving tribute to the late SOPHIE, visionary producer and frequent collaborator of Charli’s. With lyrics about SOPHIE’s impact on her, Charli expresses regrets over not spending as much time with her friend before her passing. Synth plucks shimmer like crystals in damp caves while the drums take a seat, before exploding into a distorted autotuned vocal run in the outro. The buildup and climax feel reflective of our emotional state when losing a loved one; we often struggle to process it at first, until reality hits us all at once.
The diaristic nature of the album is quite new for Charli, but more broadly, for pop music as a whole. While (mainstream) pop music regularly features poignant, personal songs — Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo come to mind — few are so direct in their message. Pop stars often function more as concepts, donning a veil that separates the human from their art. The thematic quality of Brat seems to break down the barrier between pop star as image and pop star as human, to slowly shed the myth surrounding the artist. This is supplemented by the album’s promotional material: In various interviews, Charli provides direct explanations for songs and lyrics, as if to get ahead of fan interpretations. This isn’t perfect — fans still speculate about the subjects of songs — but it attempts to shatter the mythologizing surrounding her.
In recent years, dance music has experienced a renaissance of sorts in the mainstream, from Beyonce’s, uh, Renaissance to Drake’s Honestly, Nevermind, and every artist with some penchant for danceable music facilitating Jersey Club remixes. There are things to praise and criticize — the platforming of underrated and unrepresented artists and styles of music, or the appropriation of genres without giving credit to pioneers. When you self-describe your album as “club music,” it becomes an invitation to poke at its authenticity. But little of this matters for someone as deeply invested in club culture as Charli XCX. For a self-proclaimed “party girl,” to party is to live, and thus the party becomes the setting behind Charli’s reflection. All kinds of dance music — blown-out electronics, growling basslines and hypnotizing drum loops — become the soundtrack to a chaotic set of emotions. Brat often plays on the existing sounds of blog house, house, electropop and experiments in sound design from prior albums like Charli and How I’m Feeling Now; she has always been a club-oriented artist. The baroque-inspired yearning of “Everything is romantic” may be different from the bratty rave anthem “Von dutch,” but its funk brasileiro and hardstyle influences provide the same intensity.
There’s also a moody feel throughout; songs feel haunted by the issues laid out in them, as their dance musical elements become all but an echo of themselves. A lonely hi-hat ticks and synths wail on “I might say something stupid” in what sounds like the vestiges of a party gone wrong, and Charli questions her place in an environment she has made her haven: “‘Cause I don’t know if I belong here anymore.” Then there’s “Rewind,” which cleverly disguises itself within the formalities of a club banger, with loud, fuzzy synths and a hook evocative of the campy retrospection of “1999.” But unlike the dazzling sheen that coated every inch of the latter, “Rewind” sounds intentionally exhausted; the synths flimsily burst like trying to start a broken car. There’s no nostalgia, at least not for Nike Airs or Michael Jackson or MTV anymore. Rather, Charli unenthusiastically talk-sings her way through the verses, mentioning body insecurities, lack of chart success and her childhood memories. With the help of A.G. Cook, Gesaffelstein and other frequent collaborators, Brat crafts rich, musically evocative atmospheres to tackle pressing questions. The party, the fame, the music — this is her life. But can you take the party girl out of the party?
This central question is further explored on “I think about it all the time,” inspired by one of her friends’ recent motherhood, as she sings, “I think about it all the time / That I might run out of time.” The vocals float between the daintiness of Kero Kero Bonito to surreal and My Teenage Dream Ended-esque, while the instrumental glitches and flickers like a broken lightbulb. We are far from the glee and indulgence of “360” and “Club classics,” and the party girl seems to have collapsed. But she doesn’t. On the closer “365,” she takes us down a drug-fueled, never-ending party cycle. A sped-up beat and a lyric sample (“Bumpin’ that”) from “360” create what becomes the best song on Brat; the beat is manic, switching between the lightweight bounce of “360” to rapid, aggressive acid bass arpeggios to gritty, ear-shaking industrial techno, defined by the central theme: bumpin’ that. She answers the aforementioned question with a swift and resounding “no.”
Brat marks Charli’s transformation into an “eras” artist and an auteur of sorts, whether or not one considers it her greatest collection of songs. It isn’t perfect — “Sympathy is a knife” is a rehashed “Gone,” and “Mean Girls” contains some of the most obnoxious lyrics of the year — but it feels like her most fully realized album. Where Brat differs from prior Charli albums is in its singular vision. The club is more than simply alluded to; it is the very thing that drives the “party girl.” One of the central promotional moments for Brat was the Boiler Room set where she premiered much of the album, alongside curating a set of her favorite songs and songs from her friends. A mob of fans watch giddily, some perhaps unsure of what exactly a DJ set is. This is the culmination of the last decade of her career — a curator, artist and near-cult-like figure revolutionizing pop music alongside her friends. As Brat seems to suggest, wearing that crown is heavy. In its conceptual vision, the album may be even more influential than some of her older music. It has peeked from the margins, with its blunt introspection and eclectic soundscapes, to become her biggest Billboard debut. But sometimes all a party girl wants to do is zone out, party, be cool and make music with her friends. The impact can come later.
Let’s hear it from a 16-year-old Charli XCX:
“I don’t know if I’m part of a movement … you only realize that once it’s over!”
Summer Managing Arts Editor Thejas Varma can be reached at thejasv@umich.edu.
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